Survival of the City

Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation

By: Edward Glaeser, David Cutler

Narrated by: Edward Glaeser, David Cutler, Teri Schnaubelt

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 us: 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.

©2021 Edward Glaeser and David Cutler (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Expansive and entertaining. . . . [A] fast-paced and highly readable journey . . . the book serves as a useful tool in the effort to redefine the role of the city in an age of increasingly polarized politics, and reminds us that urban health is—as Fiorello La Guardia once remarked about cleaning the streets—not a Democratic or Republican issue.” —New York Times Book Review

“Glaeser’s Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation, written with Harvard health economist David Cutler, shares the pleasing style of its predecessor [Triumph of the City], an engaging mixture of history and analysis . . . ‘The age of urban miracles need not be over,’ Messrs. Glaeser and Cutler write. ‘Indeed, it must not be.’” —Wall Street Journal

“Survival of the City lays out a compelling vision for reasonable, doable and affordable policy changes that would improve the quality of life in cities and benefit everyone across the nation . . . This is an important book of ideas, history and policy recommendations, a book that should be read and discussed by anyone concerned with the future of cities.” —Inside Higher Ed

Not really as advertised…

The book talked less about city survival and more about political and socioeconomic issues. Of course, those things matter in the broad scope but I just thought the book had different content.

Informative, balanced, lively, and thought-provoking

This book presents an Informative, balanced, lively, and thought-provoking argument about an important topic.

A must read/listening to improve our lives

Easy to read with solid information. The accounts to key challenges of modern societies and points to some pathways forward. It shows we need to better articulate multilateral efforts with national policies.

The Post-Pandemic City

I'm a big fan of Dr. Ed Glaeser and agglomeration economics. This book had more of a focus on the pandemic and how to continue to benefit from density without increasing your risks of disease and the other downsides of cities. I'm not exactly sure what a NATO of healthcare would look like and how it would differ from the WHO, but it's an interesting proposal for the next pandemic.

An Advocation for a NATO of Healthcare

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.

Weird performance

For some reason, the narrator thinks that word-final unstressed A’s, like in the word “America” and “retina” should sound like the A in “spa” rather than the schwa in unstressed “the”. It’s uh-MEH-ruh-kuh, not uh-MEH-ruh-kah.