http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCwffUO4C5E

Kotkin says: “What’s needed is something closer to lunch-bucket liberalism, which focuses on productivity-enhancing initiatives and sparking entrepreneurial growth. America–its cities in particular–could do with more private-sector stimulation and a lot less high-minded social engineering.”

Again I disagree with the politics, but it sounds to me you are both talking about the same things.

Are we just a wee bit over-sensitive:-). After all the things you’ve written about moi:-):-), have I even once asked for … Come on brother, we both know it’s hot in the urbanist kitchen.

But seriously, I very much appreciate your work, even when your challenges are sometimes a little “snarky” and when you some times … eh-hem … set my work up as a something of an … eh-hem … a “straw man.” I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a thousand times, I always learn a lot from criticism – and yours is at the top of that list. It’s made me a better thinker and clearer writer, I hope.

Just trying to clear up the record here by pointing out that even though you’ve stated in various places and implied in others that me and my group are somehow unaware, oblivious to, and neglectful of the core issue of urban inequality – implying as you sometimes do that we somehow extol the virtues and praises of the “yuppie elite” – we actually documented the inequality that is a structural characteristic of highly innovative, creative regional economies SIX years ago, identifying New York City as the third most unequal large metro in the country, behind only the high-tech centers of Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle.

Fom my end, there remains a lot of mutual interest and respect for the work of you and your colleagues. And, I’m not-so-secretly hoping the “sparks” from our renewed engagement and debate on this critical issue will encourage national, state and local leaders to pay a lot more attention to the worsening urban/class inequality that plagues our country and its biggest and most productive and innovative urban centers.

Thanks for writng and for continuing to engage these critical issues.

Rich

this is a totally uncalled for comment. i know you read the new geography which did focus on the class aspects of the digital revolution and writing about class has been something i have done for years.

it has been a major theme in articles in the washington post, newsweek, politico, the wall street journal and the latimes for years. the report on ny’s middle class out last month went into in detail as did previous report in houston as well as in reports for new america.

this is not a minor oversights. you should know better. i have no problem with our sparring but this is very inaccurate.

you owe me an apology on this one.