Snoop is a tour de force! It’s one of the smartest and most original books I’ve come across in a long time. I devoured it and then rushed over to clean up my desk and change my iPod playlist.

Already, new forms of short-term and long-term rental housing are popping up in some metro areas. You can take on a house or apartment for a few months or even a year or two in developments that are striving to provide critical elements of community - schools, healthcare, social and cultural institutions - even for people who are living there only temporarily. People invested in a home, mortgage, or community are less likely to move to more economically vibrant locales. That kind of entrenchment is going to be an impediment to the coming spatial fix.

I call the age we are entering the creative age because the key factor propelling us forward is the rise of creativity as the primary mover of our economy.

Access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steel-making.

Places that succeed in attracting and retaining creative class people prosper; those that fail don't.

Builders need to take their preeminent position back from the traders for the economy of the future to flourish.

We need to find ways to transform the more than 60 million service jobs, which make up 45 percent of U.S. employment, in the same way - rewarding workers financially, encouraging and empowering creative participation, creating professional communities, and so on. We can look to any number of new companies - from Zappos, to Starbucks, to American Apparel - for examples of how this idea might play itself out. We need to do more to make service jobs into higher-paying family-supporting jobs of the future.