Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier Free Audiobook Download by Edward Glaeser

Edward Glaeser's new book, Triumph of the City, is a groundbreaking examination that challenges the conventional wisdom that our urban areas are economic laggards and environmental wastelands. This provocative work makes the case for urban living as a greater wealth and environmental booster than rural life.

The book reads like a grand tour, starting in Manhattan and going on to Paris, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Tokyo, Lagos, and Mumbai. Edward Glaeser is an economist at Harvard University who has also taught at MIT and NYU.

Every day, 130,000 people move from the countryside to cities around the world. Fifty years ago, only a quarter of humanity lived in urban areas. Now, for the first time in our history, more than 50% of us are urbanites. This trend is accelerating and shows no sign of stopping - by 2030 over two thirds of the world's population will live in cities.

This book is about the way cities' " economies of agglomeration" (the tendency for businesses and jobs to cluster in a given area) make us richer, smarter, greener, healthier, and happier.

"The sum of all their smart and dumb decisions, taken together, can result in a great city or a miserable one. The best city is not one where the richest people live the most privileged lives, but rather one where the biggest number of people live decent, comfortable lives." Edward Glaeser, Triumph of the City

The secret of our success is that modern cities have become the world's most productive economic units. The unrivaled productivity of cities springs from their capacity to bring people together and let them interact freely, trading ideas and skills in dynamic ways that no other institution can match.