Kotkin Discusses Creative Class, New Book

From the interview transcript:

"Michael Duffy: What's necessary for a city to thrive and to do the things you've just said that they do so well? To put it another way, what are the main reasons that cities can fail?

Joel Kotkin : I think one of the big reasons cities fail is they don't deal with the basics. One of the things that was very attractive about some of these theories recently is that...well, we'll be hip and cool, we'll build some lofts and we'll have a cultural museum...I can't tell you the 'rust belt' cities that are absolutely dying and they put $250 million into an art museum. Newark, New Jersey, did it, and then 'Oh my God! We have an art museum and it's great and nobody wants to come'. So you've got to take care of the basics; you've got to have jobs, you've got to have good neighbourhoods, you've got to have good schools, you've got to have decent infrastructure. And I think mayors basically are lazy, many of them, and they say, 'Well, I'm going to be hip and cool and I'm going to build an art museum and I'm going to have a little Potemkin Village and everyone's going to say wow, what a great town I have.' Meanwhile, the place could be falling apart, and we see that a lot more in the United States than here in Australia.