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

by Edward L. Glaeser, David M. Cutler

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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Urbanism, Cities, Urban Planning, Sociology, Politics

480 pages, Hardcover

Published September 7, 2021

About the author

Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Reviews

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was very hopeful for this book, as both authors are highly regarded. Also, unusual for popular nonfiction but much appreciated, they propose solutions to each of the problems the book describes. The trouble is none of the diagnoses or solutions are unfamiliar, if you've been reading NYT / Economist / etc. for the past few years.

That said, here’s some scattered insights I enjoyed:

The WHO's operating budget is relatively small (some individual US hospitals are larger, and as a whole it's <1/3 that of the CDC's budget and <1/2 of the FDA). And their process for action / decision making involves first getting a consensus across a governming board of 34 participating states.

Thanks to the relatively random implementation of water filtration across US cities, we have been able to attribute nearly half of all mortality reduction and even greater shares of child mortality reduction in the 20th century, making clean water infrastructure probably the best investment in global health ever.

The risk of future contagions from bats are so great that these authors advocate for turning all large natural concentrations of bats into national parks, perhaps financed by international bodies if the local state is reluctant.

Wealth and unhealthy lifestyles have a greater impact on life expectancy than the combined impact of all cancers:

Among the one hundred most populous cities in the US, the highest life expectancy at age 40 is 45.4 years, in San Jose, California. The lowest is 41.0 years, in Las Vegas, Nevada. That 4.4-year gap between living to 81 and living to 85.4 is larger than the life-expectancy gains that would come from eliminating all cancer deaths in the US. If we could somehow cure every case of breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, and the like, life expectancy would increase by only 3 years. The gap between San Jose and Las Vegas is thus equivalent to completely eliminating cancer deaths in high life-expectancy areas – and then some.

Probably not surprising, given how little exercise actually does to burn calories, the authors point out that our rising obesity has mostly to do with diet.

By the 1960’s, [Americans] were almost as sedentary as we are now, and yet our obesity rate remained around 15% through the last 1970’s. By 2015, that rate had risen to 40%. The rise in American obesity since the 1960’s appears to be almost entirely about eating and drinking more…. We’ve increased our food consumption by 1/5 over 30 years

A lethal dose of heroin is only 6 times larger than a usual dose!

Medicare & Medicaid has a $1T annual budget, and is administered by a mere 6,000 people! Despite its operating efficiency, the authors criticize the program’s design, because it doesn’t have the mandate to invest in care that would have the biggest impact to the country’s health, but instead simply pays for whatever care is demanded by its constituents.

25% of all money spent in the US medical system goes towards administration (rather than care). By comparison, the share is <1/2 that in Canada. Canada also spends 6% points of GDP less than the US does on healthcare overall.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars for the book, but 5 stars for the last chapter.

It took me awhile to get through this, because I’m slower with non-fiction and I found this to be a slow read in general. My big, huge takeaway from this book was to be hit over the head (again?) about how much privilege I was born into. The authors clearly describe cities up front as a place where (wealthy) people can enjoy culture and restaurants and a better selection of jobs to choose from, and a place where (poorer) people have a better chance of maybe finding some basic job than they would in more rural areas.

The overall point is that society needs cities to keep existing. (I agree, but this book showed me more precisely why that’s important.) The book also showed many ways in which cities are inefficient and lacking at providing the exact things we need them to provide (such as an ok public education, sound policing, construction polices that don’t keep new people out). That was very sobering.

The authors have confidence that the pandemic has taught us all how we need to have some physical proximity with our coworkers in order to work well. So far, these two authors are about the only people I’ve heard voice that belief. (I didn’t think the data on that in the book was as compelling as these authors did.)

This book was a good smack in the face for me (in terms of the logistics of my life). I didn’t love how it was written, and I actually thought some of their data examples weren’t wildly strong. On the flip side, it had some good case studies, and I thought the last chapter was excellent. The ending had a list of a bunch of different solutions that could be tried to improve some of the issues they raised. (I’ve read lots of books that just set up a giant problem and then end—so I really appreciated the ideas these authors shared.)

[Ngaio · Rating 2 out of 5]

I generally enjoyed this look at how urban planning and public health have interacted in the past, and how they might interact in the future. The authors were also quite solution focused, which I appreciate.

