Aparna Piramal Raje – Why And How Cities Succeed

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livemint.com. January 2015. Mumbai: Edward Glaeser’s best-selling book Triumph of the City is an ideal starting point for anyone interested in learning about urbanization. The book examines cities across the world and describes why and how “urban spaces make us human”. An economics professor at Harvard University, Glaeser was in New Delhi to speak at the London School of Economics’s Urban Age Conference. On the sidelines of the conference, he spoke about how cities succeed. “I think triumphant is empowering the citizens to make their own choices, enabling them to find economic success and have freedom. Different cities have different dimensions. Singapore is mind-bogglingly well-run, but it can also be a little sterile, and certainly it does not enjoy perfect freedom from every dimension. Rio is a magnificent city but certainly not particularly well-run; it has huge problems of crime. Many Northern European cities are glorious in terms of their combination of prosperity and equality, but they are also not necessarily great at being inclusive to new residents, and can be very expensive. So, I don’t see one triumphant city,” Glaeser explains.