Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

摘要

Geographers are, by and large, a gloomy lot. They never seem to be more at home than when they are wading about in horrors like injustice, poverty, inequality, sexism, oppression, and imperialism. The dismal science itself usually maintains a more upbeat view on the world than this. Now here is a book by an economist that is not only not dismal, but positively replete with heartwarming visions. Even Mumbai's notorious slums come off with reasonably high marks, for while the author admits that they are certainly a desperate place in which to live, he has the satisfaction of reporting that they also function as a mechanism for enabling rural migrants eventually to trickle upward into the blessings of a more rewarding urban existence.