Toronto won't topple New York or London as a financial center, nor will it dethrone Los Angeles as the international entertainment capital, but with its large and stable banks, numerous knowledge-based industries thriving in the surrounding mega-regions, and an increasingly diverse population, it will gain ground. And with employment opportunities in the largest centers eroding, it can make a big move on top global talent. It stands as a model of an older, once heavily industrial Frostbelt city that has not only turned itself around but continues to grow and thrive.

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

Denser cities are smarter and more productive

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.

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.

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.

Beneath the surface, unnoticed by many, an even deeper force was at work—the rise of creativity as a fundamental economic driver, and the rise of a new social class, the Creative Class.