Edward Glaeser - Cities, Terrorism, Housing, & Remote Work

**Dwarkesh Patel** (0:01)
Okay, today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Professor Edward Glaeser, who is the chair of the Harvard Department of Economics, and he is the author of the best books and papers about cities. So Professor Glaeser, thanks for coming on The Lunar Society.

**Edward Glaeser** (0:15)
Oh, thank you so much for having me on, especially given The Lunar Society pays homage to one of my favorite moments in urban innovation in Birmingham in the 18th century.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (0:25)
Oh, wow, I didn't even catch that theme, but actually, yeah, that's a great time. My first question, what advice should you give to Elon Musk about building the first cities on Mars?

**Edward Glaeser** (0:38)
That's a great question.
I think in fact demand for urbanism in Mars is going to be relatively limited. Cities are always shaped by the transportation costs that are dominant in the era in which they're created. That both determines the micro shape of the city and determines its macro futures. Cities on Mars are of course going to be limited by the likely to be prohibitive cost of traveling back and forth to the mother planet.
But we also have to understand what cars are people going to be using on Mars. I assume these are all going to be Teslas. I assume that everyone is going to be driving around in some appropriate Tesla on Mars. So it's going to be a very car-oriented living. I think probably the best strategy on this is to create a fairly flexible plan, much like the 1811 grid plan in New York that allows entrepreneurs to sort of change land use over time, to put a few bets on what's necessary in terms of infrastructure, and then just let the city evolve sort of organically. I think that's usually the best way is to trust more to individual initiative than to trust to central planning, at least in terms of micromanaging what goes where.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (1:58)
Gotcha.
Now, since 9-11, many terrorist groups have obviously intended to cause harm to cities. But by and large, at least in Western countries, they haven't managed to kill off thousands of people like they were able to do during 9-11. What explains this? Do you think cities are just more resilient to these kinds of attacks than we would have otherwise thought? Or they're just not being creative enough?

**Edward Glaeser** (2:19)
I don't know. Well, I mean, there's also the question as to what the objectives are. I mean, even the 9-11 terrorists, their end game was not to kill urbanites in America. It was to affect change in Saudi Arabia or in the Middle East more generally.
I think that's likely to be one major thing. We've also protected our cities better. I mean, if you think about it, there are two things that go on simultaneously when you collect economic activity in one place in terms of defense.
One of which is they become targets. And of course, that's what we saw in 9-11. I mean, it's hard to think of a symbol that's clearer than those twin towers. But at the same time, they're also defensible space. I mean, the origin of the urban agglomeration, the first use for cities and towns was the fact that they could be walled settlements.
Those walls bringing together people collectively for defense is the ultimate reason why these towns came about. So the walls provided protection. And so I think the same thing as playing out with cities over the past 20 years, that just as New York was a target, it was also a place which in the years after 2001, the city ramped up their anti-terrorist efforts. They put together a sort of massive group as London had previously done with the cameras everywhere in the case of London to try and, in fact, the cameras that would then implement congestion pricing in London were the same cameras that we used against the Irish terrorists. So both effects go on. I think we've been both fortunate and, I think, shown the strength of cities in terms of protecting themselves.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (3:54)
Now, if you look throughout history, there's like in the ancient world, at least, there's so many examples of empires that are basically synonymous with their capital cities. You think of like something like Rome or Athens or Sparta. And today, you would never think of America as the Washingtonian Empire. So what is the explanation for why the capital city has become much less salient in terms of the overall nation?
Is it like sort of Kosian answer here or?

**Edward Glaeser** (4:20)
So there are specific things that went on with English offshoot colonies, where they, in many cases, in part because they recognize the tendency of the capital city to attract lots of excess goodies that have been taken from elsewhere in the country, they located the capital city in a remote place. And this was very much, you know, it's actually part of the story of the Hamilton musical and the room where it happened. Part of the deal in the room where it happened was about moving the capital of the US to a relatively remote Virginia location rather than having it be in Philadelphia, New York, although it was in Philadelphia, New York in the earlier days. Partially that was to reflect the fact that the South needed to be protected against all of the extra stuff going to New York and Philadelphia. And so whether or not this is Canberra or Ottawa, you see all of these English offshoot places having their capitals very much not in the big metropoles. Whereas traditionally what's happened, particularly these places have been around for centuries, is even if the capital didn't start off as the largest city, it became the largest city because centuries of French leaders thought their business was to take wealth from elsewhere in France and make Paris great.