Readings for Paul’s Spring 2013 Course

+ Brandon Fuller

From the syllabus for Paul’s Spring 2013 Course at NYU Stern, Urban Systems:

The unifying theme of the course is the city as a crucial unit of analysis that fits in between the nation-state and the business, and shares attributes with both. The number of people living in cities is increasing at an extraordinary rate. It took 11,000 years to get 3.5 billion people into cities, but in the next 100 years alone, that number will more than double. By the end of this century, between 7 and 8 billion people will call cities home. This explosion in the world’s urban population presents us with a truly historic opportunity. We may never again be so well-positioned to include everyone on earth in the dynamic of rapid progress that until now has been available to relatively few.In a macroeconomics course, you implicitly adopt the perspective of the president or prime minister who leads a nation. In a strategy course, you implicitly adopt the perspective of the CEO who leads a business. In this course, you will look at leadership from the perspective of a mayor.

More here, including the following list of required books:

  1. Triumph of the City, Edward Glaeser
  2. Planet of Cities, Shlomo Angel
  3. The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen
  4. The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt
  5. The City that Became Safe, Franklin Zimring
  6. The Chosen Few, Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein
  7. Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
  8. Fairness and Freedom, David Hacket Fischer
  9. All That We Can Be, Charles Moskos and John Sibley Butler

 

Paul will assign additional papers and articles over the course of the semester as well. To get a sense of additional readings, see this partial reading list from the Spring 2012 course.

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