It is not a subtle point. It is an important point. Steven Schwartz gets it wrong again when he titles his book 'The Rise of Cities....."
It is NOT the rise of cities. It is the rise, as we phrased it in NineShift, the rise of dense neighborhoods.
1.Cities grew in the last century. They grew outward, becoming less dense with suburban sprawl.
2.Within cities today, it is dense neighborhoods that are growing around light rail and train stations.
3.Small and medium sized towns will also grow, provided they have a train station.
For example, the city of Merced, California, currently is economically deprived, the median income is only $42,000 compared to $61,000 for the US as a whole. But watch it become prosperous once the high speed train arrives.
The medium sized cities of Rochester Minnesota and Eau Claire Wisconsin also stand to gain. One or both will be on the high speed route from the Twin Cities to Chicago. When the train station arrives, the population of the city will double or triple.
Comments