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.

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

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.

There's no getting around the fact that some cities face long odds, and governments and societies are going to be confronted with some hard decisions. Most importantly, cities have to recognize that in times of crisis they have to help themselves. Governments, no matter how well intentioned, can only do so much, especially when they themselves are so strapped for cash, as the U.S. is now. Government money will probably flow to cities and regions with good prospects for the future, so as not to risk money even further by pouring it into stalled economic models.

Economies and societies invariably remake themselves in the wake of a crisis. It's a necessary component of rebound and recovery. Outmoded industries and tired consumption habits make way for new goods and services, new careers and forms of employment, and population realigns itself in the landscape. All these developments are connected to lifestyle changes.

We are the only major developed nation that isn't investing meaningfully in high-speed rail, and I believe we're making a mistake. Transportation systems that are fast and efficient and environmentally clean are going to enable the formation of these new mega-regions, the heart of the spatial fix. We need to be able to accelerate the movement of people, goods, and services - the very movement of ideas, knowledge, and creativity - between our major population centers. We have to build these links.

Ideas are the currency of the new economy.