the future of u.s. cities is a hot topic right now… and not just in design and planning circles. the three articles below were published just this month and have me wondering whether we’re perhaps on the cusp of generating a new, distinctly american urbanism:

How the Crash Will Reshape America, in The Atlantic (Richard Florida)

On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?

Small, Green, and Good: The role of neglected cities in a sustainable future, in the Boston Review (Catherine Tumber)

Smaller cities have idiosyncratic charms of their own–worthy of sustained attention and renewal. And, fortuitously, they have a distinctive and vital role to play in the work of the new century: smaller cities will be critical in the move to local agriculture and the development of renewable energy industries. These tasks will almost certainly require a dramatic rethinking of land–use policy, and smaller cities have assets that large cities lack. Their underused or vacant industrial space and surrounding tracts of farmland make them ideal sites for sustainable land-use policies, or “smart growth.”

Obama’s Urban Opportunity, in Mother Jones (Reid Cramer)

Carrión can stick with the conventional and function as the national spokesman for cities (and their funding requests), or he can embrace the difficult and nonglamorous job of reworking how urban policy is devised and implemented by the federal government. The best hope for bringing real change to America’s cities will come if he heads down the tougher and more mundane road.