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Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Audiobook12 hours

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

Written by Edward Glaeser

Narrated by Lloyd James

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live on the three percent of land that contains our cities. Yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly. Or are they?

As Edward Glaeser proves in this myth-shattering book, cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live. New Yorkers, for instance, live longer than other Americans; heart disease and cancer rates are lower in Gotham than in the nation as a whole. More than half of America's income is earned in twenty-two metropolitan areas. And city dwellers use, on average, 40 percent less energy than suburbanites.

Glaeser travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Even the worst cities-Kinshasa, Kolkata, Lagos-confer surprising benefits on the people who flock to them, including better health and more jobs than the rural areas that surround them. Glaeser visits Bangalore and Silicon Valley, whose strangely similar histories prove how essential education is to urban success and how new technology actually encourages people to gather together physically. He discovers why Detroit is dying while other old industrial cities-Chicago, Boston, New York-thrive. He investigates why a new house costs 350 percent more in Los Angeles than in Houston, even though building costs are only 25 percent higher in Los Angeles. He pinpoints the single factor that most influences urban growth-January temperatures-and explains how certain chilly cities manage to defy that link. He explains how West Coast environmentalists have harmed the environment, and how struggling cities from Youngstown to New Orleans can "shrink to greatness." And he exposes the dangerous anti-urban political bias that is harming both cities and the entire country.

Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and eloquent argument, Glaeser makes an impassioned case for the city's import and splendor. He reminds us forcefully why we should nurture our cities or suffer consequences that will hurt us all, no matter where we live.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 31, 2011
ISBN9781452671697
Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Author

Edward Glaeser

Edward Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He has spent his career studying the economics of cities, examining key issues such as housing, segregation, crime and urban innovation, and writing about them for Economix,The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He serves as the director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

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Rating: 3.663716690265487 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Cities. Most of us live in them. Some days we wish we didn't, and then we can't imagine not to. In Triumph Of The City Edward Glaeser introduces the reader to what cities are made of. What makes them rise. What makes them fall.I must confess right away that I don't see myself as a city dweller. As much as I can't imagine living in a big city, I still appreciate living in the vicinity of one. According to Glaeser we are indeed an urban species and it's the innovations and prosperity which comes along with it, that have literally paved the path for the modern metropolis.A smart and insightful look on the modern city, its dynamics and economic perspectives, this book might appear to be a dry read on first glance, but it most certainly isn't. If you're interested in the topic, you will come to appreciate the mixture of informative content and its highly comprehensible presentation. Drawing from both historical examples and comparing them with various present day cities, I was amazed at the intricate web that makes cities what they are and how many prejudices about them simply aren't true, eg cities can often be greener than rural or suburban living.Admittedly I might not appreciate city life as fully as the author does, though I definitely loved his thought provoking depiction of what makes cities tick.In short: A fascinating look on what cities are made of!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fascinating but a bit too political. I don't like liberals who slag off scotch eggs and see nothing but rainbows in unicorns even in the darkest of slums. A bit of cynicism would'be improved this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is not a very deep book but it covers a lot of territory. The book starts with a look at Detroit which is a case study for what not to do when a city is facing problems. The author compares policies that were adopted in Detroit and compares them to policies taken in New York City. There's a lot to learn here.

    The book goes on to highlight how even cities with slums like Mumbai and Sao Paolo are better for the city residents than having the people stay in rural poverty and stagnation.

    There were some very new ideas in this book for me. I thought I would share one that struck me as eye opening. The author discusses how the lack of new construction may limit a cities growth. He points out how Houston, with no zoning laws, grows and grows and grows while the California coastal cities grow so slowly. He identifies an environmentalist attitude that looks at no growth in California as a win for the environment, but he suggests we consider that growth that does not happen here occurs in other places such as Houston. Growth in California coastal cities would be much more green than growth in sprawling, hot Houston. I think the book was well worth the read to learn about how much government policies impact city growth and how education really has such a strong influence on city growth.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A pleasure to read from beginning to end, Ed Glaeser writes intelligently and provocatively about cities. If all you care about is the bottom line you need read no further than the title: "Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier." But if you want an enjoyable and intellectually interesting tour through the world's major cities, both past and present with some speculation about the future, you won't want to miss the rest of the book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well, in the end I did like this book - but along the way various things irked me. Above all, sometimes I felt like screaming at the book, as there were lots of counterarguments which seemed obvious to me but that the author did not mention.
    Some of it may depend on the fact that mostly this is an argument for the triumph of American cities, so that a number of very apparent problems in Europe may be less of an issue in the less densely populated USA. But one argument in favour of the building regulations that Galeser sees as a curse is the environmental devastation they can bring, and the subsequent fall in demand which then leaves deserted, abandoned buildings - that is, what happens to the buildings in those cities that have been unable to reinvent themselves? Also, building tall buildings does not equate to building nice buildings, and many inner cities in Europe are blighted by ugly social housing that deteriorate and where people no longer want to live. In short, even embracing Glaeser's argument in full, I'd still see a role for at least some building regulations.

