Cities and Pandemics: A Long History
City Journal Audio
Manhattan Institute
4.8 • 615 Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2020
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Edward L. Glaeser joins Brian Anderson to discuss the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic on city life in America, the connection between urban density and contagious disease, how to prepare for the threat of future outbreaks, and the economic-policy response of leaders in Washington.
As New York enters its second month under effective lockdown, Glaeser reminds us that "density and connection to the outside world—the defining characteristics of great cities—can also turn deadly." Contagious disease has always been the enemy of urban life; overcoming it in the past has required massive investments in sanitary infrastructure. The current pandemic could prove a long-run disaster for urban residents and workers unless public fear is alleviated.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to Ten Blocks. This is your host, Brian Anderson. |
| 0:20.2 | Joining us on today's show is Edward Glazer. Ed is the Fred and Eleanor Glimb Professor of Economics at Harvard. He's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a longtime City Journal contributing editor. He's the author of a number of books, perhaps most notably the best-selling triumph of the city, which came out in 2011. |
| 0:42.3 | Ed can best be described as the godfather of modern urban economics. |
| 0:46.8 | We're proud to have him write for City Journal and to have him on the podcast today. |
| 0:51.7 | His most recent piece for us was just released online over the weekend and |
| 0:55.7 | appears in our new spring 2020 issue. It's entitled, Cities and Pandemics have a Long History. |
| 1:03.0 | And speaking of that issue, we have just announced the spring 2020 number. It is the first issue we have ever produced remotely and has a cover |
| 1:15.1 | package, an extensive package, exploring the current crisis. It's called World War Virus. |
| 1:22.7 | And now for our interview with Ed Glaser. Ed, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me on, Brian. |
| 1:31.0 | We're speaking today, obviously, at a perilous time for cities. It's been over a month now since |
| 1:38.2 | the staff at City Journal and the Manhattan Institute have commuted to our offices. We've been putting out the website and putting together our latest issue remotely. |
| 1:50.5 | The business sector in the city, much of the city is really now like something out of a ghost story or a post-apocalyptic scenario. |
| 2:00.2 | It seems empty of life at times with the roads, |
| 2:03.3 | empty cafes shuddered. You've made your career really extolling the virtues of cities. |
| 2:10.8 | The subtitle of your book that I mentioned, The Triumph of the City, is how our greatest invention |
| 2:16.0 | makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier, |
| 2:19.0 | and happier. In this piece, you warn, though, that pandemics could make the downside of density |
| 2:26.6 | quite severe for the future of cities. So perhaps we can start there. What does it mean, in your view, |
| 2:34.0 | for American cities, you know, hit by this virus? |
| 2:37.3 | What do you think the short term is looking like and then we can move to some of the long term? |
| 2:44.0 | Well, in the short term, urban life has been effectively shut down. |
| 2:49.8 | I mean, at its heart, cities are the absence of physical space between people. |
... |
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