For the past 20 years, as an urban planning gadfly, Goldsmith has talked about concepts like "pedestrian friendly" and "mixed use" — concepts that, at first, were revolutionary and now fall easily off the lips of developers. For years, he talked about the mistake the city made by letting developers build the Crossroads Plaza with blank, fortress-like walls.

All over the country, once-state-of-the-art shopping malls are now "gray fields," nearly deserted or totally abandoned, as planners and developers try to re-envision what makes a city vibrant.

Recently, Goldsmith — who is also a sculptor — has been working with the national Center for the Living City to help rethink New Orleans post-hurricane, including a re-employment effort called The Katrina Furniture Project, which helps residents build step stools and church pews out of the miles of flood debris.

In the Salt Lake Valley, he says, people are hungry for a chance to be spontaneous and creative — just look at the success this spring of Project 337, the old apartment house turned into a temporary art installation that drew thousands of curious people. In the Salt Lake Valley, he says, "kids are dying to find alternatives to the homogeneity of their lives."

To talk with Goldsmith for an hour is to come away dizzy with possibilities. Maybe he gets a little carried away (the Temporary Museum of Permanent Change might include "the world's smallest Nordstrom," he says; this turns out to be a computer where shoppers can order merchandise on the Internet). But it's hard not to get excited by the idea of a downtown energized in the process of being rebuilt — not just waiting for the city to be "finished," but coming downtown to celebrate the present moment, to watch the city tumble and then watch it rise again.

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com