Triumph of the City: Book Launch Event with Edward Glaeser

JohnAKeith

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Triumph of the City: Book Launch Event with Edward Glaeser
February 16, 2011

Wednesday, February 16 at 7:00 p.m.
Harvard Bookstore, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Harvard Square

Edward Glaeser, author Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier; director, the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government

Harvard Book Store, the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government are pleased to welcome urban economist and Harvard professor Edward Glaeser as he discusses his new book, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier.

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 shows in Triumph of the City, 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.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/...he-city-book-launch-event-with-edward-glaeser
 
I was at the Edward Glaeser book signing the other night at the Harvard Book Store. He spoke for about 50 minutes on a wide range of topics. I enjoy his points of view, immensely.

Here's a clip from the Daily Show. Funny at the end, Jon Stewart wants to make him into a left-wing, big-city intellectual. In reality, I hear he's centrist / moderate right-wing. In fact, he sang the praises of the Tea Party, during his talk. (Well, just one part of their platform, and it was only to make a point about something, I forget.)

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-14-2011/edward-glaeser

P.S. And the way to post a video here is???
 
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