2 books on urban affairs, ‘Triumph of the City’ and 'Aerotropolis’

There’s a debate in urban-development circles over whether cities should aspire to be cool or just solid. Should they aim to attract iPad-flaunting Arcade Fire fans, on the logic that creative capitalism follows young, fertile minds, or should they focus on getting the basics right — decent schools, low crime, a mix of industries — and let coolness sort itself out?

I thought of the “cool cities” debate while reading two new books on urban affairs, because they also split along cool and sober lines. Edward Glaeser’s “The Triumph of the City” takes the unflashy approach you might expect from a Harvard economist (which Glaeser is). It provides an illuminating mix of history, statistics and polite polemic, while displaying a basic faith that cities are sufficiently interesting to hold the reader’s attention. “Aerotropolis,” by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay, on the other hand, fairly strains and sweats in its attempt to be breezy, knowing and of the moment as it makes the case that a new kind of city, centered on airports, represents the future.

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\"Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next\" by John D. Kasarda & Greg Lindsay

Reading them serially is like spending the afternoon at a Smithsonian exhibit, then going clubbing, albeit with smart people. “Aerotropolis” has verve, but it can also wear you out.

Glaeser starts with the basics. A son of Manhattan, he defends the very idea of cities against such noted idealizers of rural life as Thomas Jefferson and Mahatma Gandhi. Cities are not only the engines of the economy and seats of culture, he argues, but founts of happiness: The more urban a country is, on average, the happier its citizens, according to research Glaeser cites.

Crucially, too, cities offer a pathway to the middle class for immigrants and the rural poor. Concentrated poverty has always looked bad, whether in Chicago or Kinshasa, but the situation is almost always grimmer in destitute rural areas. (Another new book, “Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World,” offers a more ethnographic look at what those multi-generational rural-to-urban transitions look like in places such as Mumbai and Chongqing.)

Not long ago, Glaeser’s pro-city stance would have come across as more contrarian than it does now. After all, Americans are returning to cities — or, to be precise, to some cities. They’re embracing Minneapolis, Houston, Boston and Washingtonif not, to put it mildly, Detroit, which lost 1 million people between 1950 and 2008. Since 2000, Glaeser writes, Americans have actually been willing to pay a penalty, in wages, for the privilege of living in the most vibrant urban centers. (Illuminating statistics such as these are a strength of the book.) That’s a sharp reversal from the ’70s, when companies essentially had to bribe people to work downtown.

We should want people to reembrace cities, Glaeser thinks, for ethical reasons that go beyond an appreciation for Kobe beef, cultural elan and entrepreneurial verve. For one thing, there may be no other way to achieve sustainable growth. The average suburban household consumes roughly one-fourth more electricity than the average urban household, Glaeser observes. (David Owen made a similar argument a couple of years ago in his book “Green Metropolis.”) And such averages mask great differences between cities. A household in San Francisco emits 60 percent less carbon than one in Memphis, because of the latter city’s sprawling design.