While waiting to meet Culture of the Future founder Jody Turner for breakfast this morning, I flipped through the New York Times and found this item in a story by Paul Vitello on voters in the heart of Pennsylvania: "Peter Contacos, 42, the fourth generation of his family to own and operate Coney Island Lunch, a downtown Johnstown business that survived two floods and the loss of thousands of regular customers when Bethlehem Steel eliminated 15,000 jobs in the 1970s and '80s, will not vote for Barack Obama, 'because his name is Barack Hussein Obama -- case closed.' Mr. Contacos, an avid hunter who proudly displays pictures of himself with a magnificently maned lion he killed in Botswana, said he considered Mr. Obama 'a terrorist.'"

When Jody arrived, she quickly flipped open her MacBook to show me the cool presentation she gave at GlobalShop 2008. It was all about the future and how we are attempting to reconnect with body, mind and community. It was our first meeting, even though we have worked together long distance on a remix project. (She confessed she had thought I was African-American until we met this morning.) And while she had many exciting ideas (as she always does), one thing Jody said struck me as profound. As we talked about how cities must raise their performance to satisfy an increasingly mobile and demanding population, she said, "People seek places where they can more of themselves."

As she said that, I grabbed my notebook and jotted it down. It seems the central question for cities. How can they, indeed, be places where people can be more of themselves? And that begs a larger question: Which people? Mr. Contacos? Or Jody Turner? Can any city, in fact, be a place where both Mr. Contacos and Ms. Turner can be more of themselves? Or will cities put a premium on particular kinds of people they want to attract and keep?

Tough questions.

And then I thought about the almost 8 hours of focus groups I sat through the night before testing the most persuasive arguments for and against cities... how very different from one another participants looked when they walked into the room but how much they found to agree on. They readily agreed that cities are the economic engines of our nation and without strong cities America would be only a shadow of itself. And yet, even in the midst of a tough economy with all the worries that go with that, participants said cities were about much more than the economy or money or jobs. They are about culture and diversity. They are demonstrations that Americans of different ethnic backgrounds and religious beliefs can live together in harmony, and that is something to be proud of.

Now, connect that idea to the second most desired attribute by college-educated 25-34 year-olds in our 2006 survey with Yankelovich. Right after "clean and attractive," respondents said they want a city that gives them an opportunity to live the life they want to live.

In this city, can I be more of myself?

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