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

495 Pages·2011·1.821 MB·English

by  Edward Glaeser

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction

CHAPTER 1 - What Do They Make in Bangalore?
CHAPTER 2 - Why Do Cities Decline?
CHAPTER 3 - What’s Good About Slums?
CHAPTER 4 - How Were the Tenements Tamed?
CHAPTER 5 - Is London a Luxury Resort?
CHAPTER 6 - What’s So Great About Skyscrapers?
CHAPTER 7 - Why Has Sprawl Spread?
CHAPTER 8 - Is There Anything Greener Than Blacktop?
CHAPTER 9 - How Do Cities Succeed?

CONCLUSION:
Acknowledgements
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

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First published in 2011 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © Edwa rd Glaeser, 2011
All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Glaeser, Edward L. (Edward Ludwig),———.
Triumph of the city : how our greatest invention makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier, and
happier / Edward L. Glaeser.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47567-6
1. Urbanization. 2. Cities and towns—Growth. 3. Urban economics. 4. Urban sociology. I. Title.
HT361.G53 2011
307.76—dc22 2010034609

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To Nancy,

for All the Days
INTRODUCTION:

Our Urban Species

Two hundred forty-three million Americans crowd together in the 3 percent
of the country that is urban. Thirty-six million people live in and around
Tokyo, the most productive metropolitan area in the world. Twelve million
people reside in central Mumbai, and Shanghai is almost as large. On a
planet with vast amounts of space (all of humanity could fit in Texas—each
of us with a personal townhouse), we choose cities. Although it has become
cheaper to travel long distances, or to telecommute from the Ozarks to
Azerbaijan, more and more people are clustering closer and closer together
in large metropolitan areas. Five million more people every month live in
the cities of the developing world, and in 2011, more than half the world’s
population is urban.
Cities, the dense agglomerations that dot the globe, have been engines of
innovation since Plato and Socrates bickered in an Athenian marketplace.
The streets of Florence gave us the Renaissance, and the streets of
Birmingham gave us the Industrial Revolution. The great prosperity of
contemporary London and Bangalore and Tokyo comes from their ability to
produce new thinking. Wandering these cities—whether down cobblestone
sidewalks or grid-cutting cross streets, around roundabouts or under
freeways—is to study nothing less than human progress.
In the richer countries of the West, cities have survived the tumultuous
end of the industrial age and are now wealthier, healthier, and more alluring
than ever. In the world’s poorer places, cities are expanding enormously
because urban density provides the clearest path from poverty to prosperity.
Despite the technological breakthroughs that have caused the death of
distance, it turns out that the world isn’t flat; it’s paved.
The city has triumphed. But as many of us know from personal
experience, sometimes city roads are paved to hell. The city may win, but
too often its citizens seem to lose. Every urban childhood is shaped by an
onrush of extraordinary people and experiences—some delicious, like the
sense of power that comes from a preteen’s first subway trip alone; some