‘City on a Hill’ Review: Utopia, American-Style

Unfortunately, I am afraid that most of the urban ideals of the past detailed in Mr. Krieger’s “City on a Hill” will be of little use. He himself concludes with “it might be best if the tendency to decamp—to go West, young man—continued to wane.” Indeed, we need to stop running away to seek fresh starts and commit ourselves to renew and transform our aging cities—beloved and disdained, tired and used up, sprawled and polluted, wasteful and unjust, congested and exuberant, dangerous and ugly as they may be—into new and unimaginable communities.