Five articles for fans of city living:

• The Place Making Dividend: “Do you want the character of your community to shape the new development – or do you want the new development to shape the character of your community?” (Urban Land Institute)

• What Makes A City Great? An American Perspective: One way to envision urban greatness is to  use  a simple formulation of the “4Cs”: currency, cosmopolitanism, concentration and charisma. (Planetizen)

• My Endless New York: Musings on what makes a world city. (New York Times)

• If you want a model city, fix the one you’ve got: When it comes to the cities of the future, sustainability needs more than just purpose-built models. Imagine if the resources used to build these places were instead channeled into existing cities. (Grist)

• Stubborn US cities rated in personality test: Cities have ingrained characters that are stubbornly hard to change–and they’re not necessarily what you’d expect. (New Scientist)