However, it is a book with a concentration on America. They bring in occasional examples from abroad (e.g. black death in Europe), but the emphasis always comes back to America. I also disliked the authors' habit of dismissing whole arguments with a limited objection. For example, they dismiss the concept of universal basic income because men (and specifically men) derive purpose and social interaction from work and their mental health would suffer from being unemployed. They toss out the entire concept of UBI because of that and then just move on.

Frankly, there were a few moments where they seem to skim an argument or skirt around an issue because it's inconvenient to their position. And, while they did begin the book swearing that it was politically non-partisan, policy never really is. There were a bunch of arguments they seemed to be presenting as value-neutral which aren't. I would have preferred if they acknowledged their political leaning affects their views rather than pretend they're unrelated. It would have felt more genuine.

Overall, 2.5 stars. Lots of good thoughts in this. A little dry in places, but interesting.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected so much of importance to millions of people around the world that it is nearly impossible to come to grips with it intellectually, much less to figure out what one should do as a result of COVID-19 going forward - once there is a return to normality (whatever that means). Over the past eighteen months, if one has been blessed enough to work at home and possess a number of digital apparatus units, it has been hard not to take a “deep dive” into the nature of COVID-19 and its effects. This has been helped by nearly universal data regarding the virus and its consequences around the world, coupled with a literal explosion of papers by specialists and “experts” of all sorts. Society has been trying to make sense of COVID-19 too, without much success. Fold in the military, political, and economic consequences of the pandemic and it is enough to make one wonder about the value of trying to make sense of it all. Do you feel smarter and more enlightened about spending all this time in the middle of a plague?

Which brings us to this book - “Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation.” This book combines contributions of two highly accomplished economists who have spent much of their careers with particular approaches to focusing their policy work. Glaeser is a top scholar of the state and prospects of cities around the world. David Cutler is an accomplished scholar of health care financing and administration. Is this a good combination of backgrounds to bring to a broad book about life during COVID-19? I think so - it is an inspired combination. COVID-19 is a health crisis, albeit a highly unusual one that also threatens to disrupt the very health systems that attempt to combat it. But COVID-19 also has affected the world economy - indeed it has caused whole sectors of the economy to shut down as a result of the dangers of prolonged social interaction - leading to a business slowdown with few parallels since the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919. Are the medical and economic effects of the virus independent of each other? Or are they linked? We have all heard some of the debates over containment policies in key states and countries.

What makes this book most effective has been the linking of the consequences of COVID-19 with the current state and future prospects of large cities. The unification of medical and economic effects in the context of large urban areas is what gives this book its most distinctive contribution to the debate. The authors do a fine job and coordinate their writing well. The book is organized in a series of chapters on particular topic areas. Policy steps and responses are provided in the second half of the book. As these sorts of books go, the later chapters are fairly effective, although the book does not provide a definitive answer. The writing and analysis is sharp but not difficult to follow. Lots of references are provided in case a reader wants to go further into a topic.

There are lots of books on COVID and some are worth reading. This is one of them, especially with its analysis of how COVID has affected cities.

[Roberto Charvel · Rating 5 out of 5]

In August 2020 I read ¨Triumph of the City¨ by Edward Glaser. It was a book that in my mind did not age well, but thankfully I was able to write a review on Goodreads, which reminded me of what a great book it was to understand cities better. I finished my review wondering what the impact of Covid was going to have in the XXI century cities: Glaser partners with David Cutler, another professor from Harvard University's school of economics, but who has focused his research on health economics.

The book starts exploring how cities die. How some of the Western cities have died due to deindustrialization before jumping into another risk to cities: previous pandemics. The first semi urban inhabitants were less healthy than their gatherer peers as the urban dwellers came in constant contact with animals being raised for consumption and due to density. We think of previous pandemics as events from the raise of civilization, but the authors remind us of five large pandemics that have hit the US since 1900: influenza pandemic (1918-1919), Asian flu (1957-1958), Hong Kong flue (1968), HIV/AIDS (1980-), H1N1 flue (2009), Zica virus (2015-2016) and COVID-19. The list excludes near misses that include Marburg virus (1998-2000, 2004-2005), Ebola (2014-2016, 2018-2020).

Even when this book seems to focus on what will happen to cities post COVID-19, it goes deeper into the future of cities, and constantly remind us about how cities need to help the poor at the same time they need to attract jobs that pay taxes.

