When I see online photos of places like Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and other major cities around the world, some brand new and some completely revitalized, I have to wonder: Is there ANY comparable city in the US today?

Why not?

Because we’re not spending the money to make it happen.

We know we need to…you can’t support millions of new citizens without going vertical and renewing the infrastructure…but we’re just not willing to invest the resources to make it happen.

Yes, there are infrastructure projects – principally in China – that have gone horribly wrong, springing up in places with no industry and therefore no reason to exist. But that doesn’t have to be the case, and now that we’ve seen how bad things can go we surely can avoid going down that road.

Yes, some of what you see is extravagant and perhaps beyond our means in these times.

But that should tell us something, too.

To me, it says that our richest companies are investing in those places, not ours.

They have lost their sense of pride, their desire to invite the world to our doorstep.

We need to get that back.

We need to bring industry and infrastructure together in a way that builds on itself, attracting workers and visitors.

We need to create and rebuild cities to make them more efficient, effective and attractive to the global community.

It’s not enough to subsist. It’s not enough to populate the ground floors of drab office buildings with lunchtime franchises.

America needs to rebuild its identity.