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 COV...

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 governmen...

I expected to like this more since it covers a lot of topics that really interest me, but it didn't contain much that felt new or existing. It has a really terrible discussion of obesity as a health issue that they described as being socio-economic because people on the Upper East Side know how to say no to a second cookie. Gross. No. That's not exactly getting to the complex heart of the issue.

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.

The first half was not so good. The second half did a much better job a discussing key policy issues and potential solutions.

This book makes many strong points, but its strongest parts are about the history of pandemics, the consequences of them, and the need to have a better organization to deal with health issues because the WHO can’t enforce it policies. This book also strongly makes the case for changing our system to being one that pushes public health instead of public health maintenance.One of my favorite ideas from the book is the comparison of the modern city to the Titanic alongside the idea that a city, sta...

This book makes many strong points, but its strongest parts are about the history of pandemics, the consequences of them, and the need to have a better organization to deal with health issues because the WHO can’t enforce it policies. This book also strongly makes the case for changing our system to being one that pushes public health instead of public health maintenance.One of my favorite ideas from the book is the comparison of the modern city to the Titanic alongside the idea that a city, sta...

Preferred the Glaeser parts over Cutler (but don’t tell him). Think I’d be an urban economist in another life.

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 dismi...

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. Measur...

Came for urban planning, got a covid recap.

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...

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

Essential reading for policy makers if not already familiar. But not super novel if you’re already familiar with Glaeser’s work (as I am).

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 munici...

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...

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 t...

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 bette...

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 pretty familiar, 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...

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 a...