Name: Triumph of the City
Rating: 3.444444444444445 (9 reviews)
ISBN: 9781594202773

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

Greg Talbot

Descending into an airport of Los Angeles, I was privy to the beautiful landmarks of the city. It's mountains, tropical features, and the endless sprawl of a human activity. In one perspective, it's the magnification of our civilization's greatness. But in it's collection of neighborhoods, one could easily focus on squalor of the poor. A portfolio of employers (p. 71), an array of attractions and one unrepenting sun that beats on it all. What a sight, a unique one, but LA is hardly the only city with riches and rubish flung across its vast area. Glaesner's assessment of cities is largely positive. The health benefits of living in a city extend from longevity, to healthcare access to security. Even the acknowledgement of poverty is hedged with the statements that people have opportunities in cities to improve SES. Poverty in New York city is not the same as poverty in Cuba. Surprisingly, the data points toward cities like New York city being far green that rural areas that rely on more driving and electrical power (p. 210). The challenges cities face now are the growing environmental realities of carbon emissions, the suburban sprawl that displaces people/resources away from central locations, and of course helping those in our society that are without resoruces. A rich book, full of fascinating insights and illuminating in so many ways.

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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