The inaugural event of the Design Trust Council, "Gothamitis: Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Gopnik in Conversation" took place on May 2, 2007 in the Founder's Room at the Museum of Modern Art.
Cultural phenomenon Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers) was joined by fellow writer Adam Gopnik (Through the Children's Gate, Paris to the Moon), in a lively and provocative conversation entitled "Gothamitis." Keen observers of New York civic life, Gladwell and Gopnik approached the topic of "Gothamitis" -- what current development trends mean for the soul of our city -- from different perspectives.
Adam Gopnik:
"What we see is an enormous, increasingly enormous mono-cultural desert of sameness, with a Duane Reade on every block and a bank on every corner. When I walked out of my loft on Broome Street in 1983, I could have guaranteed with any direction I walked, I would find some new world. I would go into the Lower East Side and I would find an ethnic world, I would go towards the Village and I would find an older world of Bohemia. I went south and I would be in the new Bohemia of Tribeca. Everywhere I walked within 20 or 25 minutes, I could stumble on another world."
Malcolm Gladwell:
"If I had to guess what our streets would look like 10 years from now, I would say that this very process of increasing wealth, increasing social diversity, is going to drive a change in increased street level diversity, because to serve that kind of highly sophisticated heterogeneous population you need to do more than have a Washington Mutual that looks like every other one."
The entire conversation between Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Gopnik, along with audience questions,
is available as a PDF.