The book then starts a systematic analysis of the impact of plagues on cities and civilizations. It starts with the fall of Athens to Sparta and the death of Pericles in 430 BC which killed 25% of the population in Athens before of going back 3,000 years to Egypt which would time the plague with the fall of the bronze age. The events described in the Iliad about the plague in Troy occurred in the same time period. There are also some Sanskrit sources which mention a contemporaneous plague.

The Roman times where different. The Roman civilization was built not on trade but on tribute thus the empire was supported on roads which made the propagation of plagues slower than those from ships and sea based trade. However, Rome had several plague outburst of its own starting with the Antonine Plague that killed 10-14% of the Roman population between 168 and 180 AC. The second pandemic was in 250 AC. This plague was part of the reason of why Rome became Catholic: "one advantage of Christians had over their pagan contemporaries was the care of the sick, even in times of pestilence, was for them a required religious duty" and "the teachings of their faith made life meaningful even amid sudden and surprising death".

Plagues also have changed civilization completely. Soon after the fall of Rome, Constantinople was ready too bring Europe out of the Dark Ages in a matter of decades not centuries with a campaign in 533 AC. The barbarian conquerors that took over Rome were now weaker tribes fighting against each other. Unfortunately in 540 AC a new plague hit Europe and Constantinople's efforts to retake Rome cessed. This was the Justinian plague or black death, which sunk humanity to 1,000 years of medieval darkness. The result was that the population decreased from 1,000,000 in the tempi of the Tears to 30,000 a millennium later as humanity retreated into the autarky of isolated rural communities. The black death reemerged in Asia during the 14th century. This second back death plague did not hit Europe as hard as there were less deadly populated cities.

In the 18th century the US suffered its first plague threat through yellow fever. The authors then jump to the obesity pandemic that started in the 1970s. Food refrigeration (specially of French Fries) was a stepping store to the exponential growth of fast food (McDonald's). As time cost falls due to fast food business models, consumption of processed foods increase.

The other pandemic studied by the authors is the OxyContin pandemic. The authors do a quick overview of opium and how humans have synthesized drugs from it. From heroin, to codeine, morphine and its last version with OxyContin. In every iteration people tend to believe that the drug has the same benefits but with no impact on addiction. They also do a quick assessment of Fentanyl.

Before 2005, urban areas experienced higher drug overdose rate than rural areas. By 2015 this had reversed as rural inhabitants got hooked on opioids then in 2016 things reverted again towards cities. If there is something clear about the opioids plague is that it has increased health inequality. Opioid overdoses are 3x higher for those with only a high school degree relative to those with a college degree. Less educated Americans perform more physical jobs prone to injuries that may require pain killers.

Low levels of life satisfaction -despair- can also leave some people looking for outs and opinas are such an out. across individuals and countries, more income is associated with more happiness and life satisfaction. This is why opioids deaths are known as "deaths of despair".

The book then presents a clear criticism to the US healthcare system which spends $3 trillion annually on medical care through insurance systems with poor results. The public health service in the US is based on private, not public health. Second, the subsystem focuses on caring for the sick rather than promoting health. Third, America is tolerant of enormous disparities in health care between rich and poor.

It is really interesting to learn that not all pandemics have lead to poverty. In medieval Europe, the decrease of the population made survivors richer as they were able to get more land and if decided to got employed got better compensation. The Black Death decreased the pollution by 46% in 18 months during 1348-1349. The Black Deaths also opened work opportunities for women as less men where available to perform tasks. This eventually paved the way for consumption of textiles and other goods better made in urban centers. These urban centers gave us the Renaissance. In a way, tithe Black Death both started and ended the Middle Ages.

This book is a delight for people interested in learning for the act of learning. For example the book talks how the use of cotton during the Industrial Revolution and how it substituted wool, had a big impact on people's health: wool is fabric that can be washed at boiling temperatures as it looses its shape. Cotton can be washed at very hot temperatures, situation that kills germs and parasites and avoids some types of plague propagations. It also mentions that pasta with ketchup during the 19th century was a delicatessen in restaurants as people wanted to avoid poorly cooked or unsanitary sauces that could make them sick (for a close encounter visit a taco stand in Mexico and brave yourself to have uncooked salsa).

