Lately I am impressed by the number of educated people I meet who don’t think about these issues and their implications. They may feel that there is something vaguely wrong with their homes, their neighborhoods, their cities, the whole physical arrangement of their lives. They may quietly yearn, like homesick children, to belong somewhere, to be members of real communities. But their feelings aren’t moored to specific positive ideas about what it takes to make a good place. When I mention the things I have been writing about to my friends—middle- aged people advanced in serious careers—they
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