I'd like to suggest a few interesting articles. This one, published in The Atlantic (where else?), discusses the constant longing for the authentic city that probably never existed. It focuses on New York, but a similar argument could be made for almost any other place where people constantly speak about a supposed magnificient past in contrast to the seemingly decadent present.
This one, written by the Stanford economist Paul Romer, suggests that better than giving aid to poorer nations, rich countries should unite to build better cities for them. His argument is that since most of the developing world's population will move into cities over the next decades, the best way to increase their living standards is to invest in the quality of the urban infrastructure.
On a different note, this article reviews a new compilation of Charles Dickens' travel writing. Travel writing was to a great extent where Geography as a discipline started, as explorers and others went around the world describing the different cultures that they found. Charles Dickens was particularly good at this, because as the author of this review points out: "Travel is not that interesting. People are. Stories come alive only when there are people in them."