    There is another argument that I think Glaeser's doesn't really address: it is not clear that building tall and beautiful residential blocks would stem demand - at least, this does not seem to be the case in Singapore. I may be missing something here, but it would have been nice if Glaeser had tackled this issue. Sure, you would expect that increasing supply of desirable accommodation would reduce prices. But elsewhere in the book we are also given the argument that building more roads does not decrease congestion, as more cars seem to use then. So in a world of flexible households where if California does not build more, people favour settling in Houston, why would desirable tall buildings in California, say, not encourage more demand for housing in California with the result that price would not fall? There is an easy argument to be made to explain why this analogy fails, and I think he should have made it.

    And there is one last issue: inner city living in small compact spaces is not nice, and creates problems that design alone cannot eliminate. The neighbour that slams his door when going to work on an early shift; the neighbour with the newborn baby who screams at night; the kids in the next block who party when their parents are out, but that you can do nothing about as you cannot identify the flat they live in; the lady who is hard of hearing and keeps her telly really loud; the garrbage truck that comes at three in the morning and wakes you even if you are on the fifth floor (somebody must live on the fifth floor, too) - you do not need to live in a problem neighbourhood to experience all those little nags that make you long for your own private space, where you can either sleep in peace, or blast your stereo without the neighbours complaining.

    Nevertheless, I'd recommend anyone to read this book, it is definitely engaging and thougth provoking.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book should come with a surgeon general's warning: Reading this book may harm your brain and heart. The harm to the heart is caused by the author's extreme callousness. Glaeser is the poster-child of the "some are more equal" Reagan revolution. His Upper West Side Ivy Prep School features 113 faculty for 613 students, a ratio a struggling kid in the Bronx certainly will equalize by displaying greater effort. The unity in the school's Dutch motto "Eendracht Maakt Macht" probably applies only to the select few.He applauds poor people's misery. Individually, the author claims that misery pressures poor people to seek to market and explore their true talents in a Social Darwinian competition. Collectively, poverty in a city, according to the author, is a sign of success, because the reserve army of the poor could be living in even more desperate places in the countryside. The struggling poor alone, however, are necessary but not sufficient for the triumph of a city. For this, a city needs to answer the question Glaeser asks multiple times: What makes a city attractive to a billionaire? Coddling the billionaires is the main purpose of this book. Let the poor, who, in a US context, are of a different pigmentation than the author, eat cake! In a twist of history, the poor today are no longer hungry (at least, those not on food assistance or food deprived) but obese (because, as Glaeser writes in another paper, they "have self-control problems".). A truly ugly mind.Apart from his philosophy, his facts are questionable too. Much is pure "truthiness" of the David Brooks and Tom Friedman variety. One of his key examples for the triumph of the city is Silicon Valley which takes quite a bit of mind-bending before one can subsume it under the term "city". What he actually means is known as cluster development theory developed by Michael Porter or Paul Krugman (both absent in Glaeser's book intellectually and in the bibliography). In his muddled understanding of clusters, Glaeser's key recommendation is investment in education (which only works if the educated contribute and create to a city's unique competitive advantage which nowadays has to be near global). Glaeser also fails to understand specialization. His advice is for the world to become more like Manhattan, Singapore or London. The world, however, does not need multiple Manhattans. To the contrary, Manhattan's first mover advantage means that many industries cluster there and it would be futile to try to compete with them from afar.The next idea Glaeser manages to misunderstand is urban density. Again, he sees Manhattan's sky scrapers as the perfect solution. Stupid Paris and London, which do not want to bulldoze their old buildings for skyscrapers in the heart of their city centers. At least, Glaeser acknowledges that in those cities, their sky scrapers are clustered outside the center, easily reachable by public transportation. Glaeser's view of Paris seems to be shaped more from Amélie than the real city, but facts have never been much of an impediment to anti-French sentiment in the US. If Glaeser had researched beyond his dream of urban business and condominium towers for the rich, he might have become aware that the anonymity and lack of public surveillance can create enormous social problems (see French HLM or Chicago or Philly projects). His skyscraper utopia could turn ugly really quickly (but then, it would only confirm his prejudices about "those people").His final idea is uncontroversial in enlightened societies. Urban people use less natural resources than those living in rural areas. Glaeser examined a truly unhelpful question. Texas would naturally become greener if it looked like New York city, but how likely is that? A sensible approach would have compared energy utilization in Texas compared to one in, say, Southern Europe, thus exposing the giant energy waste in Texas. Glaeser straddles the idea of ecological behavior with a soft climate change denialism (either a personal opinion or in deference to his audience). As he is "not a climatologist", it "appears", "seems" etc. that climate change is happening. The science is in. Or does he think that the Holocaust "seems" to have occurred, because as a non-historian he can not venture beyond a guess? Climate change denial today is not far from denying the Holocaust. Only those who pursue a certain agenda have a need to engage in word play. It is truly strange that so called economists should have a problem with a carbon tax to compensate for externalities.In sum, a book only partially grounded in reality, based on an incomplete and often wrong understanding of theory, mixed with a truly toxic political philosophy, is the perfect candidate to become a US bestseller and to be praised by The Economist and the usual suspects. Cities, if well managed, were, are and will be the drivers of economic growth. Glaeser's book only detracts from the discussion. Avoid.