The book was written by politically opposed authors, and it is refreshing to see that the solutions they come up with are simple to understand but difficult to execute. The last 100 pages of the book is dedicated to this problem. The solutions are in solving underperforming urban schools, police violence and mass incarceration. I would add something discussed previously in the book: a healthcare reform in the US and the rest of the world that focuses on prevention and that does not tolerate income discrimination.

One additional problem that cites are facing is the polarization of its citizens. In 2001, Giuliani had the support of the city on his back. 20 years latter society is so divided that it can't come together to face health, political or environmental problems.

Part of the reason of why cities in the US have stopped to grow has to do with the lack of availability of new housing promoted by NIMBY movements all over the US. Up until the 1970 poor people moved to growing urban areas to be better off. Today they can't move to booming cities as even when salaries are higher, housing prices are even higher than the wages. This is a bigger risk for cities than COVID-19.

I promised myself to continue reading about cities and housing after finishing this great book.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book posits itself to be a defense of urban living and claims to address the many issues threatening the continued existence of the city. However, this book is merely a history of city responses to pandemics, with only a single chapter devoted to policing in cities. No other existential topics are addressed.

The authors push forth some high-minded idyllic solutions, ones which will never come to fruition. I began this book thinking actual policy would be discussed, not dreams.

My complaints aside, the book was easy to read and the history of cities and their responses to pandemics was very interesting, just not at all what I expected.

[Kayla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched and very thought provoking. But too dry. Delivery was boring. Saw author speak at a conference and he is much more interesting to listen to than to read.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few weeks ago, some idiot on Twitter wrote that "it isn't government's job to protect you from a virus." The purpose of this book is to prove otherwise- in particular, to show that over the past millenia, government has sometimes been quite helpful in protecting its citizens from infectious disease.

In the Middle Ages, the most effective city goverments sought to avoid the bubonic plague by forcing travelers to quarantine themselves, much as Israel did in 2020-21. In the 19th century government financed sewers and water filtration systems to protect people from drinking polluted water, thus eliminating water-borne diseases such as cholera. The authors cite one study showing that clean water was responsible for 3/4 of the infant mortality reduction in 19th-c. urban America, and half the overall mortality reduction.

Although the authors discuss COVID-19, much of their analysis is out of date. For example, they write "With contagious disease, even living near a city puts one at risk"- but as of right now (Oct. 2021) COVID-19 is more widespread in rural areas than in dense cities. The authors write that low levels of obesity protect India from high COVID death rates- a generalization that turned out to be false in 2021. The authors assume that COVID-19 first arose among bats; however, some commentators now believe that it may have originated in a lab in China (a view indirectly supported by this book, since it details how Chinese officials misled the World Health Organization in January 2020 about the dangers of COVID).

The rest of the book is a set of essays related to urban policy; although they have some interesting historical tidbits, they generally don't seem that useful. Their chapter on education concludes that experimentation is important, which although certainly true is hardly worth a lengthy discussion. Their chapter on housing emphasizes the harm done by restrictive zoning, but doesn't seem to me to add anything to Glaeser's earlier work (especially his magnificent Triumph of the City).

[Hana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some chapters were better than others, some good stuff when the authors are writing about things within their areas of expertise. The policing chapter in particular is pretty weak. Some good points - like it’s about effective management not just spending, and that unions are happy to trade more accountability for higher compensation (relevant to both teachers and policing), and that increased spending on social services that reduce crime is important but may or may not need to come from the policing budget - but overall feels much less grounded in research/evidence than the chapters about health & to a lesser extent education and economic mobility and fits a bit awkwardly with the rest of the book. Overall feels a little bit like it was thrown in there just for the authors to say ‘defund the police bad’ rather than seriously deal with policing and criminal justice overhaul. (To their credit, they do acknowledge that they are not here to seriously grapple with it. But it’s a pretty weak chapter even so)

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Survival of the City : Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation (2021) by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler looks at how cities have dealt with disease, health, crime and other issues in the past and how they can deal with them in the future. Glaeser is an urban economist at Harvard and Cutler is a health economist at Harvard.

The book starts by looking at how pandemics of the past have damaged cities and societies. The Plague of Justinian was effectively the end of the Roman Empire in the West and the start of the Middle Ages. Then the Black Death was close to the end of the Middle Ages and drove per capita wealth and wages up which led to dramatic social change.

