Are Cities Becoming as 'Dull' as the Suburbs?

"For all their reputation as hives of individuality, neighborhoods like my own city's Broadway Market
offer almost identical businesses to those you'd find in currently hip
city neighborhoods anywhere," argues O'Sullivan. "While the base materials (streets and
houses) may be different in, say, NYC's Greenpoint, Berlin's Neukölln,
or Madrid's Malasaña, the trappings of gentrification – expensive coffee
and bike shops, junk sold at a premium as 'vintage' and, soon after,
bitterly resented chain outlets – make these places seem increasingly
homogenous."

While O'Sullivan admits that Britain's suburbs - walkable, transit-served and historic - are not analogous to those in the U.S., his bile is more pointedly directed against the faux heterogeneity and diversity of "inner city honey pots."

"No
longer the offbeat choice for hard-up people who couldn't fit in
elsewhere, inner city living is now a ubiquitously promoted urban
fantasy, recreated ad nauseam in real estate brochures, newspaper trend pieces and ads for instant coffee."