What is Glaeser’s opinion towards cities? [originaltext]Faiza: Big cities are vi

Faiza: Big cities are vibrant hubs for culture and industry, or dirty, congested, crime-ridden warrens. As the world population surpasses seven billion, economists, environmentalists and social scientists are rethinking the role of the city in global society. Economist Edward Glae-ser believes cities are the best places to live.
Glaeser: Cities are so fascinating because they play to mankind’s greatest gift, which is our ability to learn from other people.
Faiza: Since ancient times, he says, cities have attracted smart people and enabled them to work collaboratively to advance society. But it wasn’t always a smooth road.
Glaeser: In the 1970s, it looked as if globalization, new technologies and the death of distance was making our older cities obsolete. After all, the garment industry was fleeing New York. It looked like history itself was telling New York City to drop dead.
Faiza: Over the past three decades many cities have been revitalized, not just despite globalization and new technologies, but, as Glaeser explains, because of them.
Glaeser: What these new forces have done is they’ve increased the returns to new ideas, to being smart. Because, now if you got a new idea, you can manufacture it on the other side of the planet. You can take advantage of some new market opportunity in India or Indonesia or Sub-Saharan Africa. These trends have also made cities more important because cities are at their heart today, engines of innovations, forgers of human capital.
Faiza: In a new book, " Triumph of the City, " Glaeser takes readers on a world tour of urban success stories from Boston and London, to Bangalore and Kinshasa. He explains how cities are places of pleasure and production. Restaurants, supermarkets, theaters and museums create job opportunities and vibrant economies.
Glaeser: If you look across the world, the countries where more than half of the people live in urban areas are more than four times richer, on average, than the countries where less than half of the people live in urban areas.