Terry Blue
Joel Kotkin is a pro growth urban advocate and his book the next hundred million shows where he wants the country to go. For men like Kotkin a large population that degrades the environment like China is a model we need to keep trying to achieve. He disagrees with every sensible argument against the urban projection that America has disastrously created and in fact Kotkin praises places like Houston. He says immigrants and their ethnic taco stands in areas and strip malls Americans no longer patronize are good for America and we need to keep being a dumping ground for people all around the world. Most of these businesses he praises are tax shelters for these immigrant families and many are useless businesses such as nail salons are over priced small grocers. The tech industry he speaks often basically are filled with people who want to bring high skilled Internet people in than really create jobs for Americans. The industry has done more to press for their global buddies coming here for good jobs than training the native population. He says little about the European model for cities and the ac that the reason these places and countries offer more to its citizens is because they are smaller.
Kotkins idea for America is one where cities where technology continues to build inequality and a bridge separating the haves and have nits. Global cities will continue to lead the way while those in hinterland will have immigrants help rebuild smaller and more rural areas. Kotkin wants to see more traditional places like Lexington, Nebraska transformed into Michiocana, Mexico. That us the basic problem with urban visionaries that hold views such as this prick Joel Kotkin. The America they'd want to see in 2050 is not an America where American people add anything. This is a guy who thinks technology will bring communities and allies together when in fact it has already shown that technology does the opposite. One can only look at the modern amply and that teenagers text more on their phone than talk to their parents. Kotkin says that small cities and businesses will return to the way they were functioning but doesn't say how this will occur and reverse the affects of policies that favor corporations and stockholders that lead to the downfall of the heartland. The fast growing cities that Kotkin loves with no central core were developed with low taxes and low cost housing from a population that had little economic prosperity and skills to remain in high end cities. They will always be second rate cities that only loners, immigrants, rednecks, and tax avoiders will be drawn too. Charlotte, Atlanta, Phoenix,Dallas, Houston and Orlando are terrible cites to look at and be in for more than a day. People who live in those places are types who stay I homes and only venture out for work or Wal Mart. Mr kotkin just doesn't seem to understand the limited resources and real problems of water and other resource use will have for this nation if his dream of hundreds of more millions of Americans immigrating and bringing in crappy Hong Kong Kitchen type establishments in strip malls. This us a writer and a man that likes his asphalt and only a temporary boom in natural gas to leak out the last vestiges of resources is what has prevented a suburban and sunbelt bust out from a people who can no longer afford the costs to live in these costly regions. In this book Kotkin talks about the future that didn't happen from writings in the fifties and I suspect his book will be
mentioned in complete falsehoods in the future about his ridiculous notions on where cities and country need to go in 2050.
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