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How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Penguin Press
February 2011
On Sale: February 10, 2011
352 pages
ISBN: 159420277X
EAN: 9781594202773
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A pioneering urban economist offers fascinating, even
inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest
invention and our best hope for the future. America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live
on the 3 percent of land that contains our cities. Yet
cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime
ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly... Or are they? As Edward Glaeser proves in this myth-shattering book,
cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest
(in cultural and economic terms) places to live. New
Yorkers, for instance, live longer than other Americans;
heart disease and cancer rates are lower in Gotham than in
the nation as a whole. More than half of America's income is
earned in twenty-two metropolitan areas. And city dwellers
use, on average, 40 percent less energy than suburbanites. Glaeser travels through history and around the globe to
reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out
the best in humankind. Even the worst cities-Kinshasa,
Kolkata, Lagos- confer surprising benefits on the people who
flock to them, including better health and more jobs than
the rural areas that surround them. Glaeser visits Bangalore
and Silicon Valley, whose strangely similar histories prove
how essential education is to urban success and how new
technology actually encourages people to gather together
physically. He discovers why Detroit is dying while other
old industrial cities-Chicago, Boston, New York-thrive. He
investigates why a new house costs 350 percent more in Los
Angeles than in Houston, even though building costs are only
25 percent higher in L.A. He pinpoints the single factor
that most influences urban growth-January temperatures-and
explains how certain chilly cities manage to defy that link.
He explains how West Coast environmentalists have harmed the
environment, and how struggling cities from Youngstown to
New Orleans can "shrink to greatness." And he exposes the
dangerous anti-urban political bias that is harming both
cities and the entire country. Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and eloquent
argument, Glaeser makes an impassioned case for the city's
import and splendor. He reminds us forcefully why we should
nurture our cities or suffer consequences that will hurt us
all, no matter where we live.
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