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Posts Tagged ‘U.S. cities’

To Get America Growing Again, It's Time to Unleash Our Cities: A Guest Post by Ed Glaeser

Ed Glaeser is an economist’s economist — as smart as they come, driven by empiricism, with something interesting to say about nearly anything. He has just published a new book, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. Glaeser argues that cities often get a bad rap even though they 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.”
We’re pleased to offer the following guest post from Glaeser on the glory of cities. I hope you find it as enthralling as I did.



Innovation Nation

If you want to live somewhere particularly innovative, consider Boston, Paris or Amsterdam.



Cities, Before and After

A site called Oobject features juxtaposed shots of cities before and after major events like war, natural disasters, and “property speculation.”



The FREAK-est Links

What happens when Monty Python puts its videos on YouTube for free? It increases DVD sales by 23,000 percent. (Earlier) How much are your friends worth? (Earlier) It’s like online dating, except you’re seeking cities. (Earlier) Will Wilkinson asks: are economists clueless? (HT: Jarrod Hunt) (Earlier)