Summary Of Triumph Of The City By Glaeser

In the book Triumph of the City, Edward Glaeser discusses how our greatest invention, cities, make us: richer, smarter, greener, healthier, and happier. He goes on to talk about the growth of cities, while also listing off all the positive externalities that cities give to the people within them. One area that Glaeser discussed about, that really resonated with me, is how cities make us smarter. Although this can be viewed in a very broad sense, Glaeser does a great job elaborating on how cities improve our intelligence and production. He provides the reader with intriguing facts and supports his claims by using great, real-life examples. Towards the beginning of the book, Glaeser discusses the rise of Athens and how Athens acted almost

Silicon Valley is a great example of the benefit of firms in similar industries clustering, and this technology centered cluster even inspired other clusters in different areas around the world. Since there are a lot of smart people in the area who are a part of the technology industry, it attracts more people to the area with similar skills. Stanford University played a big part in making Silicon Valley what it is today, and the companies in the area give back to education, another factor that drives smart people to move to cities. Some people wonder if clustering is as necessary today as it used to be, since technology has advanced so that face to face meetings are not necessary. Many would think that face to face interactions wouldn’t be as valuable in an industry that is all about technology. Glaeser addresses this counter argument when he states, “The computer industry, more than any other sector, is the place where one might expect remote communication to replace person to person meetings; computer companies have the best teleconferencing tools, the best internet applications, the best means of connecting far flung collaborators. Yet despite their ability to work at long distances, this industry has become the world’s most famous example of geographic concentration. Technology innovators who could easily connect electronically pay for some of America’s most expensive real estate to reap the benefits of being able to meet in person.” (34). Here Glaeser is pointing out how the technology industry could easily be spread out, but they still choose to cluster even though the costs can be high. This illustrates that knowledge sharing and clustering will always be important, even as technology keeps on advancing. People will continue to move to cities where they can be around other smart and educated