Triumph of The City Touches on Chicago's Successes

By Betsy Mikel in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 22, 2011 9:40PM

Whoever our next mayor will be, he or she has pretty big shoes to fill. Meigs Field and parking meters snafus aside, there’s no doubt that Daley had a ginormous role to play in much of Chicago’s success. In his new book Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Use Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier, Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser takes a detailed look at what makes some cities great and others not so great. He writes about the whole spectrum of city economics, from how improved public transportation increases poverty, to how urban environments are better for the well-being of both people and nature, to his research against investing huge amounts of infrastructure to climbing cities. Glaeser has been researching, studying and writing about the economics of cities for 20 years, and Triumph of the City blends much of that research with anecdotes and history across 10 chapters, which are further subdivided in easy-to-digest subchapters.

The book is not 270 pages about Chicago, although our fine city has a role, since, it’s, you know, a city. But Glaeser, who came to the University of Chicago in 1988 to begin his PhD in economics just one year before Daley was first elected, has a special place in his heart for Chicago. “I love Chicago,” Glaeser said, “because it shows that you can be a tremendous success in the United States and not be New York City.”

“Much of my introduction to economics and urban economics happened in Chicago,” said Glaeser. “The city helped educate me in two ways. One, just by being around smart people at the university; we can learn from the smart people that are connected to us. And just by wandering around Chicago at a point in time when it felt like it was on the hinge of history. It felt like it could look like Detroit in 12 years or a more successful city like Boston of Minneapolis.” And now, 30 years beyond when Glaeser came to Chicago, we know it does not compare with Detroit. He writes in Triumph of the City:

Chicago succeeds by offering the benefits of density while still remaining affordable and pleasant. The city’s economy depends on information-intensive industries, like finance and business services, that seem to particularly value density. Financial entrepreneurs, like the billionaire hedge-fund manager Kenneth Griffin, choose Chicago because it has the size and the well-educated workforce to provide the professionals and services that their organizations need, while still maintaining a strong quality of life and a family-friendly wholesome Midwestern feel, as compared with Manhattan.

Glaeser goes on to point out that Chicago has Daley to thank for a business-friendly environment and decent quality of life. And, if Daley hadn’t allowed new construction along Lake Michigan, Chicago might have suffered the same fate that New York and Boston now claim: in danger of pricing out young, smart, middle class people.

But, Daley won’t be our mayor for much longer, so we couldn’t resist asking Glaeser, a city expert in our eyes due to his research and writings about urban economics, about how a new mayor can contribute to continuing Chicago’s success. “I think you want a mayor that's focused on the most important thing, which is to preserve the quality of life, not someone who can determine economic growth; that's dependent the people living it,” he said. “A strong effective urban government shouldn’t be in the business of micromanaging small business, they should be in the business of kids being able to walk to school safely.”

Edward Glaeser will be reading and discussing Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier on February 23, Union League Club, 65 W. Jackson Blvd., 12 p.m.