Chicago has a soul. I've spent 18 years prowling its many neighborhoods experiencing its complexity. There's ample meanness and even evil, side-by side with all the positive accomplishments and culture to be found here. By all appearances, American cities seem to be reforming. The decades long trend of moving out of the city is reversing.
All cities have problems, though they are often unacknowledged.
In Santa Fe, for example, conflicts arise between the economic bonanza of tourism and its rich historic, Hispanic character. Race, of course, is an issue affecting most American cities. To drive past abandoned buildings with the U.S. Capitol looming in the background, to see how dramatically the pollution-choked Anacostia River contrasts with the cleaner, suburban Potomac River, is to witness a visible tear in the city's soul. He had much to say about the city-its place in history and its possibilities. In his 1938 book, The City, Mr. Mumford waxed mythopoetically about the meaning of the city.