Liveblogging the 21st Century City Conference

• how suspenseful, after the bridge is open in October, we will launch the solar powered regatta and eradicate west dallas using our police powers

• That was the BIG announcement? What a letdown...sniff, sniff.

• ANNOUNCEMENT TIME. "I really enjoyed this kind of session," says Suhm. "I do want to take the opportuity to get you to mark your calendars." "This spring we will be opening the standing wave," says Suhm. "If you haven't got a kayak now, go get it." Ask for it for Christmas, she says. Hold 14, 15, 16 of October 2011 for the opening of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. "Anything that significant is going to take three days of celebration." Applause. I am underwhelmed. Are you? Should I not be? Help?

• Here comes Mary Suhm--oh wait, no, says the lady with the microphone, "I have to tell Mary what the announcement is." Laughter. Okay, now here comes Mary Suhm. "We're ready for the announcement," says the woman who is not Mary Suhm. "This is called thinking on your feet. I like to plan," says Suhm. Then, a voice from the back of the room "They're coming!" The TV is getting all set up now--Brad Watson's looking lanky and newsy as ever. And we wait. Byjebus, this is annoying. "These are announcements worth waiting for," says Suhm.

• Kotkin concludes by saying he's very excited about the new Woodall Rogers Deck Park. "It's a great opportunity." Now, it's AN ANNOUNCEMENT!

• Old dude stands up and asks of suburbs, "Will they be able to adapt their zoning to these new realities?" Because they're "splintered" and "contentious." Kotkin disagrees a bit, saying he's seen some real zoning success in the suburbs. He says of downtown Burbank: "you go down there on a Friday or Saturday night and it's packed!" He also cites Glendale, Culver City "which was a joke when I moved to LA, is now the hip place to be." "The places that have been more foresighted are doing much better," says Kotkin. So if your suburb is full of racist jerks who hate change and brown folks, you are probably going to have a crappy suburb in the future.

• Malls don't have to be "where somebody goes in and has a transaction, but they spend a good part of the day," says Kotkin. "Certainly in India, you cannot avoid the poor," says Kotkin. "If you look at Gran Plaza," says Kotkin, those people are poor, too. "It's an environment of respect for working class families," he said. Imagine!

• That point, at 11:50, is what I use every day I choose to work out of the house.

• In his "Rethinking the Future" slide, Kotkin emphasizes sustainability (bingo?) as the most important factor in "cities of aspiration" like Dallas. And now, questions: "I want to question you a little bit of the idea about the mall," says a woman from India who reports that many folks she talks to feel that India is "losing its soul." (Anthropology nerd alert: if this kind of idea is interesting to you, check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Representing-Calcutta-Modernity-Nationalism-Transformation/dp/0415392160 and its ilk. There's lots of excellent research happening now about India and modernity.) Kotkin says: "Put the predictable next to the unpredictable," if you're doing malls. "What they've done with La Gran Plaza is they have the mercado, and they have space for the flea market," so there's room for many different kinds of businesses and activities.

• "To me the most important thing is, we have to make something work environmentally that will be acceptable to the vast majority of the population," says Kotkin, and an example of that is telecommuting. "This is going to increase," says Kotkin, and greenhouse gases will be reduced significantly--more effectively than if people were lawed-and-legislated out of driving around. When people work at home, it's good for local businesses because they tend to eat in their neighborhoods and it's also good for public safety because "there are eyes on the street."

• Somebody in the audience is wearing some incredible cologne. If it's you, and you're reading this, you smell awful. But I bet you look nice.

• "Coming Next: The Multi-Generational Suburb," is Kotkin's present slide. Directed by Wes Craven.

• We can also look forward to more multi-generation households, says Kotkin. Used to be, more and more people were living alone, but now, more people have relatives living with them and we can all look forward to having more of that. A lot more. Who needs a drink?

• "You can still build great new parks here," says Kotkin, moving on in his discussion of public space. And then dropped a New Urbanist Bingo Keyword: sustainability! His next slide looks like something out of the Land Before Time and is titled "The Archipelago of Villages: Towards 'Smart Sprawl.'" Since most people still want a single-family house and personal space, says Kotkin, "we have to think about how to we solve the problem of sprawl within sprawl." "If you're living in a great neighborhood," says Kotkin, just importing density is no good: "the idea of putting a lot of high rise buildings in it is not very attractive." And then, Kotkin started spittin' truth: in Dallas, we "always wanted to be approved by people from Boston, always wanted to be approved by New York." Kotkin says we should own our identity and quit looking elsewhere for approval and inspiration. "Most people are staying close to home," and moving less than they ever did, so there's an opportunity to build a real Dallas-identified community now and in the future.

• "Your city is going to be reshaped by millenials and immigrants more than most other cities," Kotkin told the crowd. And today, a majority of immigrants live in the suburbs. Is this presentation about cities or what? Kotkin showed a sign of Fort Worth's La Gran Plaza (http://www.lagranplazamall.com/en/home.aspx) and asked if anyone in the room had been--one person raised a hand. "The owner is Jewish like I am," said Kotkin. "They created this place that is clean, safe, treats people with respect." They have Hispanic-targeted religious festivals, shopping areas, etc. "Malls have been the social center of society," says Kotkin, so buck up and face the music, New Urbanists. "This place has minted money throughout the recession," says Kotkin, who also says he's seen similar success with Asian-targeted areas. "I'm not a big mall guy," but "there are ways you can make malls into viable spaces that enliven urban life."

• "Millenials are going to be a bigger factor" than Baby Boomers, says Kotkin--and many of those bunch are going to be in and around Utah, where those LDS'ers get their tap on regularly. But they'll also be in other places, and generally are interested in getting married and having kids. As opposed to Japan, where only 50% of women surveyed are interested in having kids, said Kotkin. (Big ups, Japan.) Kotkin's graphs show that millennials apparently aspire to live in the suburbs when they grow up because they have fond memories of the suburbs, themselves. (So far, no audience members are weeping and skulking away on bikes and public transit, hoping to drink away the pain of the realization that texting teenagers just want to shop at Target forever and drive home in their Hummers.)

• Kotkin warned the crowd against getting down on suburbia and doing too much back-patting about urban life: "I think we need to think about how to make suburbia better than trying to think about how we can eradicate it." Fact is, people are going to move where the jobs are. "That is going to be the big issue," said Kotkin. In the modern economic climate, "people are moving to opportunity regions." Dallas is one of those--in fact, one of Kotkin's slides called Dallas the "City of Aspiration," and he noted Texas' growth potential in the science and engineering industries. Despite all that science happening, Kotkin reminded the crowd that "most people aren't going to have advanced degrees." (UGH! I always forget that. Where's my latte?) He also noted that they're going to be moving to the 'burbs. Just the way it is. Not like in the 1970's, the "dark ages" for cities, but they're moving to the burbs. Kotkin threw up a graph from a survey by the National Association of Realtors which showed that 35% of those interviewed say they'd like to live in a rural community ("They've been watching too many reruns of Green Acres or something," said Kotkin) and just 13% want to live in cities.

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