That age old question of "why", some thoughts on Battery Electric Buses, and Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser in this edition of I Hope This Helps👍🏽!
I don't recall when I read *Triumph of the City*, but I bought my copy as a Glaeser fan boy. But I am the anti-Glaeser now. We should distinguish *urbanists* from what I call *regionalists*. Agglomeration studies are always studies of regions, not studies of *urbs*.
Fair point! I like to think of cities (generally) as collections of people living overlapping lives. Books like Triumph of the City offer an informative lens into why people opted to cluster in a specific place and why they keep doing it. I think there is value in differentiating regions from *urbs* (particularly when you are trying to understand how to manage them), but since life transcends political boundaries, focusing on *urbs* threatens to limit our understanding of how people truly interact with the built environment surrounding them.
To be fair, I'm writing this from Illinois, the state with the most number of local governments, so I carry some bias.
I have not yet published an essay on *urbs* and my critique on *urbanization*. I shared a draft with a geographer, who posed some good questions that I have no answer for yet. But I may publish the flawed version anyway. In any case, I take *urban* to mean, *to be bound to neighborhoods*.
I don't recall when I read *Triumph of the City*, but I bought my copy as a Glaeser fan boy. But I am the anti-Glaeser now. We should distinguish *urbanists* from what I call *regionalists*. Agglomeration studies are always studies of regions, not studies of *urbs*.
Fair point! I like to think of cities (generally) as collections of people living overlapping lives. Books like Triumph of the City offer an informative lens into why people opted to cluster in a specific place and why they keep doing it. I think there is value in differentiating regions from *urbs* (particularly when you are trying to understand how to manage them), but since life transcends political boundaries, focusing on *urbs* threatens to limit our understanding of how people truly interact with the built environment surrounding them.
To be fair, I'm writing this from Illinois, the state with the most number of local governments, so I carry some bias.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/2024/march/local-governments-us-number-type
I have not yet published an essay on *urbs* and my critique on *urbanization*. I shared a draft with a geographer, who posed some good questions that I have no answer for yet. But I may publish the flawed version anyway. In any case, I take *urban* to mean, *to be bound to neighborhoods*.