5 reasons urban living trumps suburban
Book Review: ‘Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier’
BY TARA-NICHOLLE NELSON, TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 2011.
Inman News™
Image courtesy of The Penguin Group.
Book Review
Title: “Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier ”
Author: Edward Glaeser
Publisher: The Penguin Press, 2011; 352 pages; $29.95 hardcover, $14.99 e-book
Love and economics. Outside of marital economic conversations, like dowries, prenuptials and divorce settlements (and maybe even inside them!), the two seem to be strange conceptual bedfellows.
Apparently, someone forgot to mention this to economist Edward Glaeser, whose book “Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier” is a veritable love letter about the metropolis, laden with economic proof points that cities deserve not just Glaeser’s, but the undying affection of every world citizen — rich and poor, laborer and businessperson, suburban and rural alike.
Glaeser’s central theory — which he proceeds to prove and prove again throughout the book with vivid case studies of slums, skyscrapers, asphalt and sprawl from Detroit to Dubai, from Bangalore to Singapore — is that large cities the world over have a strong track record over history of improving the lot in life of both their residents and their fellow non-urban countrymen.
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