Great minds think alike. And so it was that this weekend the country’s two most prestigious daily newspapers both brought us stories of how sleepy, prosperous suburbs of their respective cities are developing hip downtowns with all the accoutrements of a gentrified urban neighborhood. Out with the chain store surrounded by parking lots, in with the yoga studio and “vintage” clothing boutique on Main Street.

The New York Times reports that hipsters are fleeing Brooklyn and Manhattan’s East Village for towns along the Hudson River. “You no longer have to take the L train to experience this slice of cosmopolitan bohemia,” the Times claims. “Instead, you’ll find it along the Metro-North Railroad, roughly 25 miles north of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the suburb of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post published a story about Montgomery County, Md., a collection of leafy, wealthy suburbs, that, in the hopes of appealing to young professionals, is making plans to build pedestrian-friendly downtown areas and seeking trendy stores to fill them. “For all its prosperity and family-friendly suburban appeal, Montgomery is in the throes of a midlife crisis,” the Post writes. “That angst has led to a new item at the top of the public policy agenda: a yearning to be hip.”

The most famous cliché of editorial advice -- “write what you know” -- has always served me in good stead. I've often regretted ill-advised ventures outside my areas of expertise. (In 2006 I wrote a screed complaining that critics over-rate Ghostface Killah, based on my deep knowledge of hip-hop circa 1997. And don’t ask me about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ever. Please.) Ed Glaeser, Harvard economist and author of Triumph of the City, has just made such a mistake. While Glaeser knows free-market economics, he clearly knows nothing about the people who live in cities.

In the current issue of City Journal -- house organ of Rudy Giuliani-style neoconservatism -- Glaeser contends that it is time for cities and Republicans to put aside their history of animosity and come together. He makes three arguments, each less true than the next: that Republicans would benefit politically from appealing to urbanites, that urbanites will be receptive to their entreaties, and that Republican policy ideas would substantively benefit cities. Glaeser writes:

The GOP has an urban problem. And it’s partly a self-created one. The party, nationally and even locally, has focused on winning suburban and rural votes and has stopped reaching out to city dwellers.

The cities-as-foreign-territory approach is bad politics for the Republicans: after all, successful cities like New York and Houston surge with ambitious strivers and entrepreneurs, who should instinctively sympathize with the GOP’s faith in private industry. The Republican move away from the cities is also bad for the cities themselves, which have hugely benefited -- and could benefit a lot more -- from right-of-center ideas.

Let’s take these assertions one at a time.

You're probably aware that the federal government spends money on some things you like (national parks), and some things you may not care for (imprisoning non-violent drug offenders). But you probably don't know that the feds actually spend more money on real estate than practically anything else other than defense.

How so? As a new report illustrates, a variety of federal policies that go by other names are actually public investments in housing and other development. The report, "Federal involvement in real estate: A call for examination," by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Smart Growth America, adds it all up and finds approximately $450 billion each year in subsidies.

These public dollars, the report argues, collectively create an incentive for suburban sprawl and redistribute income from the poor to the rich. So much for the “war on suburbia.”

"Local governments are finding it hard to develop the walkable urban housing that is so in demand, and to leverage federal resources [for it]," said John McIlwain, senior housing fellow at the Urban Land Institute, on a conference call discussing the report.

If you’ve ever looked at the skyline of Washington, D.C., you know what it’s lacking: tall buildings. While other cities of D.C.'s population size and economic stature have at least a few high-rise office and apartment buildings in central locations, D.C. is just a collection of squat boxes. In fact, it’s illegal to build anything over 130 feet tall. That may soon change, however -- and it’s about time.

A widely cited urban myth holds that D.C. law prohibits buildings taller than the Capitol dome. In fact, preserving views of the Capitol and Washington Monument is one of the law's few virtues, but the height restriction is actually the result of some old-fashioned NIMBYism. Height restrictions were first approved by Congress in 1899 in response to neighbors’ complaints about construction of a 160-foot-tall apartment building. In 1910, Congress passed the Height of Buildings Act, which established that the height of a building on a commercial street cannot exceed the width of the street by more than 20 feet and cannot exceed 130 feet overall. As a result, the tallest office and apartment buildings downtown are typically not more than 12 stories.

Growing up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, I used the subway to get around the city. Cabs -- or car services, since in those days (the 1990s) taxis were often impossible to find in my part of town -- were saved for special circumstances: It was very late, it was pouring rain, or your subway line wasn’t running. Only some Uptown kids, with more money than me, seemed to use cabs as their main mode of transportation, the same way suburbanites drive everywhere. They often seemed to have an only passing familiarity with the subway system.

So it was with considerable amusement that I heard that Newt Gingrich inveighed again last Friday against “elites” in Manhattan who live in high rises and “ride the subway.” As every New Yorker knows, the measure of true privilege is being centrally located and flush enough that you never have to depend on the loud, dirty, unreliable mass transit system. If you live in an outer borough, it can be difficult to find a cab, or one that is willing to take you where you want to go. And the cost of cabbing everywhere would be ruinous for all but the very wealthy.

Of course, many people who are objectively rich and arguably elite take the subway in New York. But while Gingrich views this as a sign of moral decrepitude, it is part of what makes the city so great. The kind of elites Gingrich prefers -- the sort who live in suburban Atlanta and get into an Escalade every time they leave the house -- rarely come into contact with the less fortunate. If you live on Park Avenue, on the other hand, riding the subway is the great equalizer of your life experience. No matter how rich you are, you will suffer the delays and indignities of the subway just like the middle-class and poor riders from the Bronx and Harlem sitting next to you.