As I write this I am sitting on a balcony thirty feet above the Plaza Mayor in the center of Madrid Spain. Madrid is a fantastic city and, in my opinion, one of the last cities in the world where the idea and reality of what a healthy city should be still exists. This is my sixth visit to Spain where my wife lived during her Junior year of college, and brought me shortly after we were married. This trip is even more fascinating than the others. The reason for the difference is due to the dismaying contradictions posed by an exciting, safe, and strongly interactive urban giant such as Madrid and the declining, almost Third World, cities that now characterize much of America.
