Cities, Agglomeration, and Spatial Equilibrium (The Lindahl Lectures)

If you want to read some of the most outstanding work of an economist dealing with urban economics, I recommend this book. Unfortunately, it also reveals a serious limitation of academic urban economics: it is focused on economic optimization per se, not on the optimization of the political, sociological or cultural objectives of most urban planning, or on what pursuing those non-economic objectives might cost in strictly economic terms.Hugh Schwartz, author of a book on Curitiba, currently working on a mss, Incorporating Economics into Urban Planning

Cities, Agglomeration and Spatial Equilibrium by Edward Glaeser provides a contemporary summary of where the field of urban economics lies at the start of the 21st Century. The book is extremely well written, with clear models and a concise list of references.It provides the base case against which the newer complexity theories of cities can be compared, which challenge the notion of spatial equilibrium.