class

Back when I was a college right-winger (and in those days we were few and had no pretty girls), I wrote fierce papers demonstrating the murderous fraud that was Karl Marx. A professor gently cautioned me that even if I disagreed with Marx, he offered another way of "seeing through history." He was right, of course. Marx's ideas led to some of the most bloody deeds in history. But his emphasis on class (and this was not original to him) is indeed useful.

I think about this as I watch downtown revivals and their failures. A city such as Seattle preserved most of its core buildings, many businesses and the downtown evolved organically and with all sorts of people. Phoenix and Charlotte, on the other hand, clear-cut most of their downtowns and started from scratch. If you arrived in Phoenix after 1980, you'd think the downtown was always vacant lots, government buildings and a few towers. Of course, Phoenix had a thriving downtown into the 1960s. Charlotte was similar.

Their results have been vastly different. But the class and power undertones are unmistakable and they have shaped the fate of each downtown and city.