Assignment 1 - 1

In "What is a City," Mumford writes that people responsible for planning and managing cities often fail because they do not think about the primary social functions of the city. Glaeser identifies a few primary social functions of a city, one of them being that a city must provide breeding grounds for innovation. He recognizes that innovation is key to a cities current and future success, stating that for centuries innovations have spread from person to person across crowded city streets. Cities such as Bangalore, New York, and London all depend on their ability to innovate, and thus can speed innovation by connecting its smart residents with one another. According to Glaeser, workers in metropolitan areas earn 30% more than workers that don't work in metropolitan areas. These high wages often reflect high productivity, which is another reason why cities are currently concentrating so much talent in one area these days.
Another social function of a city is to promote a certain type of lifestyle. Any city you look at these days has some sort of theme or lifestyle. For example, if you think about New York, one would say the lifestyle is very "fast paced." Or, for Boulder one would say that it is very "chill" or "relaxed and laid back."As people become wealthier, they choose cities based on lifestyle, leading to a consumer city being born. Cities have become places of consumption through restaurants, theaters, comedy clubs, bars, and other pleasures of proximity. For example, cities such as London, San Francisco, and Paris have all boomed in part because people have found them fun places to live. These cities enable people to find other people with similar interests, which create marriage markets and even social groups that people can interact within. Glaeser even goes so far to mention that successful cities attract smart entrepreneurial people in part by being urban theme parks.

This picture identifies a social function of Boulder in that it promotes a lifestyle. With a small downtown area such as The Hill, students are allowed to eat, drink, go to a concert, buy textbooks, and do anything they need to do within this area. This photo illustrates this concept because as you can see, all of these necessities are close together and within a small and manageable area for college students.