A new urban era

We now live in a new era where the towns and cities of the present are different from the grey, coal-fired cities of the past. Technology has advanced; cities are cleaner--the smoke stack is gone from factories, homes are heated with cleaner natural gas, and waterways are no longer brazenly treated as sewers.

Diverse peoples are mixing more easily. Urban spaces as gathering places are getting more popular and numerous. Crime rates are falling. In the past, massive migrations put diverse racial and ethnic groups in uneasy and un-mixing proximity. Commonplace multi-racial scenes like the above would have been unthinkable one hundred years ago. There is still work to be done, but cities are becoming places of contact and learning. We have the knowledge, technology, and sophistication to turn our built landscapes into hospitable, sustaining and beautiful places.