And we have a further article in Salon on the creative cities business. From the article

What that means for cities is that instead of "underwriting big-box retailers, subsidizing downtown malls, recruiting call centers, and squandering precious taxpayer dollars on extravagant stadium complexes," the leadership should instead develop an environment attractive to the creative class by cultivating the arts, music, night life and quaint historic districts -- in short, develop places that are fun and interesting rather than corporate and mall-like.

My personal opinion is not that it is about making cities less mall-like, but more about making the cities more like the right kind of mall. I'm sorry for being a little cryptic here. I have more thoughts on the subject - in fact I probably have a long book's worth of thoughts on the subject, and I shall get to them over time.
At least, however, they do attempt to answer the "Why do so many cool people come from Texas (in particular Austin) question, although I don't think they have got to the bottom of it yet.