Triumph of the City: How Urban Spaces Make Us Human

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You already recently rated this item. Your rating has been recorded. Write a review Rate this item: Preview this item Preview this item. Triumph of the city: Edward L Glaeser Publisher: English View all editions and formats Summary:. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private.

Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item Edward L Glaeser Find more information about: Reviews User-contributed reviews Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Similar Items Related Subjects: Cities and towns -- Growth. Linked Data More info about Linked Data. Cities have been and will continue to be the engine of growth. The place where cultures, ideas, people, technology and capital meet. This emphasizes the place of cities in our lives.

City life has many challenges like crime, poverty and disease but the author brilliantly illustrates that these challenges can be overcome with the This book is very counterintuitive, the best defense I've come across for the maligned city. City life has many challenges like crime, poverty and disease but the author brilliantly illustrates that these challenges can be overcome with the right public policies and political will. A great book for city planners and anyone who is interested in cities. Aug 03, Michael rated it really liked it. This is not a Jane Jacobs acolyte book about urban design or about how density and walkability make us more virtuous, but an out of the box urban economics study; part Richard Florida with more substance , part Malcolm Gladwell with just as much trivia but fewer syllogisms.

Glaeser's underlying theory is this: Traditionally the city has been a place to make ideas, not automobiles This is not a Jane Jacobs acolyte book about urban design or about how density and walkability make us more virtuous, but an out of the box urban economics study; part Richard Florida with more substance , part Malcolm Gladwell with just as much trivia but fewer syllogisms. Traditionally the city has been a place to make ideas, not automobiles, and places designed to attract the educated and the skilled, not the unskilled factory worker.

The knowledge blender does not have to happen in a dense traditional city--the low-density Silicon Valley of office parks has launched many of our best innovations for decades--but low-density suburbia is not sustainable. Glaeser manages to hatch some truly original ideas. Some are provocative, others just eccentric. Yet Glaeser has given those of us who spend a lot of time thinking about cities some new material to chew on.

Aug 12, Kylie Sparks rated it really liked it Shelves: 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 bi 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.

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.

Driving progress

I still think that there is perhaps an in-between strategy. 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. Apr 13, Gordon rated it it was amazing.

Sometime around , the world's population passed a great milestone: We are fast leaving our agricultural past behind. Edward Glaeser argues that this transformation of the way we live is a very, very good thing. As compared with their rural cousins, people who live in cities have a much smaller carbon footprint. T Sometime around , the world's population passed a great milestone: They make more money. They are less likely to commit suicide. This argument is a little twisted, if you believe in the notion that a life closer to nature is one that returns us to our roots, allows us to leave greener lives, and makes us healthier, calmer and generally morally superior to the degenerates in the city.

Alas, people are voting with their feet. All that country greenery is nice, but what good is it if you can't find a job, you can't meet interesting people, and the nearest doctor is in the next county? So they leave and head for the big city. This process of urbanization is inexorable, says Glaeser. Other than during the Dark Ages, after the fall of Rome when the great cities of the empire returned to being villages as their starving inhabitants scattered to the countryside, the long term trend since the dawn of civilization has been towards more and more of us living in cities.

But cities can be made even better, he says. It is when we resist the natural logic of the city -- for example, by using zoning laws to prevent high density development -- that we thwart the benefits we would otherwise gain. In Paris, where the heights of buildings have been limited to about five stories since Baron Haussmann tore down much of the city in the nineteenth century only to rebuild it more elegantly, real estate supply has been so restricted that only the rich can afford to live in the central city -- the poor are confined to the outer suburbs, filled with high-rises.

Contrast this with cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong, where high density has created immensely vibrant cities with public transit systems that make it easy to get around and also drastically cut carbon emissions from cars. Glaeser generally believes that the job of city government is clear-cut: Keep the streets clean and above all, safe.

Build basic systems infrastructure: Provide a good educational system accessible to all. And don't impede business with excessive bureaucratic obstacles, especially the small businesses that keep the economy vibrant, adaptable and growing. Who loses out with this kind of model of governance? Lovers of old architecture will see their cities' brick and mortar heritage steadily swept away and replaced by newer, denser developments. Those who value small cities will be overcome by the forces of growth.

Older businesses will have little protection from aggressive newcomers who out-compete them. Glaeser grew up in New York, and Manhattan is his model of what a great city should be.

