Harvard’s Edward Glaeser welcomes global shift to cities
For the first time in human history, city dwellers make up the majority of the world population, a trend that Professor Edward Glaeser examined in a talk at the Harvard Ed Portal in Allston earlier this spring. Glaeser, the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is the creator of CitiesX, a free course on the EdX platform. Before an in-person crowd of 60 and a live-stream audience of 8,700, he made the case for the benefits of urbanization, and outlined how urban leaders in the U.S. and around the globe can learn from one another. He was joined by Brian Golden ’87, director of the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA), who discussed how the city is aiming to make the most of lessons learned in the face of ongoing challenges. The shift to cities has been “an incredibly good thing,” Glaeser said. “If you...