Has conventional wisdom on our cities changed?

Has conventional wisdom regarding our cities changed? Do our old paradigms not work? do we need to rethink what we expect to see in our great cities?

I'll throw out some changes I believe are in place today to see if you agree with them. Also, I'll invite you to throw in some of your own, if you'd like.

• One major newspaper in town is no longer a sign of being hick: PM newspaers have gone the way of dinosaurs and many daily's have sprung up in suburbia. One city newspaper today just isn't the problem it once was.

• Your city can survive not having a major downtown department store. They're dinosaurs, too, at least in many ways. They take a back seat to so many types of retail outlets. Meanwhile, they no longer are locally owned and the major chains that own them have no need for the huge downtown department stores that were built in an era without branches. Nobody is coming to your town to shop in a department store; they have Macy's back home.

• Sports franchises are no longer essential: LA seems to be surviving quite well without the NFL, thank you. Meanwhile, you really don't have to build that shiny new baseball or football stadium: they just aren't the draw they used to be and some cities (like Det, Milw, Pgh) never got the spike in attendance expected with their openning (poorly performing teams can have that effect). Small market cities in MLB should avoid new ball parks like the plague....MLB is not set up for success in secondary markets.

• Don't build downtown buildings in plazas, don't build downtown buildings without retail space at street level, don't build malls downtown: people want a vibrant urban enviornment full of street life with shops and restaurants and cars driving through the streets.>