It is immensely productive -- a few blocks of mid-town Manhattan contributes as much to the nation's GDP as entire mid-sized states such as Oregon. Public transportation is so good that New Yorkers use less fuel per capita than any other city in the country, by a wide margin. It is the intellectual heart of the nation. It is wildly multicultural. And it continues to evolve steadily, adapting to the times. As recently as the 's, the biggest industry in NYC was textiles. That industry crashed when the tsunami of globalization hit it, but NYC recovered within a decade or two and replaced manufacturing with financial services.

Contrast this with what happened when Detroit was faced with a similar crisis due to the decline of its own mature manufacturing sector: The city never adapted and never recovered. Today, it is bankrupt.

Reading Progress

Its population is a small fraction of what it was in , and large sections of it are nearly deserted. Why the difference between NYC and Detroit? NYC relied on small businesses with a relatively high proportion of skilled workers, and invested in an excellent educational system. Detroit relied on three giant vertically integrated behemoths with a relatively low-skilled workforce, and tolerated a poor educational system. Predictably, NYC proved much nimbler at coping with environmental change than its dinosaur-like counterpart, Detroit.

There is lots more in this wonderful book, which overall makes me much more optimistic about the ability of our increasingly urbanized world to change and adapt. Read this book if you want to feel that you made the right choice about living in a city rather than retreating to that cabin in the mountains as you always fantasized. Jul 12, Joaquin Garza rated it it was amazing Shelves: La ciudad triunfante descrita en un libro triunfal. Con errores y omisiones, por supuesto. So far so good. Recomendado para cualquiera interesado en tener una mayor calidad de vida urbana.

Apr 04, asih simanis rated it liked it. Hopefully my rating will not undermine the value of the ideas inside this book too much, since many of the arguments presented were well argued and important. However I find the book repetitive, tiring and boring. I believe the book could've been shrunk by half and it would've been better and more brilliant. Nov 24, Tom rated it really liked it. This proved to be an interesting book based on a somewhat controversial premise: A lot of challenging positions are asserted by Glaeser and he provides a lot of examples showing how var This proved to be an interesting book based on a somewhat controversial premise: A lot of challenging positions are asserted by Glaeser and he provides a lot of examples showing how various cities, worldwide, have failed or succeeded.

For example, environmentalists fight for and praise restrictions that support preservation, reduce density and preserve public lands. The result is fewer housing opportunities and higher living costs.

Triumph of the city : [how urban spaces make us human]

Houston has a much higher carbon footprint than the Bay Area where a temperate climate and higher density reduce global warming. He attacks many other policies that he believes lead to bad environmental outcomes: So we need, according to Glaeser, most dense, livable cities, building up, up and up, all with affordable housing that will attract us to live that way.

Some of it irritated me, in part because it challenged my preconceived ideas. I assume this was good for me. Dec 07, Andrew rated it it was amazing Shelves: I'd like to see a good rebuttal of him, but I couldn't think of any myself. The worst thing I could say about this book is that I think his writing style was a little too simple.

This is a stirring defense of cities, and the benefits they can offer. As someone who grew up in Detroit, I've spent the last ten years defending it. Glaeser spends a whole chapter and constant asides elsewhere explaining what happened to Detroit, and why it will be so hard to bring it back. There are a number of other snippets that make the book worth reading- like his argument that local environmentalism, especially on the coasts, is bad for the environment.

The fewer people are allowed to live in California because of zoning laws, the more will move to Houston and Phoenix, where they will drive more and use the air conditioner more. I should say that this book has come closer than anything else I've ever read to making me really optimistic for the future. I'm still a subscriber to Malthus, in the end, and while I think he did a fantastic job of arguing that large cities are the best way to make the world richer and happier, and making those cities dense is the best way to have a massive population without too much pollution.

But he didn't engage with the idea of the depletion of resources that that would entail. Of course, that wasn't what the book was about, so I can't really fault him for not going into it, but that's why I'm still not certain that we've really broken out of the Malthusian cycle, rather than just pausing it for a couple centuries.

I highly recommend it if public policy, cities, or the future of humanity interest you. Aug 10, James rated it liked it Recommended to James by: The themes of the book are interesting, cities are the greenest living spaces and are intellectually productive. Stewart Brand and others have written good stuff on the first and many have written on the later. He does try and answer the questions why cities thrive or die, what makes one city better than another?

