Wealthy individuals like Mr. Resnick, well-funded nonprofits and even corporations...have begun buying deserted American main streets, hoping to reinvent them with a fresh aesthetic. The people behind these ventures frequently install their friends and acquaintances in storefronts, while attempting to preserve (or exploit, depending whom you ask) local history. The practice is rarely free of conflict, even when developers have the best intentions. — NYT

There is always a delay between the time a trend begins to gain traction, and the time hipsters begin following it. This delay is caused because people can't be aware of what others are deciding, in real-time. As a result, hipsters gradually realise that the trend, and the decision has been made while making the same decision separately.
This leads to them gradually conforming towards what then becomes the mainstream. — daily mail

Joel Kotkin, a fellow at Chapman University and an untiring defender of the suburbs, begins a recent column in the Washington Post with a valid question: “What is a city for?” He then proceeds to get that question completely wrong. But really, we should be thanking him. In his article, he neatly sums up many of the key myths emerging from the anti-urbanism set, making my job of debunking these myths a lot easier. — thisbigcity.net

current conventional wisdom embraces density, sky-high scrapers, vastly expanded mass transit and ever-smaller apartments. It reflects a desire to create an ideal locale for hipsters and older, sophisticated urban dwellers. [...]

Overlooked, or even disdained, is what most middle-class residents of the metropolis actually want: home ownership, rapid access to employment throughout the metropolitan area, good schools and “human scale” neighborhoods. — washingtonpost.com

The low hipster homeownership rate of the past five years translates into a market of potentially millions of first-time homebuyers looking to find a home that matches their budget and fits into their hipster lifestyle. Real estate investors who want to tap into that trend should start with location: finding homes in communities with a heavy hipster demographic, and that are affordable for that demographic. — RealtyTrac

we want to experiment in making better public spaces. Cities are built in a very formal and classist fashion, which is at odds with the good that rapid production and public participation can do for urban development. — Huffington Post