Better Together: Why Cities Are Man’s Greatest Invention and How We Could Fix them

The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.

The urbanist and economist Edward Glaeser called cities “man’s greatest invention,” but cities have hit a bit of a rough patch lately. Why are cities so important to human life? What has gone wrong with them? And what can we do to make urban life better?

In a new book, “Age of the City,” Ian Goldin, a South African professor of development, and Tom Lee-Devlin, the business editor of The Economist, address these big questions. Unfortunately, the book is not an exemplar of expository or persuasive writing; it’s workmanlike and straightforward. If you know a little about cities and want to learn more, it’s a helpful start. But if you have time for only one book about cities, Glaeser’s 2008 masterpiece, “Triumph of the City,” is better in almost every way.

“Age of the City” is also a little too fond of central planning. The very nature of cities makes some degree of planning necessary, but when the authors’ solution to every problem is more government, that’s a bias worth noticing. Such a bias is not surprising from a writer for The Economist, which edged away from its classical liberal past after a change of ownership in 2015 and became more conventionally statist. It’s a little more surprising coming from Goldin, who collaborated with the libertarian-leaning Glaeser in the past.1