Other interesting bits are short sketches of different cities and their evolution. I didn't realize how extensive the remodeling of Paris was, good stuff! Also good is the evolution of The themes of the book are interesting, cities are the greenest living spaces and are intellectually productive. Also good is the evolution of 'burbs and the anti-city bias of early American authors like Thoreau and Jefferson. I do have some bones to pick, this author comes across as a free-market economist, which given who he works for is not surprising.

He touts lack of zoning in Texas as a great thing, I guess he doesn't have any children going to school next to a chemical plant. He also poo-poos NIMBYism and environmental impact reports, why should anyone but the owner decide what to do with their land? This is ironic since several of the cities that he admires were controlled by dictators or emperors that ran roughshod over property owners. A real situation in parts of California.

Vouchers of course are the real answer. This book is thought provoking and would probably make a good book club read. Dec 22, Marks54 rated it really liked it. This is a review of current thinking on the city by a Harvard economist who specializes in such work. He adds, however, that Jacobs was not an economist and so misunderstood some points, such as the unintended consequences of restricting the size and extent of building in a city - that preservation and limits building will lead to the marginalization of c This is a review of current thinking on the city by a Harvard economist who specializes in such work.

He adds, however, that Jacobs was not an economist and so misunderstood some points, such as the unintended consequences of restricting the size and extent of building in a city - that preservation and limits building will lead to the marginalization of cities with gentrification along the way, which to me is a reasonable comment on Jacobs' great book.

The major takeaway from this book is counterintuitive, namely that in some very important ways, building up cities is much more friendly to the economy and to limiting global warming than is limiting cities and building green suburbs. It is counterintuitive but it leads to some really interesting arguments about city planning, both in the US and in Asia.

Glaeser also provides lots of updated info on lots of cities, from Chicago, Atlanta, and Detroit to Singapore and the nascent high growth Chinese cities. Overall, it was a really good book with good policy implications that does not just reinforce established arguments but makes the reader come to grips with if not totally agree with new ones. It did not have the same impact on me as Jacobs' book had but it was a very good book. Jul 06, Sean rated it liked it Shelves: I have to give this a very low three stars. While containing a good deal of informative content and good ideas, the tone of the book is more abrasive to me than almost any other book I've read.

I've never had to describe a book's tone as such before, so I had to check out a thesaurus to find just how to explain it. Glaeser is sickeningly smarmy, unduly unctuous, and atrociously adulatory. Though he repeats on numerous occasions that the failings of the city are tragedies in need of fixing, such I have to give this a very low three stars. Though he repeats on numerous occasions that the failings of the city are tragedies in need of fixing, such assertions are one-offs followed or preceded by pages and pages of fetishistic glee over the city's economic potential and strawmen of opponents proposing that impoverished city dwellers return to urban life.

About half-way through I could stand it no more, put the book down, and went on to more tolerable fare. Put this down as a "To Borrow" rather than a "To Buy". I don't really know why reading this was such a complete and utter chore - in small doses it was quite interesting, but attempting to read it for any longer than a couple of pages resulted in my mind wandering off and subsequently having to re read the last paragraph again. As such this took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to finish.

As you would expect from the title, the book is basically a eulogy to cities and an attempt to frame why the drive towards suburban living in America and el I don't really know why reading this was such a complete and utter chore - in small doses it was quite interesting, but attempting to read it for any longer than a couple of pages resulted in my mind wandering off and subsequently having to re read the last paragraph again.

As you would expect from the title, the book is basically a eulogy to cities and an attempt to frame why the drive towards suburban living in America and elsewhere is fundamentally flawed. There are some very fascinating anecdotes presented along the way e. I'd give this one two thumbs down and a strong avoid recommendation. Dec 02, UChicagoLaw added it Shelves: The book argues convincingly that cities have a comparative advantage with respect to economic productivity and human flourishing.

As part of his analysis Glaeser argues for policies that favor market-based development and high levels of education. Dec 16, Maite Alcaraz rated it it was ok. Oct 14, David Sasaki rated it really liked it. One of those books that I read to mostly in order to recommend it to others.

