It’s hard to define what makes a great city, but part of the magic lies in different kinds of people living in close proximity — with just enough friction to generate something unexpected. It’s the bar where a journalist and a hedge fund analyst realize, well past midnight, they share the same obsession for Nick Cave.
The great hotel lobbies of the twentieth century used to accomplish this. They were promiscuous in the best sense — places where the famous, the obscure, the moneyed, and the merely interesting collided. They had energy because they had range. That era is largely over, and the industry should be honest about why.
The ultra-luxury segment has grown dramatically over the past decade, and with that growth has come a creeping, self-inflicted homogeneity. The guests at the top tier of any major market are now largely interchangeable — a narrow band of u
