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Example of a book review (Edward Glaeser – Triumph of the city) for Advanced Urban Geography. Graded with an 8
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Book review ‘Edward Glaeser – Triumph of the city’An elaboration of urban sprawl
Edward Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard University, has a passion for cities and
everything around them. On the basis of lengthy research, he has written the book ‘Triumph of the
city’, that was first published in 2011. In this book, he reports his findings and ideas about the
potential of cities. In the subtitle of his book his optimistic view on cities already comes forward:
“how our greatest invention [cities] makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier and happier”. In 338
pages he explains how cities came to be and why they are the most promising places on earth,
despite their bad reputation. The main factor in his argument is ‘proximity’. Proximity allows people
to work together and create new ideas. The innovations made by these collaborations ensure the
economic growth of cities. The so called ‘death of distance’ that gained attention from prominent
researchers like Michael Porter (2003) didn’t cause cities to end according to Glaeser (p. 5). In his
opinion, distance (as in proximity) matters more than ever in making the society thrive.
Glaeser supports his optimistic view on the potential of cities by writing about different urban issues
in his book. Examples of such issues are the decline of cities, slums, skyscrapers, environmentalism
and sprawl. This book review focusses on chapter 7 which is about this last urban issue: urban
sprawl. In this chapter Glaeser argues that many people have moved to lower density suburbs as a
result of increased car use. With the growing dominance of the car, people could commute longer
distances which made it possible to leave the cities.
The main message of this chapter is that mistaken public policies have played an important
role in encouraging this sprawl. Governments promoted home ownership with subsidies, which
resulted in many people leaving the city. Moreover, the houses in the suburbs are less expensive
than houses in older places, because of mass production (p. 175). The housing prices in, for example,
Houston are kept low because there is so much construction (p. 189). Another factor resulting from
public policy is that the gas taxes in America are very low, which results in cheap commutes (p. 178).
The construction of an extensive highway network also decreases commuting time (p. 194). The last,
most important factor, encouraging sprawl is the school system. Schools in cities have lower quality
scores than suburban schools. This forces people to move closer to better public schools (p. 195).
This chapter is related to the central argument of the book, because according to Glaeser it is
better for people to live in dense cities instead of in suburban regions. These dense urban areas, and
thus proximity, allow people to work together and create new ideas that would not be developed in
suburban areas, where there is less proximity. He argues for example that it would be better if the
people in developing countries “live in cities built around the elevator, rather than in sprawling areas
built around the car” (p. 197).
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