urban obsession

I have an urban obsession, if you haven't noticed. I was born in a city (yes, the nation's capital), and I'm going to die in a city. And though I've lived in suburban hell my whole life (this changes in August), I've always been an urban enthusiast. You know I'm always reading about urbanism, particularly in this great time of procrastination. What I've linked you to is an article published in the new issue of The Next American City by Joel Kotkin excerpted from his recent book. It's atrocious, really. It's long, and when I first began reading, I thought this might be a flawed but perhaps decent read to introduce people to the development and significance of cities in human existence, but it quickly became a mouthpiece for promoting fear of Islamic terrorists. Kotkin actually puts forward that Islamic global terrorism is the greatest threat to the world's great, thriving cities. Unbelievable. People around the world, in cities as well as rural areas, starve, live in extreme poverty and substandard conditions with growing wealth disparities that are remaking poor ghettos into rich, homogenized ones. Lack of diversity (in all forms, people, character, social, cultural, economics, etc.), compassion, and tolerance are the greatest threats. I should have known this ridiculous religious, under the guise of cultural, attack was coming when he termed "sacredness of place" (when he really should have said unique architectural and place distinction) as one of the required elements of a surviving city. There are many more flaws, including his contradictory attitude toward Western superiority in citymaking.