Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Edward Glaeseramazon.com
Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
London and Shanghai, not suburbia, are the real friends of the environment. Nature lovers who live surrounded by trees and grass consume much more energy than their urban counterparts, as I painfully discovered when, after thirty-seven years of almost entirely urban living, I recklessly experimented with suburban life. If the environmental footprin... See more
Edward Glaeser • Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Now we know that the suburban environmentalists had it backward. Manhattan and downtown
Edward Glaeser • Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
We must recognize that if we try to make one neighborhood greener by stopping new building, we can easily make the world browner, by pushing new development to someplace far less environmentally friendly.
Edward Glaeser • Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Nine square feet of road space is plenty for a pedestrian walking down Fifth Avenue, and on a busy day, walkers will put up with much less. The Honda Accord, a modest-size car, takes up about a hundred square feet on its own. If that car is going to have a couple of feet around it and several car lengths ahead of it, its space needs can easily incr
... See moreEdward Glaeser • Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Yet as people have become richer, they have increasingly chosen cities based on lifestyle—and the consumer city was born.
Edward Glaeser • Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
I doubt that I would be in the suburbs if it weren’t for the antiurban public policy trifecta of the Massachusetts Turnpike, the home mortgage interest deduction, and the problems of urban schools.
Edward Glaeser • Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
The world’s most important market is the labor market, in which one person rents his human capital to people with financial capital.
Edward Glaeser • Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
All those electronic interactions are creating a more relationship-intensive world, just as improvements in steam engines led to a more coal-intensive economy, and those relationships need both e-mail and interpersonal contact.
Edward Glaeser • Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Because she saw that older, shorter buildings were cheaper, she incorrectly believed that restricting heights and preserving old neighborhoods would ensure affordability. That’s not how supply and demand work. When the demand for a city rises, prices will rise unless more homes are built. When cities restrict new construction, they become more expe... See more
Edward Glaeser • Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
you need to walk a city’s streets to see its soul.