The Next American City, a quarterly journal,

The Next American City, a quarterly journal, makes its debut this spring with an issue devoted about half to smart growth — what it is, why building “smart” is hard, whether downtown Los Angeles is a model of multi-centered growth — and about half to other matters, such as green building on the World Trade Center site and suburbs as homes for gay people. Two items in the 48-page inaugural edition are especially noteworthy: an interview with Yale architecture professor Kent Bloomer and an incisive review of Richard Florida’s important book, The Rise of the Creative Class. Bloomer, a master at creating ornament for buildings — he designed the fanciful roof sculpture of the Harold Washington Library in downtown Chicago — tells interviewer Sarah Rubinstein that monuments and ornament are essential because “they establish a memorable and knowable locus for the city around which one rallies.” He seems sympathetic to New Urbanism, but says many of the movement’s suburban developments “have proceeded without ornament, and in a sense, that’s what’s wrong with them ... It’s gone, it’s not there.” In The Rise of the Creative Class, published last year by Basic Books, Richard Florida, a Carnegie Mellon professor of regional economic development, argues that the future is bright for American cities that have the kinds of amenities desired by the burgeoning “creative class” — such as bike trails, a lively music scene, and mixed urban districts where people can work, live, and hang out at all hours. Reviewer MacKenzie Baris examines the city rankings compiled by Florida and questions whether technologically creative people such as computer engineers are in fact gravitating to the kinds of cities he praises, and whether workers who earn modest wages can fit into “creative” centers like San Francisco and Boston. If they can’t, this could undermine the diversity of cities much admired by new urbanists. The Next American City, the nonideological product of a youthful crew (editor-in-chief Adam Gordon, 23, of Baltimore, and publisher Seth A. Brown, 24, of Morningside Heights in Manhattan), aims to explore “how cities, through design, policy, and entrepreneurship, can remain economically competitive while addressing critical environmental and social issues.” A four-issue subscription costs $29. Information is available at www.americancity.org.