New book: Triumph of the City

Economic impact of urban life

Marci Gilbert, Apr 22, 11.

Economist Edward Glaeser makes a strong case for urban centers in his provocative new Triumph of the City, an entertaining, occasionally annoying, and almost always thought-provoking look at how urban centers are socially, economically, and environmentally good for us, according to a story in On Earth..

A Harvard professor who writes for the New York Times’ blog Economix and had recent pieces in The Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal, Glaeser is a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute, and he brings a free-marketeer’s eye to his environmental query. That makes for some interesting insights, some of which might not please traditional conservatives, many of whom view cities as cauldrons of criminality and dependence and see density as a sort of social engineering.

Example: Glaeser concludes that rising poverty may be a sign of a city’s success. “Cities aren’t full of poor people because cities make people poor,” he writes, “but because cities attract poor people with the prospect of improving their lot in life.” Because of this, he concludes, poverty-related social services costs should be borne not by local governments but federally—a suggestion sure to raise eyebrows among the starve-the-government crowd.

At the book’s heart lies this belief: “Humans are an intensely social species that excels, like ants or gibbons, in producing things together.” Cities are the key incubators of human innovation, and thus for building wealth.

Glaeser’s environmental analysis is, with a few exceptions, spot on. His exhortation to nature-lovers to stay away from nature comes after describing the time that Henry David Thoreau - the 19th-century author beloved by 20th-century environmentalists - accidentally burned 300 acres of woods. When people live close together, as they do in cities, they do less harm to the environment and the earth’s resources. They drive less. Their buildings, with shared walls, retain more heat. Their dwellings tend to be smaller.

Source: On Earth