Abstract
Being well acquainted with some of Ed Glaeser’s work—and sometimes disagreeing with the thrust of his policy arguments—this reviewer expected not to like this book. Overall, however, despite taking issue with some of the arguments and positions in the book, this reviewer finds Triumph of the City to be something of a triumph itself. Regardless of whether one tends to share Glaeser’s perspective on urban issues, this book is a must read for anyone engaged in work related to planning, planning scholarship, or the future of metropolitan places more broadly. It covers a great deal of ground and attempts answers to some of the biggest questions that urban scholars have spent a great deal of effort addressing in recent years. It will also leave many readers asking how one person can master, and relate so well, such a broad grasp of urban knowledge.
Triumph’s basic theme is that cities are an essentially superior form of social and geographic organization and that the world’s economic and environmental future is well served by supporting well-managed, high-density urbanization. The book focuses on the advantages of urban density in terms of economic development and resilience, creativity and culture, and environmental sustainability. In Triumph, Glaeser is an optimistic urbanist and a fan of density—a bête noir to a Wendell Cox or a Joel Kotkin. His Manhattan Institute affiliation and orthodox economist orientation certainly suggests a conservative policy perspective, and many of his policy recommendations in Triumph reflect this. However, the book is likely to find foes among both suburban conservatives and urban liberals. It makes for a highly convincing argument that urbanization should not be discouraged (but not quite that it should be encouraged) and that antiurban policy biases should be eliminated.
Many of the arguments in Triumph are not new. Some are reminiscent of Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier and other antisprawl classics. However, Glaeser offers a review of newer evidence on many topics and weaves them together with stories and histories that make the writing highly accessible. He discusses the problems that car-oriented development has posed for cities and the suburban bias of U.S. transportation and housing policies. He also nicely summarizes analyses showing the larger carbon footprints of lower- versus higher-density residential patterns. Perhaps the most persuasive parts of the book discuss the factors making for urban economic ascendance and decline, both in the United States and elsewhere. He probes why density and proximity have such advantages for social and economic interaction and why communications technology does not necessarily erode such advantages.
While the book does not shy away from broad policy recommendations, most of these are at least partially abstract. For all of his knowledge of urban analysis and history, there is significant evidence in the book that Glaeser’s strengths might not be in formulating detailed policy prescriptions, where understanding what is politically and operationally viable is as important as any notion of what is theoretically appealing. (An example is Glaeser’s suggestion that zoning be replaced with a form of negative externalities tax, the revenues from which would be shared by neighbors and the locality. I will not begin to list the practical problems with this proposal.)
Glaeser is especially effective at covering diverse geographic ground, from his observations of Bangalore to his upbringing in Manhattan. Each time he discusses a particular city, he provides a history of some part of the city’s development, often with vignettes about particularly important characters. His writing is well paced and sometimes humorous, as when he states that the “environmental footprint of the average suburban home is a size 15 hiking boot (while) the environmental footprint of a New York apartment is a stiletto-heel size 6 Jimmy Choo” (p. 14).
The book will certainly ruffle some feathers, including those of many historic preservationists, supporters of traditional, place-based economic development, and zoning administrators. For example, Glaeser has little sympathy for preservationists who cover entire neighborhoods or large segments of the built environment with historic protections, seeing such moves as hampering the competitiveness of cities and stifling their need to reinvent themselves. He skewers preservationists in New York by calling them “the urban equivalent to those restrictive suburbanites who want to mandate five-acre lot sizes in order to keep out the riffraff” (p. 150).
