Descartes Saw that a Great City Is “an Inventory of the Possible”

(p. 226) Joel Kotkin writes about “The Broken Ladder: The Threat to Upward Mobility in the Global City.” “A great city, wrote Rene Descartes in the 17th Century, represented ‘an inventory of the possible,’ a place where people could create their own futures and lift up their families. In the 21st Century–the first in which the majority of people will live in cities–this unique link between urbanism and upward mobility will become ever more critical.”

Source:
Taylor, Timothy. “Recommendations for Further Reading.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 24, no. 4 (Fall 2010): 219-26.