Edward Ludwig Glaeser

A pioneering urban economist poses arguments for the city's potential for securing the world's future, challenging common perceptions to reveal why cities are actually more environmentally sound and are comprised of healthier and wealthier populations.

How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

Triumph of the City

Gavin

Engrossing optimistic catalogue of the counter-intuitions that urban economics provides us: “poverty can mean a city’s doing well, since the poor wouldn’t stay, otherwise”, “cities are greener and more democratic (smaller houses, less travel, scale utilities)”, “zoning laws ensure prices are too high, apartments too small, congestion, sprawl, slums and corruption”, “people are less unhappy and less suicidal in cities”. 

Glaeser’s aims are larger than simple Gladwellian gee-whizzing: he’s out to get a prevailing anti-city mood (e.g. Blake, Rousseau, Thoreau, hippies). Explains why art is urban, why we didn’t have good ideas before settlements, the origins of the restaurant (in a crap Parisian health-food place), the skyscraper, and the global bank Chase Manhattan (in a scam defrauding money meant for NY’s first public water supply). Valuing the devalued, staying within evidential warrant, and honest about the achievements of public agencies.

Triumph of the City How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

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