I read this book sometime ago, but it was one of those books that I enjoyed, put down, and kind of promptly forgot. I don’t think that is a criticism of the book, just a reflection on the fact that I got busy in life. But I think it also happened a bit because I was the choir this book was preaching to. This will be light on the details.
At some point in the US, after the death of Martin Luther King Jr, there was a massive influx into suburbs from the cities. Of course, this trend had already started at some point after the second world war, but that was motivated by the construction of cheap, vehicle accesible suburbs that were being constructed at the time. But the death of King marked a different point, as from that day cities were viewed as a dangerous and not very nice places unaligned with the neo-Elizabethan sensibilities of the middle class that wanted things to be prim and proper. It disheartened me immensely when I saw this model of living exported to Europe (I left my hometown in 2002 for university, and when I went back to Italy in 2012 after my Masters I found that many people in my cohort had moved out to car dependent suburbs), altthough perhaps without the stigma of urban blight that existed in America.
Glasser’s book is meant to dispell that myth.
As he mentions in the subtitle of the book, he thinks cities are humanities greatest invention, and goes on to argue about the benefits of the urban enviornment. He could have picked a handful of the world’s nicest cities, those sleepy European Burgs that have barely changed in the past 1000 years or so, but instead opted to pay particular attnetion to those places that don’t have the greatest reputation. India comes up a lot, and he argues how despite the problems they are currently having, still those places are ultimately moving things towards the better.
Failures in Polymathy 