Comments on: A Tale of Ten Cities: It’s the Regional Economy! http://citiwire.net/post/1564/ Our mission... to reflect a new narrative for 21st century cities and regions. Leaving behind the 20th century pattern of cheap energy, endless automobility, burgeoning suburbs, threatened inner cities. To a challenge-packed 21st century: energy prices headed north, perilous carbon emissions, deepening have-have not divisions, excruciating social problems and deep challenges in education. But a time of exciting promise, too. Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:47:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Lawrence Gulotta http://citiwire.net/post/1564/comment-page-1/#comment-1029 Lawrence Gulotta Sun, 20 Dec 2009 22:20:23 +0000 http://citiwire.net/?p=1564#comment-1029 "In today’s interconnected web of a global economy, where talent, capital and ideas are on the move like professional soccer players...." William Stafford Although this is a promising approach for cities and regions, the idea that talent (i.e. people, families, children, elders) will move around the regions like "soccer players" strikes me as naive. In addition to running and sky trails, opera houses and cafe society, talent requires good schools for their children, affordable housing, first rate medical facilities, and sensitively run senior care for mom and dad. What do soccer players need by comparison to qualified professional talent? Soccer players are mostly young, have not settled down with family responsibility, travel endlessly from game to game. Their needs include a good hotel, food, athletic facilities, medical care and socializing with the opposite sex. Suggesting that professional talent will move around like "soccer players" undermines 1.) the natural desire of people to form stable families; 2.) join and participate in stable communities; 3.) form attachments to their cities: cultural, political and social. The "soccer player" society is transitory by definition and therefor socially unstable: prone to a conformist "barracks mentality." It is poor planning to conflate the movement of capital and ideas with the fragile social organism known as talent. “In today’s interconnected web of a global economy, where talent, capital and ideas are on the move like professional soccer players….” William Stafford

Although this is a promising approach for cities and regions, the idea that talent (i.e. people, families, children, elders) will move around the regions like “soccer players” strikes me as naive. In addition to running and sky trails, opera houses and cafe society, talent requires good schools for their children, affordable housing, first rate medical facilities, and sensitively run senior care for mom and dad.

What do soccer players need by comparison to qualified professional talent? Soccer players are mostly young, have not settled down with family responsibility, travel endlessly from game to game. Their needs include a good hotel, food, athletic facilities, medical care and socializing with the opposite sex.

Suggesting that professional talent will move around like “soccer players” undermines 1.) the natural desire of people to form stable families; 2.) join and participate in stable communities; 3.) form attachments to their cities: cultural, political and social.

The “soccer player” society is transitory by definition and therefor socially unstable: prone to a conformist “barracks mentality.” It is poor planning to conflate the movement of capital and ideas with the fragile social organism known as talent.

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