New York: Back From The Depths!

I'm currently reading "How the Crash Will Reshape America" over at The Atlantic, describing the vast changes that the financial crisis is likely to make across the country. I'm not done yet, but It's opening section has optimistic things to say about my hometown and its future. In these frightening times, that's a good thing to have, so here you go:

...the financial crisis may ultimately help New York by reenergizing its creative economy. The extraordinary income gains of investment bankers, traders, and hedge-fund managers over the past two decades skewed the city’s economy in some unhealthy ways. In 2005, I asked a top-ranking official at a major investment bank whether the city’s rising real-estate prices were affecting his company’s ability to attract global talent. He responded simply: “We are the cause, not the effect, of the real-estate bubble.” (As it turns out, he was only half right.) Stratospheric real-estate prices have made New York less diverse over time, and arguably less stimulating. When I asked [famous urbanist Jane] Jacobs some years ago about the effects of escalating real-estate prices on creativity, she told me, “When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.” With the hegemony of the investment bankers over, New York now stands a better chance of avoiding that sterile fate.