Las Vegas an opportunistic newcomer.

That's what Joel Kotkin says in his noteworthy article. Over the last decade or two cities like Vegas have generated the most new jobs and garnered steady population growth. The future of American urbanism is in the younger cities, besides Vegas there is Houston, Charlotte, Phoenix and Riverside, and the older superstar cities like Boston, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco tend to stand still.

From the residential real estate standpoint, middle-class people can better afford to buy a house in a newcomer. In some superstar places only about 10% of households have the means to purchase a median-priced home while the national average is about 50%. No wonder the middle-class out-migration from them.

Does Chicago belong to the superstar city group? What do you think?