Way back in 2014, when the sun still shone on America, I did a column titled New York,
New York in which I ventured an opinion or two
about why New York City draws to it the best and the brightest young people, or at
least the most energetic and ambitious, from around the country, including
Springfield.
I recall my nephew, recently relocated to New York after a
couple of years in the Bay Area, explain the ways in which he found New York to be San Francisco’s superior. His reply was quick and insistent: “Energy,
opportunity and diversity.”
It is not only San Francisco that lives in New York’s shadow. In September, Aaron Renn, the distinguished urbanist, published in
Crain’s Chicago Business an opinion
piece in which he explores why Chicago – the economic and intellectual and cultural
engine of Illinois — remains what Renn calls a “duck-billed platypus of cities.” It’s worth reading.
This article appears in Dec 22-28, 2016.
