A Little More Urbanity, Please

Chicago architecture critic Blair Kamin has this advice for Greensboro's developers:

But if your building is third rate, then your company’s image will be third-rate. And if your city’s buildings are third-rate, then the image of your city will be third-rate. And if the image of your city is third rate, then how on Earth are you going to attract the most desirable people—“the creative class,” as Richard Florida calls them?

You won’t. You’ll be a provincial backwater. You won’t be fully equipped to move into the 21st Century. It’ll be as though as you were living without cell phones and Blackberries and computers. They’re all essential right? Well, good design is too...

My challenge to you--to the business leaders of Greensboro, to the political leaders and to the citizens--is to recognize that architecture matters and to act on that understand in fresh and creative ways. You’ve made a good start in reviving your downtown, but now it’s time to raise your game to the next level.

Benjamin Briggs has the whole story.