JOEL KOTKIN: Bad Times in the Blue Zones: If they are to survive and thrive, cities need to become more people-friendly. “Crime has always been a part of the urban story, but in many ways, today’s wave is more terrifying and more random. Even the worst gangsters of the 1930s—like Murder Inc. in my mother’s Brooklyn slum—generally left “civilians” alone. Today’s crime, on the other hand, reflects what one Chicago resident described as “sociopathic idiocy.” In some great urban centers—San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, New York—the social order has broken down, and these cities have become centers for homelessness, open drug markets, and petty crime. In many cases, crime has made people more reluctant to ride on public transport such as the New York subways, once a major asset to traditional cities. The current crop of urban leaders has only made things worse.”