Understanding the modern city and the powerful forces within it is the life’s work of Harvard urban economist Edward Glaeser, who at forty is hailed as one of the world’s most exciting urban thinkers....

In this timely study of the different approaches of America and Europe to the problems of domestic inequality and poverty, the authors describe just how different the two continents are in the level of State engagement in the redistribution of income....

220 million Americans crowd together in the 3% of the country that is urban. 35 million people live in the vast metropolis of Tokyo, the most productive urban area in the world. The central city of Mumbai alone has 12 million people, and Shanghai almost as many. We choose to live cheek by jowl, in a planet with vast amounts of space....