On whether city TLDs will succeed or are needed, I trust the markets to make that decision. Any proponent of a new gTLD has a significant upfront investment to make-- in the millions -- and I presume they all do their market research before launching to know whether they have a reasonable chance to make a return on that investment. ICANN should have a plan for "retiring" failed TLDs, along the lines of what it has done with some ccTLDs, and then let qualified applicants see what they can do. I can understand why a registrant might prefer nameofmyhotel.nyc over nameofmyhotel.travel, but I share some of the skeptism expressed by others about the willingness of commercial enterprises who already have a .COM name to re-brand themselves under something else. Then again, I once thought that buying <commonword>.com was a waste of $35, that a portal was stupid business (Yahoo!), and that Google was *way* overpriced at its IPO....so what do I know? -- Bret