Get Ready for Winter Weather Introducing Kindle Unlimited. Your Journey Awaits Men's Clothing Men's Clothing Trend Shop All Men's Clothing Cloud Drive Photos U2 Amazon Fire Phone, now just $0.99 with a two-year contract Momentum Fire TV Grocery Halloween Explore Howl-o-ween Pet Deals The Walking Dead The Walking Dead The Walking Dead Fire tablets Kindle Voyage New Arrivals in Sports & Outdoors Kids' Halloween Store
Start reading Triumph of the City on the free Kindle Reading App or on your Kindle in under a minute. Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.

Deliver to your Kindle or other device

Enter a promotion code
or gift card
 
 
 

Try it free

Sample the beginning of this book for free

Deliver to your Kindle or other device

Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Color:
Image not available

To view this video download Flash Player

 

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

Edward Glaeser
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)

Print List Price: $16.00
Kindle Price: $10.32
You Save: $5.68 (36%)
Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC

Free Kindle Reading App Anybody can read Kindle books—even without a Kindle device—with the FREE Kindle app for smartphones, tablets and computers.

To get the free app, enter your email address or mobile phone number.

Whispersync for Voice

Switch back and forth between reading the Kindle book and listening to the Audible narration. Add narration for a reduced price of $4.49 after you buy the Kindle book. Learn More

Best Books of the Month
Best Books of the Month
Want to know our Editors' picks for the best books of the month? Browse Best Books of the Month, featuring our favorite new books in more than a dozen categories.

Book Description

A pioneering urban economist presents a myth-shattering look at the majesty and greatness of cities.

America is an urban nation, yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly . . . or are they? In this revelatory book, Edward Glaeser, a leading urban economist, declares that cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in both cultural and economic terms) places to live. He travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and cogent argument, Glaeser makes an urgent, eloquent case for the city's importance and splendor, offering inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest creation and our best hope for the future.




Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Glaeser�s academic specialty, urban economics, informs his survey of how cities around the world thrive and wither. Using a range of expository forms�history, biography, economic research, and personal story�he defines what makes a city successful. That changes through time, and a flourishing Industrial Age model may not work in the service-age economy, as rust-belt towns like Detroit have learned. One thing constantly attracts people to one city rather than another�how much housing construction is permitted. Restrictive places, such as New York City, coastal California, and Paris, have a tight housing supply with prices only the wealthy can afford. Hence, middle-class people move to the suburbs or cities like Houston. Other features of metropolises�their incidences of poverty and crime, traffic congestion, quality of schools, and cultural amenities�also figure in Glaeser�s analysis. Whatever the city under discussion, Mumbai or Woodlands, Texas, Glaeser is discerning and independent; for example, he believes that historic preservation isn�t an unalloyed good and that bigger, denser cities militate against global warming. Thought-provoking material for urban-affairs students. --Gilbert Taylor

Review

"You'll...walk away dazzled by the greatness of cities and fascinated by this writer's nimble mind." ---The New York Times

Product Details

  • File Size: 680 KB
  • Print Length: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (February 10, 2011)
  • Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B0049U4HTW
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray:
  • Lending: Not Enabled
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #174,250 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  •  Would you like to give feedback on images or tell us about a lower price? .


Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
150 of 165 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Meh - Padded, Wandering, Unfocused April 3, 2011
Format:Hardcover|Verified Purchase
This is a book I thought I would love, but as I read it I began wishing there was another, tighter, more focused book I could be reading.

The book is pacted with factoids, most of the post hoc ergo propter hoc type, but, for me at least, it doesn't really gel as a convincing, connected argument. There are points made that make sense - some cities have a lot of poverty because they attract poor people seeking opportunity, cities with diverse economic bases are less susceptible to an economic shock linked to the decline of single industry, it's good for cities to have strong educational institutions, that London is a fun place helps make it attractive as a place to live for skilled professionals, skyscrapers are an efficient way to house businesses and people, there are still advantages to be had in close physical proximity. Some of these points are old hat; some are relatively fresh and even against the received wisdom.

