Simon talks about the significance of music and culture to New Orleans' recovery and how "we have no sense of the collective anymore in America." He says,
"If we do [Treme] right, is an argument for the city. For the idea of American urbanity, for the melting pot, for the idea that our future can't be separated from the fact that we are all going to be increasingly compacted into urban areas, though we're different in race and culture and religion. And what we make of that will determine the American future.
...Rural America's not coming back. That idea was lost with the Industrial Revolution."
