Hamburg is getting a new symbol with its new Elbe Philharmonic concert hall. Such an architecturally impressive building is built somewhere in the world maybe once every five years, if you're lucky.

The Germans are often too bureaucratic, too fixated on rules and not risk-oriented enough. And some of their officials have the feeling that they need to make everything in the cityscape look nice and pretty as quickly as possible. That was particularly apparent in the former East Germany after reunification. Then cities sometimes get a bit too neat and tidy.

Hamburg is getting a new symbol with its new Elbe Philharmonic concert hall. Such an architecturally impressive building is built somewhere in the world maybe once every five years, if you're lucky.

As industries migrate toward the Far East, the future of many Western cities will no longer lie in manufacturing products but ideas and patents. Young, mobile elites can choose where they want to live, and they can easily move, which means that cities are involved in a heated competition for the best people. Only the most attractive cities can benefit from this development.

Hamburg will have a new and important attraction with which it can distinguish itself from other cities. But the important thing is that activities should not just be limited to the building, but that the concert hall should symbolize a general mood of creative rejuvenation.

Detroit is an urban hell. But even in this city of the dying auto industry, there is reason to hope, if they manage to combine the creative forces of designers and other intellectual "suppliers" in other ways.

Some remain great cities, but they shouldn't stand still. They should move in the direction of a knowledge-oriented society. Most cities have to do something to draw attention to themselves and make their particular assets visible on the international radar. I'm not talking about developing countries, but about the United States and Europe.