For an awful lot of these points, though, the ultimate response is: So What? The whole seemed like a lot less than the sum of the parts. The experience was less like reading a focused essay than browsing through Google news or an RSS feed on cities - a lot of information, somewhat organized, but nothing like an actionable vision. At times the data triumphantly trotted out was inconsistent (Silicon Valley succeeds as a kind of city, dispersed into office parks thought it be; Route 128 failed because being dispersed into office parks as it is it lacked the physical connections of a true city). At times, it fails to grapple with the implications of the obvious (yes, the theater in London or New York is great, but the seats are often filled with tourists because the locals are too busy working to make it).
Read more ›
Was this review helpful to you?
57 of 67 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Growth of the Nation Depends on Cities February 16, 2011
By DRDR
Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Producing a comprehensive and entertaining book on cities' value to society requires a scholar with a lifelong urban devotion whose background and skills cut across traditional social science disciplines. Fortunately, the world has Ed Glaeser. Each of Glaeser's chapters seamlessly blends historical narrative, present day travelogue, history of urban thought, rigorous empirical research, and policy prescription. By presenting each of these well, he produces a convincing polemic. As more academic economists begin to popularize their research, Glaeser is distinguished in both the quality of his scholarship and the importance of his subject to society.

Much of Glaeser's work is refuting conventional wisdom against cities: we learn urban life can be green, skyscrapers need not destroy local character, congestion ills can be solved, and inner-city education need not be dreadful. Glaeser does not have all the answers to the problems he addresses, and occasionally his arguments are weak. But what fun is reading about a subject with nothing left to debate?

Glaeser is most convincing on one central policy theme: inept government makes urban living less accessible than it should be. These policies include overzealous historical preservation and height limits, subsidization of home ownership and auto travel, oversupply of public infrastructure, various forms of NIMBYism, and the more complex failures surrounding urban education. These issues touched Glaeser deeply as the tilted landscape led him to pick suburban life for his own children.

The book's subtitle could use clarification. Glaeser is not arguing that everyone will be happier in cities.
Read more ›
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
148 of 187 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Three Books for the Price of One February 10, 2011
Format:Hardcover
This is two really wonderful books and one less wonderful book all wrapped into one.

The first book, which is terrific, is a brisk and accessible tour through a series of real-life experiments deeply grounded in data: "A study of corruption in Indonesia found that the stock prices of companies whose leaders stood closest to that country's dictator in photographs suffered most when the leader fell ill."

More: "When American cities have built new rapid-transit stops over the last thirty years, poverty rates have generally increased near those stops." It's not that transit stops cause poverty, he explains; rather, poor people value being able to get to work without the expense of owning a car.

That insight, like many of those mentioned by Professor Glaeser, bears on the main topic of his book, the economics of cities. The author proves useful as a guide to the research of others as well as in conveying his own thoughts. "Nathaniel Baum-Snow, a Brown University economist, has calculated that each new highway passing through a central city reduces its population by about 18 percent." And, "Dartmouth economist Bruce Sacerdote found that children displaced from New Orleans by Katrina had a significant improvement in their test scores. He found the biggest beneficiaries of the exodus were children from poorly performing schools who left the New Orleans area altogether." It's the counterintuitive nature of these insights that makes them particularly delicious -- that expensive highway project that the local congressman fought to get funded turns out to be bad for his city, and Hurricane Katrina turns out to have been a good thing for the education of its "victims.
Read more ›
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Great insight into future population trends
Great book for Architects, city planners, politicians, and any one interested in the development of cities, and their planning.
Published 15 hours ago by Pedro Carvajal
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Great
Published 6 days ago by Nicolas Pereira
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
wonderully enligthening.
Published 10 days ago by Osman Cuneyt Okan
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Excelente
Published 16 days ago by denise
3.0 out of 5 stars OK, but not earthshaking
My first impression of Triumph of the City was underwhelming. For a book with so much praise and so many blurbs, the basic information here can be largely found in articles on web... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Flakker
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
very good book on urban ministry
Published 1 month ago by jabef
4.0 out of 5 stars We used this book as a basic textbook for a seminar
What can I say more than what has already been said very well in so many good reviews already on this site? Read more
Published 1 month ago by B. Case
3.0 out of 5 stars good ideas about housing, less so about transportation
This book presents a compelling case for using market forces to encourage higher densities. Glaeser presents some effective arguments about how height restrictions and over zealous... Read more
Published 1 month ago by David Bickford
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent enjoyable read about cities and how they are measurably ...
Excellent enjoyable read about cities and how they are measurably more ecologically sound than suburbs or rural areas for our large world population to be living in.
Published 2 months ago by De Plume
5.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling Case and Intro to Urban Geography
An economist argues why cities are the source of the world’s greatest innovations,
because of the inspiration proximity to great people and works provides. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Brandon J. Nascimento
Search Customer Reviews
Search these reviews only


Forums


Look for Similar Items by Category