Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation

Product Description
One of our great urbanists and one of our great public health experts join forces to reckon with how cities are changing in the face of existential threats the pandemic has only accelerated
Cities can make us sick. They always have—diseases spread more easily when more people are close to one another. And disease is hardly the only ill that accompanies urban density. Cities have been demonized as breeding grounds for vice and crime from Sodom and Gomorrah on. But cities have flourished nonetheless because they are humanity’s greatest invention, indispensable engines for creativity, innovation, wealth, and connection, the loom on which the fabric of civilization is woven.
But cities now stand at a crossroads. During the global COVID crisis, cities grew silent as people worked from home—if they could work at all. The normal forms of socializing ground to a halt. How permanent are these changes? Advances in digital technology mean that many people can opt out of city life as never before. Will they? Are we on the brink of a post-urban world?
City life will survive but individual cities face terrible risks, argue Edward Glaeser and David Cutler, and a wave of urban failure would be absolutely disastrous. In terms of intimacy and inspiration, nothing can replace what cities offer. Great cities have always demanded great management, and our current crisis has exposed fearful gaps in our capacity for good governance. It is possible to drive a city into the ground, pandemic or not. Glaeser and Cutler examine the evolution that is already happening, and describe the possible futures that lie before us: What will distinguish the cities that will flourish from the ones that won’t? In America, they argue, deep inequities in health care and education are a particular blight on the future of our cities; solving them will be the difference between our collective good health and a downward spiral to a much darker place.
Review
“Expansive and entertaining. . . . [A] fast-paced and highly readable journey . . . the book serves as a useful tool in the effort to redefine the role of the city in an age of increasingly polarized politics, and reminds us that urban health is—as Fiorello La Guardia once remarked about cleaning the streets—not a Democratic or Republican issue.” —
New York Times Book Review
“Glaeser’s
Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation, written with Harvard health economist David Cutler, shares the pleasing style of its predecessor [
Triumph of the City], an engaging mixture of history and analysis . . . ‘The age of urban miracles need not be over,’ Messrs. Glaeser and Cutler write. ‘Indeed, it must not be.’” —
Wall Street Journal
“
Survival of the City lays out a compelling vision for reasonable, doable and affordable policy changes that would improve the quality of life in cities and benefit everyone across the nation . . . This is an important book of ideas, history and policy recommendations, a book that should be read and discussed by anyone concerned with the future of cities.”
—Inside Higher Ed
“Ambitious and timely . . . a valuable resource on how to make America’s cities better.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A sweeping investigation of threats to urban life. . . . A thoughtful and useful consideration of the fate of cities in the age of Covid-19.”
—Kirkus
“Over the past three decades, David Cutler has done pathbreaking work on the determinants of health, while Ed Glaeser has done pathbreaking work on cities and economic growth. Now they’ve teamed up to write a book that focuses on the intersection between these two areas: how cities shape our health and livelihoods amidst a global pandemic. A fascinating read that helps us understand how we got to where we are today and design policies to build healthier, opportunity-rich cities in the future,
Survival of the City will be a terrific resource for the public and policymakers for years to come.”
—Raj Chett