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I don't agree with everything Glaeser says but overall I found it really interesting, thought-provoking and it opened my eyes to a lot of things. I already agreed with him that the density of cities is great and breeds connectivity, new ideas, and creativity. And I also knew that it is much better for the environment for people to cluster together in cities where they use less gas, less energy and contain their impact (as opposed to spreading out in suburbs and rural areas. But I used to be a big fan of preserving all old buildings and not allowing high rises. Glaeser makes a really good case for why we should build up and preserve strategically, not preserve everything blindly. Unless we want our beautiful old cities to only be playgrounds for the rich, and want builders to go elsewhere and sprawl all over the rest of the country....As environmentalists, we need to think about the good of the whole, not just the good of our neighborhood. I still think that there is perhaps an in-between strategy. between low two story buildings and sky-scrapers. And I don't have his blithe faith in the free market. But he makes a lot of really good points and has changed my mind on a number of issues. I hope that politicians, ecologists, and urban planners will all read and discuss this.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Glaesar's book is an analysis of the city as one of the great inventions of humanity and the connections the city fosters being a moving force behind human ingenuity and progress. Cities are seen as a place with poor people living in slums yet Glaesar demonstrates that cities actually draw poor people because cities offer them opportunities to improve their lives. Glaesar also demonstrates that cities are more environmentally friendly than suburbs. He criticizes how government policies tend to encourage sprawl and expensive housing. Several cities (including my own, Boston) are cited as examples of successful cities. If there's one thing that does make me uneasy about this book is Glaesar's uncritical support of free-market capitalism, but he does make a good point that governments should spend money to help the poor but not spend money on poor places, an important distinction. My opinion is already biased toward cities, but I believe this book makes a great argument toward encouraging dense well-managed cities as the sustainable way to go for humanity's future.Favorite Passages:"The strength that comes from human collaboration is the central truth behind civilization's success and the primary reason why cities exist. To understand our cities and what to do about them, we must hold on to those truths and dispatch harmful myths. We must discard the view that environmentalism means living around tree and that urbanites should always fight to preserve a city's physical past. We must stop idolizing home ownership which favors suburban tract homes over high-rise apartments, and stop romanticizing rural villages. We should eschew the simplistic view that better long-distance communication will reduce our desire and need to be near one another. Above all, we must free ourselves from our tendency to see cities as their buildings, and remember that the real city is made of flesh, not concrete." - p. 15
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An excellent book. Although somnewhat more of a free market liberal economist approach than I would normally take, I have to agree with his basic premises that succesful cities are better for society and mankind generally than the suburbs and rural areas. And to have succesful cities we need migration, education, good governance, space for clever people to interact, quality cultural/leisure activities, a social system that maintains the poor and rich who equally drive the economy and a rebalancing of the pro-suburb bias in national tax and spend policies. Achieving the last is unlikely. But the book still reminded me why I love living in central London.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I live somewhat in the suburbs and about 5-10min from the heart of downtown by car. I doubt I would ever want to live in a big city of the kind Glaeser describes, but this book is the most convincing argument for the metropolis I've ever read. Even the hugely controversial carbon tax he argues for is reasonably explained. I still don't agree with it, but I understand better why the debate is valid.The book's best message, that the core of cities are its people and not its buildings, changed my viewpoint substantially. And that helped me see another of his points, that the urban poor in cities are better off there than anywhere else. It's necessary to understand this because so much of our judgements against cities are judgements against the poor living there.The only reality that Glaeser doesn't address well enough is that most people don't want to live in cities if given a choice. The smaller community, the suburb, seems to be preference for the majority - damn all the consequences of communting and higher gas prices.