The names in the title are scholars. Put their names into the Google Search Engine to bring up the list of their papers and something you don’t see often without asking for “images”, a list of documents available for academic consumption.
Scrolling yields more ideas than the entire class of graduate students from every urban study, anthropology, architecture and urban planning program on the planet can read and understand in a term. An enormous body of work for consumption at very little cost other than the megawatts required for delivery
William Fulton, Rolf Pendall, and Edward Glaeser are among a legion of urban observers aligned with an even larger multitude of undergraduate students and colleagues on a band of words circling the planet. It seems to me, across the top of each image above, a story of their work explodes. Very quickly, the search reveals a random grab of key-words for a planet of cities that is unready to be a planet of cities.
“territorial governance, measuring sprawl, smart growth, urban sprawl, urban areas, cities, planning, density, geography, Brookings, metropolitan.”
All of our scholars will agree these are the issues, yet remain gleeful in naming the exceptions that has got to stop. The movement for cities will begin as one of those moments when these words are spoken quietly but routinely:
“You are in, and you (yes, you – so very sorry) are out.”
The time for neat, exploratory examinations of the trouble brewing will end when these individuals are hired for refugee analysis. The synergism here will be determined by the ability of social and physical environment designers to produce shelter, food, clothing and most importantly, strong opportunities for people and whole families to escape from the causes of environmental threat, including one another. Based on my reading they are not ready. My brothers are ready, they are not.