I'm already part of the urbanist converted, and Glaeser is preaching to the choir. For those of you who are comfortably content in the suburbs, or wary of the chaotic hustle and bustle of dense, tall cities, this is the book for you. It is part urban history, part policy argument.

Or, perhaps better put, it's a convincing policy argument grounded on the past few centuries of urban and economic history. The argument is t One of those books that I read to mostly in order to recommend it to others. The argument is this: It's crucial to our social, economic, and environmental well being that we reverse legislation and tax incentives that encourage urban residents to move from city centers to the suburbs.

Policies like the disastrous mortgage interest tax deduction , which encourages urban residents who rent apartments in productive city centers to move to cheap suburban communities to buy cookie-cutter McMansions that dramatically increase the economic and environmental cost of delivering public services and transportation. Or the ridiculously low gasoline tax, which encourages more people to drive in cars rather than take public transportation. It's even worse here in Mexico, where gasoline is subsidized by the government; money that could be spent on relieving poverty.

Here in Mexico City, zoning policies that limit height are the principal reason why we have the world's longest commutes. The average commuter spends more than two hours traveling from home to work and back. No wonder the country's productivity is so low. Over the past two decades in the US, "transportation funding for the ten most densely populated states has been half as much, on a per capita basis, as funding for the ten least dense states. No, I'm not advocating for an end to income tax, but I do think that wealth should be taxed much more than income.

In other words, the cards are stacked against cities; most governments incentivize suburbanization. Why is that a problem? First, because cities are far more productive. Urban residents are, on average, also healthier than suburban residents they spend more time walking and much less time stuck in traffic. They also report to be happier probably because they have much more access to cultural activities and are closer to their friends.

Glaeser's argument is so convincing that it's frustrating. One of the most interesting sections of the book is its thorough, complex histories of three technologies that would come to define the 20th century: At the turn of the 20th century, thanks to the invention of the Otis safety elevator , it seemed that the skyscraper would usher in a century of dense, urban living.

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Then William Levitt's perfection of mass-produced suburbia combined with the GI Bill led to a perfect recipe that ensured that the 20th century would belong to cars, suburban cookie-cutter homes, smog, traffic, and parking lots everywhere you look. It's frustrating to read this history and think what if … what if, the skyscraper had won and the car and suburb had lost? What would the world look like today? Even more frustrating is the likelihood that either America's mortgage interest tax deduction or Mexico's gas subsidy will be repealed.

In the short term, there is no likelihood. Certainly mistaken policies are responsible for harmful suburbanization at the expense of productivity and environmental conservation, but even if those policies are reversed, will we see more urbanization and less suburbanization? I have a feeling that was the exact question that Andres Lajous was asking himself this weekend when he penned an imaginary dialogue with a civil servant.

Are you going to take them to their private schools on the back of your bicycle? No, you're going to move to the suburbs and you're going to wait in traffic, and you're going to complain just like all the others. All the typical reasons … soft grass for their kids to play on, better schools, less noise. Some are even looking for a greater sense of community. As Angela Giglia has argued in her fascinating ethnography of gated communities in Mexico City , while such communities frequently isolate residents from wider democratic involvement, new forms of community decision-making come about within the gated perimeter.

How can cities retain their young talent? They need to offer more. More green parks, more playgrounds for kids. Public transportation that is as inviting as a luxury automobile like many European cities. Well financed public schools with clear incentives and paths toward upward mobility.

The Project for Public Spaces has a handy list and a great blog that profiles successful developments and interventions. It's not rocket science. But it is incredible how wrong we got it in the US throughout the 20th century. If China and India follow our car-centered, suburban path, there's no way the planet will hold up.

Not everyone should have to live in dense cities. But for those of us who do, we shouldn't be punished by policies that favor the suburbs. Dec 29, Anas rated it really liked it.

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Edward Glaeser outlined the principles of a successful city and how a city failed to function properly. The fact that great american and european cities were formed not in a day- it took vast amount of time, smart leaders and radical strategy. I agree with his point about false reasoning when rebuilding structures is equally to recovering a city. Concrete jungle, at a certain point is useless without human resources. By doing this it only favours to contractors pocket and not existing residents. Investing in human capital school, university, forums should be one of the solution considering for a place to survive throughout the time.

As industrialization decline, Manchester for example lost its main activity hence human capital comes in order for the city to stay relevant. However, the solution to traffic jam which is congestion pricing that have been introduced in London and Singapore is recessive. It hurts the poor much more than people with enough money.