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A pleasure to read from beginning to end, Ed Glaeser writes intelligently and provocatively about cities. If all you care about is the bottom line you need read no further than the title: "Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier." But if you want an enjoyable and intellectually interesting tour through the world's major cities, both past and present with some speculation about the future, you won't want to miss the rest of the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book, full of interesting statistics and fun trivia about cities, also has a more serious message to convey. Glaeser maintains that cities are absolutely essential for the elevation of civilization. They “magnify humanity’s strengths” by virtue of putting people and ideas in close proximity with one another. They encourage “competition and diverse innovations.” Moreover, he avers that cities are greener (in terms of carbon footprints) than suburbs, and amasses an impressive array of information to prove it. And he calls for more “spacially neutral” policies that advance the cause of cities rather than favoring suburban sprawl. To Glaeser, United States cities are marvelous institutions, but they could be even better if the federal and local governments pursued more rational economic policies. According to Glaeser, three main aspects of current governmental policies favor suburbs over cities:1.The federal tax deduction for home mortgage interest is not available to most city dwellers, who tend to be renters.2.Transportation dollars disproportionately go for highways and access to outlying areas, rather than to light rail or subway systems for intracity movement.3.Local funding for neighborhood schools cause the best schools to be built and maintained in the most prosperous (read “suburban”) neighborhoods. Urban schools, run by a “public quasi-monopoly,” generally cannot compete with the superior schools found in the suburbs.Glaeser proposes a number of remedial policies:1.Embrace nationwide quality schooling funded at the top-most level of government, or adopt a large-scale voucher program that would inspire urban competition for better schools. Especially in declining cities, spending on education should take precedence over spending on infrastructure.2.Streamline city building and land-use codes that over regulate and thus drive up the cost of residential construction in urban areas by artificially constraining the supply of housing.3.Deal with poverty at the national level so that city denizens cannot escape the financial burdens of their neighbors’ poverty by fleeing to the suburbs.4.Stop subsidizing home ownership. This practice not only rewards suburban sprawl, but also “encourages Americans to leverage themselves to the hilt to bet on housing … and actually pushes up housing prices by encouraging people to spend more.”5.Impose a tax on carbon emissions. Since cities generally are greener than suburbs, such a tax would be borne primarily by suburbanites who do not drive fuel-efficient cars or live in energy-efficient houses.Discussion: Glaeser received his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago. Like almost all “Chicago school” economists, he believes in the power of markets to allocate resources efficiently. Glaeser discounts or ignores “values” that are not economic in nature. In so doing, he takes issue with the groundbreaking theories of Jane Jacobs, whose influential 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities challenged the way planners understood urban spaces and public policy. Advocating low-density dwellings, her concept of a city was a beehive of diversity, spontaneity, and dynamism. The appeal of Jacobs’ city streets, which ideally pulsate with blues, barbeque, boutiques, and book fairs, is undeniable. But Glaeser argues that preserving older one-story buildings means that housing supply cannot meet demand. Prices will inevitably increase, and cities become affordable only to the prosperous, eliminating the diversity so cherished by Jacobs. Unlike many of the Chicago school, Glaeser sees a significant role for the federal government as an instrument in rationalizing the burden of dealing with poverty. But his idea that the federal government should take steps to ameliorate urban poverty is not likely to be implemented even if it does identify the most efficient venue for dispensing such aid. As he points out himself, the inherent conservatism of the U.S. government, combined with the effect of racial cleavages on sympathy for the poor, militate against the enactment of wide scale remedial action.James Trefil, a physicist who examines cities from a scientific point of view in A Scientist in the City, makes many of the same observations as does Glaeser, but comes up with a different conclusions. He believes that advances in information technology along with changes in the nature of warfare will make a pivotal difference in the evolution of cities. Because the effects of terrorism are so disruptive - especially if skyscrapers are involved, Trefil doesn’t think highly centralized systems make much sense. New developments in high-speed trains can reduce car dependency to go from “Edge Cities” and suburbs to the center, if travel is necessary. But information technology – including increased use of video conferencing - may eliminate even that need. If, Trefil proposes, just half of the labor force works from home on any given day, the harmful environmental effects of commuting will be eliminated, and each worker’s time will become more efficient as well. Shopping can also be done online, and restaurants “will join the dispersion” as in fact they always have done. Trefil’s book is a good companion volume to Glaeser's, because he has a different emphasis (i.e., the natural forces that shape cities) and because his analysis of the same phenomena differs somewhat as well.Evaluation: Glaeser’s book can be read on two levels. On the one hand, it is an entertaining, fact-filled compendium about the past and recent history of cities. It is also a treatise on how cities can thrive in the future, and indeed, why they should. This thought-provoking book is enjoyable on both levels.