Edward Glaeser - Family Background and Influence

Family Background and Influence

Glaeser was born in Manhattan, New York to Ludwig Glaeser (Born: 1930; Died: September 27, 2006) and Elizabeth Glaeser. His father was born in Berlin in 1930, lived in Berlin during World War II and moved to West Berlin in the 1950s. Ludwig Glaeser received a degree in architecture from the Darmstadt University of Technology and a Ph.D. in art history from the Free University of Berlin before joining the staff at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1963. He would go to be curator of the Department of Architecture and Design in 1969.

Glaeser said, about his father, "His passion for cities and buildings nurtured my own". Glaeser described how his father supported new construction and change if it met aesthetic standards. According to Glaeser, his father also "disliked dreary postwar apartment buildings and detested ugly suburban communities", but Glaeser, himself found much to admire in sprawl in so far as it facilitates "the ability of people to live as they choose". Yet Glaeser's work also argues against local anti-density zoning laws and federal government policies that encourage sprawl, such as the mortgage tax deduction and federal highway programs.

Glaeser's career was also reportedly influenced by his mother, Elizabeth Glaeser, who worked at Mobil Corporation as head of Capital Markets for 20 years before joining Deloitte & Touche as Director of the Corporate Risk Practice. She earned an M.B.A. degree when Edward was ten years old and occasionally brought him to her classes. He remembers her teaching him micro-economics lessons, such as marginal cost price theory.

Glaeser admired many aspects of the work of Jane Jacobs; they both argue that "cities are good for the environment." He disagreed with her on densification through height. He advocates for higher buildings in cities while Jacobs deplored the 1950s and 1960s public housing projects inspired by Le Corbusier. The austere, dehumanizing New York high rises eventually became the "projects" straying far from their original intent. She believed in preserving preserve West Greenwich Village's smaller historical buildings for personal, economic and aesthetic reasons. Glaeser grew up in a high rise and believes that higher buildings provide more affordable housing. He calls for elimination or lessening of height limitation restrictions, preservationist statutes and other zoning laws.