[mstoehr]

The author might have done well to read pg's essay on disagreement since his attacks were mostly vague (I too agree that the characterization of London and Paris could have been better supported), and the attacks were executed merely by bringing up an example point and then not attacking it. On the point of cities, I think that there is good economic evidence (not cited by pg) that Cambridge and Boston are very much an intellectual center because some of the greatest universities of the world and they are leaders in terms of patents and scientific citations (from "Who's Your City" by Richard Florida).