Cities play a vital role in growth and development. Leading global economist, Professor Ed Glaeser summarises the top ten insights into managing cities. Cities are powerful vehicles for prosperity because they bring people together in dense clusters. This allows people to more productively and efficiently share ideas, trade and innovate. To succeed, city managers must make sure the physical environment facilitates growth and transport systems work effectively. They must also manage the “demons of density” such as public health risks, crime, congestion and high property prices. In well-managed cities, migration, even of large numbers of poor people, can be accommodated, and most migrants will become less and less poor over time. Cities’ two core functions – poverty alleviation and property development – need, as far as possible, to be kept separate. Most poverty alleviation will happen through the creation of economic opportunities and employment.