The impact of Covid 19 on the modern City is then discussed. Glaeser and Cutler believe that even with more remote work cities will still thrive. They see a few days in the office and a few at home becoming more common. They think that office real estate will, if it’s less needed, be converted into more housing or other uses. They would also like to see a better global institution for new infectious diseases. They say this will be a new NATO. Unfortunately for the book NATO’s effectiveness looks much less. Roughly twenty years after NATO defeated the Taliban it looks like the Taliban have defeated NATO. The challenge of a new global anti-disease body is formidable. The Chinese refusal to have a serious, independent inquiry into the origins of Covid 19 shows the political problems that a disease NATO would encounter. No doubt the WHO and various other organisations will be changed following Covid 19, but it’s not clear that they can be made to be much more effective. Later in the book they describe this new institution as being something like an Apollo project. It might be better to compare it to The War on Drugs, The War on Cancer or the War on Terror though.

On the technical side the rapid discovery and genetic sequencing of Covid 19 was very impressive, as was the extremely fast creation of a vaccine. But the political handling of the virus has not been as successful. The authors cite New Zealand has a model of good governance, but it’s also fair to look at New Zealand as a place where the geography helped enormously. Also, if New Zealand is cited as an example of great governance in a book on cities the authors might want to look at New Zealand’s incredible housing costs that are driven by a failure to allow building up and out.

Survival of the City looks at the history of how cities have survived disease in the past and the constructions of sewers and fresh water systems that made cities so much safer. There is considerable interesting information about the history of the New York sewer system.

The book then turns to how the US spends so much on health care and doesn’t have great results and in particular how public health spending in the US is lower than in most other developed countries. They point out that the US’s system made it hard to collate data on the pandemic and made the response worse.

There is an interesting chapter on how food technology made modern cities possible with pasteurization, refrigeration and much improved packaging and shipping. They also postulate that the nature of work has changed the impact of pandemics. They say that because so many more people worked on farms and in factories in 1918 rather than in the services economy that the impact of the disease was less economically in the past.

Survival of the City has an interesting chapter on remote work with various studies about the impact of it. They point out that training and building company culture is done much better in person than remotely. This extends into a discussion of the centripetal forces that bring people toward big cities and the centrifugal forces that move them out of the inner city. Work being in the center brings people in while transportation technology often allows them, or pushes them out.

The cost of cities also pushes people. Ed Glaeser has written about how zoning has caused people to leave cities due to high housing costs. Survival of the city looks at how gentrification is impacting cities and they use Boyle Heights in Los Angeles as an example. They point out that the real problem in Los Angeles is the huge cost of housing where people want to be and that anti-gentrification activists, by slowing housing growth inadvertently drive up housing prices.

Survival of the City also looks at how policing in the US could be changed in response to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. They frame this in an interesting way by describing how policing shifted dramatically in the 1980s due to a number of horrendous murders by prisoners who had been released and how this led to the three strikes and your out rule which was then over used and led to mass incarceration that has also had adverse impacts. The authors suggest that an over reaction to BLM that led to defunding the police would be deleterious. Instead they suggest that better policing with less incarceration of drug offenders would be better.

Education is also discussed with the authors suggesting more teacher accountability and empirically verified changes that result in improvements. Here there is little discussion of how recent history and how people have been trying to improve education for decades with fairly little to show for it.

Survival of the City is an interesting book but like this review it rambles. There is also an assumption by the authors that things can be improved with new government programs that are smarter but there is perhaps a lack of acknowledgement of the failures of past programs that were as good as people could actually make them. Hopefully though better programs will be created and no doubt there will be some improvements. No doubt that cities will also muddle though.

Survival of the City contains much of interest but it isn’t as good as Glaeser’s ‘Triumph of the City’. It’s worth a read though.

[Ollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A firm 3 stars for this effort from the authors - if you read newspapers/magazines regularly, nothing said here will be groundbreaking. It seemed more like a collection of essays than a cohesive book, and while it was peppered with some interesting insights (refer to other reviews for examples), I must say that I wasn’t convinced by their recommendations, especially with their chapter on improving public schools, conveniently leaving out the fact that teachers are paid near poverty wages, plus the real harm charter schools inflict onto the public school system. It must be nice to live in their ivory tower and bounce “ideas” off of each other without seeing how dire the situation on the ground is, that’s all I’ll say.

