* The exurbs have fallen drastically in price compared to urban dwellings which retained most of their value in the recession. Urban dwellings in the US's biggest cities have increased dramatically in price since the article was written, even including the recent drops.
* An urban renaissance has occurred in the US, with young people and investment again flowing to city centers. (Compare NY 1996 with NY 2010 - the progress is amazing.) The culture has followed. Most sitcoms (and many movies) of the 80s occurred in the suburbs, now they are almost entirely urban.
* Many cities started promoting more-dense zoning and mass transit, helped along by mid-decade energy spikes. Some cities have stopped providing water rights to new areas to combat sprawl.
* McMansions (not even a widely used term in 1996) have gone from must-have to gauche. The Hummer, a status-symbol of the commuting class at the time, was dismantled this year after several years of terrible sales.
The point I was sort of alluding to is that right now urban life has certain undeniably advantages, along with certain undeniable disadvantages. I also suspect the advantages are still going to grow for another decade or so. But looking ahead to even some perfectly straightforward applications of trends already in development across a wide variety of fields, I see a lot of technologies emerging in 2025-2030 or so that will start bringing parity back to the "sprawl", or, to invoke a buzzword that I think actually works better, "decentralization". (I think the 2010s will come to be seen as the last dying gasp of industrial-age centralization.) Our grandchildren will be aghast at the horrors of our era of driving, for instance, not merely that we killed ourselves by the thousands for it but that it took up all our concentration for the duration. A fifteen minute drive in a rented car that automatically picks you up and doesn't drop any of your net connections for the duration, well heck that's hardly an inconvenience at all. In fact, "drive" is the wrong word, it's a ride. Better delivery systems; robotics will make practical things like grocery delivery in all but the most remote of areas. All of this automated infrastructure can work on even existing battery technology, because they remove the biggest problems with batteries which is the human issues of charge time (these can use industrial strength chargers) and the downtime of a given car is much less relevant. And so on for quite a while.
So what I see is a wave that will continue to go towards the cities, but then recede back away from the cities, but actually in some sense, drag all the good things about cities with them.
And my god, the hands that will wring as that is happening. We could probably power half the shift with the mighty power of wringing hands. Which won't do a damned thing to stop it.
I'm not sure how much of NYC's growth is related to any larger trend, or if it is simply for the last 10 years crime has dropped like crazy because the police have done a great job tackling hard problems. Anytime you see crime dropping 50%+ it is going to change who wants to live there.
In one of the pg essays, he reflects (I'm paraphrasing from memory) how it might be lamentable how everyone prefers fast food and reality TV to Mozart and Fresh produce, but you can't call it wrong. I think pg calls this 'trying to say that up is circular or down is blue' Because if that's what people prefer, it's what they prefer. The job of people contributing to society is to provide what people want, not to try and herd people into your own vision.
In a democracy, there's going to be large amounts of people who live life in a different style to your own. One of the hardest things for people as they get older is to learn to accept this and let them be. You don't have to make fun of them, or try to change them, just let them be, and ask that they leave you be as well. There are far too many people trying to boil the ocean these days and institute social changes where it isn't wanted or needed. People will adapt and change as their circumstances and tastes change. The market will follow them.
Also with lines like this:
>We hear this unhappiness expressed in phrases like "no sense of place" and "the loss of community."
People are ALWAYS complaining about something, and usually talking about how much better something or other was (while quietly forgetting/ignoring all the problems with the previous state).
Personally I think it's a pretty rad time to be alive. Something for everyone.
I do not think everybody in America thinks just like an "architecture critic". In fact I suspect most people in America, if introduced to an "architecture critic" would say "And what's that?"
If people were really upset about this, it wouldn't be happening. Alas, deep down inside, "everybody" pretty much likes what's happening.