Despite this general praise, the book has some significant flaws. One important problem with the book is its continual, and somewhat confusing, shifting between discussing cities as metropolitan areas and cities as central cities (versus suburbs). This is not just a methodological issue; it also causes confusion regarding whether the book is celebrating the superiority of metropolitan areas, of central cities, or of density in whatever form. (There are also places where it is difficult to follow whether Glaeser is comparing statistics for central cities or metropolitan areas; he switches his unit of analysis frequently.) This confusion has led already to a bit of a dispute among early reviewers with Alan Berube, of the Brookings Institution, taking on Nicholas Lemann of Columbia’s journalism school. Lemann (2011) wrote a review of the book in the New Yorker in which he questioned whether Glaeser’s praise for central cities over suburbs was duly appreciative of the advantages of suburban living. Berube (2011) responded in the New Republic by suggesting that Glaeser’s book was more about the advantages and strengths of metropolitan areas and not so focused on central cities versus suburbs. He criticizes Lemann for focusing on the city-versus-suburbs debate, suggesting that Lemann “get over it.” Yet Glaeser’s book does not itself “get over it.” It focuses both on the advantages of urbanism as metropolitan growth as well as the benefits of density within a metropolitan area, which occurs mostly, but not only, in central cities. In fact, a shortcoming of Glaeser’s book is that it does not recognize the existence of, and potential of, denser suburban areas that are well connected and accessible to all sorts of folks. For example, there is no discussion of retrofitting suburbs to encourage more density, something that could help address some of Glaeser’s concerns.
Another issue is the condemnation of place-based policies. Except for some quick praise for Harlem’s Children Zone—the replication of which Glaeser doubts can be supported by federal policy—the book disparages most place-based development, arguing that policies should focus only on helping people, wherever they choose to be. In this criticism, Glaeser seems unaware of the substantial community and economic development efforts that tie local benefits of development to local, disadvantaged residents. While they may still represent a small minority of all place-based strategies, they deserve some consideration in such discussions.
Glaeser also sometimes reduces housing and locational choices down to solely financial factors. When examining why people stay in declining places such as Detroit, he argues that “there is one force that helps explain why most of them stay—cheap, durable housing” (p. 63). Certainly housing costs play an important role, but other factors are most likely at work as well, including the social and family ties that many working-class and poor households depend on. Glaeser, like so many of his economist colleagues, reduces too much motivation to financial considerations and ignores other forces that may be important.
Many planners and planning scholars, even those who are not fans of zoning and its exclusionary effects, are likely to have some substantial differences with Glaeser’s lumping together of large lot zoning and “land use regulation” and his inability to see merit in regulating land use more comprehensively. In fact, Glaeser’s own analysis finds that Houston, famous for its lack of zoning, provides more affordable housing (at least when one wants large, detached, single-family units) than places where exclusionary, large lot zoning is common. At the same time, he criticizes Houston’s low-density urban form as environmentally disastrous. The book actually does not reconcile these two seemingly conflicting criticisms very well. Land use regulations or related practices (like variance practices etc.) that are locally derived and that exclude small lot sizes, small houses, and especially, multifamily housing are likely to encourage sprawl and provide for a lack of affordable housing, especially where it is most needed, near jobs and transportation. On the other hand, while larger-scale, regional growth management may have some effect on housing prices, it can also encourage more socially optimal locations of housing, such as higher density levels, and produce more environmentally sustainable metropolitan areas. To the extent that such comprehensive strategies do raise housing costs, it is important to provide for affordable housing subsidies for low-and moderate-income households. However, to be concerned about adding a few thousand dollars to the cost of a large, detached single-family home for an upper-middle-class family makes little sense, especially when such costs may effectively work to internalize the negative externalities of low-density housing. Concerns over housing costs should be focused on those who have difficulty affording even modest-sized homes.
Finally, the biggest problem with the book, from this reviewer’s perspective, is the lack of attention that it gives to the problems of racial and economic segregation within U.S. metropolitan areas and to forces that perpetuate these patterns. The nation has effectively turned its back on aggressive efforts to enforce fair housing law and has not used the power of visible and vociferous enforcement to open up neighborhoods, discourage exclusionary zoning, and provide for greater residential and economic mobility. Reducing racial and economic segregation would do more, in this reviewer’s mind, to increase density within metropolitan areas (including the suburbs) and to make them more successful places, than almost any other policy initiative.
One of the reasons this book has provoked the comments above is that it is a book that makes the reader think and argue! It is also sure to be well read, so the stakes are high. Triumph of the City is sure to be a critical entry in the urban policy discourse of the next decade.