IF you apply for a grant today and want to be successful, you’d better use the words “innovate” and “innovative” in your proposal. In art and architecture, words like “challenging,” “transgressive,” and “disruptive” are among the most used. So I was interested to see what Leon Wieseltier said to the Silicon Valley team that took over The New Republic (and eventually drove most of the employees to quit):

Wieseltier responded to Hughes with a message about stewardship. “We are not only disruptors and incubators and accelerators,” he said, seemingly mocking the language that Hughes and Vidra often used. “We are also stewards and guardians and trustees.” He went on, “The questions that we must ask ourselves, and that our historians and our children will ask of us, are these: How will what we create compare with what we inherited? Will we add to our tradition or will we subtract from it? Will we enrich it or will we deplete it?”

— Ryan Lizza, “Inside the Collapse of The New Republic,” The New Yorker

We should ask ourselves the same questions about our cities. Will future generations in London and New York thank us for all the innovative and challenging Starchitowers we built with so much fanfare?