[Jac · Rating 1 out of 5]

I cannot imagine that these two have managed to have any worthwhile ideas when they introduce the book with glib idiocy, managing twice in *just the introduction* to emphasize that the question of defunding police is where we land on the tradeoff of anarchist crime hell/white women risking rape vs black men risking false arrest. Jesus fuck. And rounding it off with the braindead platitudes that everyone agrees the government should be responsible for public health and welfare and just disagrees on whether the government should do that through COMMUNIST REDISTRIBUTION TAXES or rational effectiveness....
Anyway, that was the introduction, didn't bother going further.

[Steph De Mel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I'm a great admirer of Ed Glaeser's work as an economist, and have a particular interest in the economics of cities that should have made this book an easy winner for me, I find "Survival of the City" disappointing for two main reasons. First, this book is very poorly marketed: both the blurb on the back cover and its subtitle of "Living and Thriving in An Age of Isolation" suggest that this is a book about what cities might look like in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what adaptive changes might be necessary in order for them to continue to thrive. In truth, however, this is a book about public health: the titular focus on cities and broader policy feels almost like a red herring. The first quarter of the book is a sweeping history of global pandemics and the infrastructure used to battle them. The remainder of the book focuses on more contemporary public health policy. There are some short sections on topics like education, but these feel rather like an afterthought. I did enjoy the final chapter, which outlines suggestions for how governments should deal with the threat of future pandemics, although much of this should be familiar material to an educated lay-person.

Second, I find the writing style quite dense and dry (particularly the opening section on the history of global pandemics), while the section on contemporary policy has too great a focus on the US (rather than a more global approach to this obviously global problem) for my personal preference.

Consequently, I'm disappointed by this book. It makes a few interesting points, and I did enjoy learning some new information, but I can't say that I'll recommend it widely, or even at all.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up thinking it was going to be about individual isolation in cities (ie the young worker who does not speak to anyone from Friday after work until Monday morning or the elderly adult alone in an apartment) but instead it was all about the history of plagues and contagion and the role of cities throughout history. I thought it was fascinating, and I very much appreciated the authors' willingness to both provide possible solutions and emphasize that they don't know everything. Measurement of specific goals will be necessary to address multifaceted problems like the role of policing and improving public schools. A major theme is how society privilages insiders over outsiders. Specific policy recommendations include relaxing zoming codes (especially in very expensive places like CA or NYC), better vocational training, tax subsidies for the working poor, and non police public employees. We also need a NATO-like organization to help prevent and manage pandemics. I'm glad to know there are people out there working on solving tough problems instead of just describing them.

[Dylan Pamperin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Survival of the City by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler explores how cities have historically overcome pandemics and how we can ensure the threat of future pandemics can be mitigated.

The book discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic was effectively handled in some countries and mishandled in others - namely, America. It's not a condemnation of what America did wrong, but what it could do better. A lot of the political and socioeconomic factors that inhibited America's response and worsened the effect of the pandemic are further expanded upon through different lenses. Glaeser and Cutler argue improvements in our health care and education could benefit cities and their people.

This book is an important read if we are to better fortify our cities and their inhabitants from future pandemics. Survival of the City is an advocation for a NATO of healthcare - someone to set precautions, educate, take divisive action, and isn't burdened with the typical short-comings of bureaucracy.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an urban planner, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Agreed with most premises and observations appreciating how cities are survivors because they are mixing pots of people, cultures, ideas and innovations. However, as a planner and writer, I'm recently intrigued with notion of micro neighborhoods within cities based on the notion that poor folks should be entitled to gated communities just like the rich. Within their gated, safer communities, the working class and poorer folks might get a better sense of self-sufficiency, self-determination with community gardens, coop housing and employee owned businesses within their own enclaves. Maybe the next book could explore this angle which would view cities more as a mosaic rather than a mixing pot. I have been exploring this notion in my own writings

[Camilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book but too scattered and unfocused for me to really love it. The first section of the book is about historical examples of pandemics and their effects on cities, and then it switches to focus on Covid, but then the last whole third of the book felt entirely separate and not about pandemics at all... Also, it's kinda hard to stay focused throughout the book because they always insert detailed narratives about examples that should just stay a single-sentence example. IDK. One thing I did really appreciate was that for every policy fault they list, they also list a solution, though I will say some of the solutions have a lot of holes/faults themselves and they do not address rebuttals.

