Cities make it easier for humans to interact, and one of the main advantages of dense, urban areas is that they facilitate social interactions.

The paper reviews the basic facts of urban resurgence.
It then turns to the social aspects of dense urban centres. In the final part of the research, the researchers turn to the question of whether car-based living, or sprawl, as it is sometimes called, is destroying the social fabric of this country.

Over the past 50 years, the automobile has dramatically changed the world’s urban landscape. Traditional dense walking cities have been replaced by cities designed entirely around the automobile. These new cityscapes look completely unlike earlier ones because they are so much less dense—a result of the form of transportation they
exploit.

With this backdrop, the remarkable resurgence of a number of big cities in the 1990s is quite remarkable. In the United States, New York, Chicago and Boston have all experienced remarkable decades relative to their recent past. London has also had a turnaround since the 1970s. There are two main explanations for this turnaround.

First, over the past 20 years there has been a remarkable increase in the importance of knowledge in the economy and the biggest, densest cities appear to have a comparative advantage in facilitating the flow of knowledge.

Second, over the past 20 years the desire of consumers to live in these cities has increased enormously as a result of changes in style of government, improvements in law enforcement technology, and rising incomes that have raised demand for high-end urban amenities.

The researchers provide evidence suggesting that the resurgence of big cities in the 1990s is due, in part, to the increased demand for these interactions and due to the reduction in big city crime, which had made it difficult for urban residents to enjoy these social amenities.

However, while density is correlated with consumer amenities, the research shows that it is not correlated with social capital and that there is no evidence that sprawl has hurt civic engagement.

Harvard University - John F. Kennedy School of Government - Department of Economics
Edward L. Glaeser, tel. +1 617-496-2150

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02/02/2006

Edward L. Glaeser and Joshua D. Gottlieb

research

Urban Policy > Urban environment > Land use

Urban sprawl