Building new road itself is a paradox solution- it's like we're promoting car commutes instead of public transport.

For some reason the only reasonable way to solve this by making drivers pay for the consequences they'll make, but i hope there will be more efficient way of solving this. Overall this is a good book- i couldn't ask more of facts and numbers presented to support his arguments. Jan 01, Courtney rated it liked it. Oct 10, Sarah Logan rated it it was amazing. Glaeser is such a pleasure to read, and so informative too. I highly recommend this book to those interested in urban dynamics - how cities enable better environmental protection and how face-to-face interaction in connected spaces is still vital for ideas generation and sharing.

Dec 28, Ed Holden rated it really liked it. This book is a persuasive argument for its central premises, that cities are the driver of economic growth and our most important creation, and that they are significantly greener than rural or suburban living. It's also persuasive in its ancillary arguments about how various cities are doing it right and wrong. Glaeser has a generally free market take on most of the issues he discusses, and while it serves him well in many of his observations, it occasionally gets him into trouble. For example, This book is a persuasive argument for its central premises, that cities are the driver of economic growth and our most important creation, and that they are significantly greener than rural or suburban living.

For example, he rightly points out that the way the United States runs education creates pockets of high demand for real estate in specific neighborhoods with good schools, because each school district relies heavily on local funding and control. He suggests we could fix this by leaning further to the right or left with our funding model, either with socialized state schooling or with vouchers to encourage competition between public and private schools. But while he offers the example of European state schools for the left-leaning solution, he offers no corresponding example of a successful implementation of the right-leaning strategy, as if we should accept one solution based upon evidence and the other on faith.

He makes this point more than once in the book and seems oblivious to the omission. Still, he's no dogmatist: Glaeser seems happy with the idea of taxing carbon emissions and city traffic, for example, and throughout the book he is more often flexible and pragmatic in his views than not. His most thorough and solid argument is that impediments to building in popular areas encourages sprawl, and could lead to devastating problems.

Real estate pricing is heavily driven by supply and demand. Glaeser points out that places like New York, San Francisco and Boston are very unfriendly to development, especially to high-rise development that would allow greater urban density, and therefore more environmentally friendly living yes, even New York is unfriendly, with whole neighborhoods that are "preserved". This regulation, coupled with NIMBYism, keeps real estate unnaturally expensive, denying city living to many people who would choose it.

Contrast this with places like Houston, which has few impediments to building and is growing like mad. Glaeser presents this almost as a moral issue, since well meaning urbanists and environmentalists think they are acting to good ends, but are only encouraging people to embrace sprawl. But it's also, he suggests, an issue of property rights: He points out that New York's Fifth Avenue was once a strip of low mansions, yet the much changed canyon it is today is magnificent and very livable rather than off-putting.

The real cause for concern with building restrictions is in developing countries. If China and India embrace the model of sprawl rather than the model of cities, carbon emissions will increase by percent. Mumbai has severe and unnecessary height restrictions, which forces the city to sprawl outward. Because of this many more people have to drive and travel long distances than would be necessary with policies favoring denser development.

There's a great deal of other good material in here, such as the problems of declining cities trying to build their way out of decline creating more supply without demand, as Detroit has done , the history and success of congestion charging, the policies that favor sprawl in the United States like the home mortgage interest tax deduction and low fuel taxes , and a wonderful comparison of the environmentalism of Prince Charles and former London Mayor Ken Livingstone spoiler alert: Recommended to anyone interested in matters urban.

My review of Triumph of the City: Electronic communication and face-to-face interaction support one another, he says. Rather than make proximity irrelevant, new tech like virtual reality will make it more valuable. This time will be no different. Triumph of the City is part pop economics, part how-to guide for policy makers and urban planners. Glaeser strikes the right balance between historical narratives, personal anecdotes and data-driven insights. Throughout the book, three points stand out. And a tool is only as good as the people who wield it.

Educated workers bouncing ideas off each other, turning these ideas into businesses that ultimately attract more educated workers is the recipe for a thriving city. Galeser does acknowledge that cities need to build in order to accommodate their growing populations. But he has recently cautioned that infrastructure investment needs to be targeted and not driven by a focus on macroeconomic effects.

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