Overall, it was definitely interesting and I learned a lot, but not my favorite structure-wise or thematically.

[Ben Mercure · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first half of the book mixed accounts of historical plagues with every Monday-morning quarterback hot takes about governments should have handled Covid. I did not enjoy this part. The second half of the book covered how cities will respond to post-Covid life, which I found more interesting. Chapters about urban schooling, development, and police-citizen interactions and related policy suggestions were most interesting to me. For instance, the authors argued that police departments and municipal governments should measure both public safety and measures of respect for citizens of a community. Things that get measured are improved. Moreover, we’re not going to solve police<>community interactions by cutting or shifting funding — more likely, we’re going to need to pay more to get more.

[Sean]

The pandemic project of two Harvard economists (one urban, one public health), this book looks at the challenges and opportunities facing American cities during the Covid pandemic and beyond. They outline a strong case for connections among public health, economic opportunity (and regulation), affordable housing supply, effective public education, and policing focused on both crime and accountability to all citizens. They base clear policy proposals on what they see as the most relevant reliable data, balancing academic rigor with readability. They concede that improving public schools is the toughest problem because there is wide disagreement on goals, let alone how to achieve them. A worthwhile, if dense, read for anyone interested in these topics.

[Daniel Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

More on Covid than I cared for and less on free-market understandings of health care issues in the US. But these were both understandable. Overall this was the fantastic blend of history and economics lit reviews that we came to expect from Triumph of the City.

The chapter on health behaviors was very interesting. I found very striking the observation that American weights didn’t increase smoothly with income but went up sharply with the introduction of preservatives that made possible the addictive processed foods that we all love! The chapter on crime and policing was a very basic but compelling presentation of the state of our knowledge about the balance of the tradeoffs between policing/incarceration and crime. Solid stuff!

[Gaetano Venezia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, not great. Repeats many of the points made in Glaeser's earlier Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier. This book reads mostly as a case study of urban economics as applied to Covid-19.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love cities and have a general city dweller interest in urban planning. This is a interesting book but the in depth historical detail was too scholarly to consistently sustain my interest. The concluding recommendations are more credible because of the "case" the authors layout. I highly recommend it to visionary people who work in city government, urban planning students and civic minded urban dwellers who have visions and hopes for a better future. The world needs more of you.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Every time the authors mention how "exciting" life in the city is I just hear "dangerous". But that is, as the authors would explain, because I'm middle aged, boring, used up and no longer needed by the glorious city machine.

Not much about cities themselves, more about politics, social justice and other societal problems. Would expect more analysis on how cities function on a technical and practical level.

[Ron Orr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall there were good points, but the authors definitely skewed their data; the focus was on how Trump messed up with Covid, but, for example, failed to lay any criticism at Cuomo for putting sick people in nursing homes.

I still recommend reading it for its overarching view in how cities need to adapt to survive.

For the record, I did not vote for Trump in either election and despise the man.

[Rhonda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This should have been titled "Survival of America", as most of the issues are about American life (and public policy) in general, not really cities. As an urban geographer, not much new here for me. It's as though the early days of the pandemic threw the authors into such a panic that they rushed out this book without thinking enough about it. Both authors are highly regarded, but their expertise doesn't come together in a coherent whole in this book.

[Noah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of the book, which was an extremely good TED Talk on the history of cities and pandemics, was delightful. Two very smart people telling interesting stories from history, citing interesting social science, and knitting it all together.

The back half was an extremely bad TED Talk on how, now more than ever, we need a brand of responsible moderate urban governance.

[Russell Glenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

After a rough first chapter (a kabuki dance through political correctness), latter chapters offer far more of value though surprisingly little addresses urban issues. Ultimately the title is therefore something of a misnomer. The book is largely a vehicle to promote the authors' policy proposals. Some of the related recommendations bear merit.

[Steven Beningo · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I certainly do not agree with all of the statements in the book, it is a book that makes the reader think. The book presents a very good look at the impact of public health and related policies on the overall health of cities.

[Matt Mandel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting stuff in here (very curious to read more about the history of public health, food businesses/innovation in the 20th century, and the development of different opioids), but the book felt pretty disorganized and I’m not sure I had any big overarching takeaways

[Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was really let down. The authors go on many tangents unrelated to the pandemic and the future of cities in the world. And we never really get the answer of where things might go as we emerge from the pandemic into a new way of working and living.