In his post "Betting on Atlanta," Glaeser charts the rise of the Atlanta metropolitan region. Frustratingly, he pegs Atlanta's dominance in the Southeast to unrestricted suburban development, the very same thing that he lambasted the federal government for subsidizing.

Housing supply, not quality of life, has been the crucial helpmate of economic convergence. Atlanta has kept housing prices low, despite a vast increase in its size, because there are few natural or legislative limits to new construction... The dominant political players have long been pro-growth, and as a result, much of suburban Atlanta is a paradise for builders. The resulting low home prices have helped bring millions to the region.

But the result of this suburban builder's paradise is a sprawling, traffic-choked region that, if it continues on the current development pattern, will ultimately become unaffordable due to transportation costs.

And what about "the creativity that comes when humans connect and learn from each other in dense areas"? And what about the region's unsustainable use of resources like gasoline, electricity, and water?

And even more frustratingly, Glaeser argues that the city's "business-friendly politics" will allow Atlanta to quickly recover form the housing crisis and the recession. The only "business-friendly" policy that he talks about are union-busing right-to-work laws that Glaeser contends, "Had a deep impact on manufacturing growth." But with only about eight percent of Atlanta's workforce employed in manufacturing, this hardly seems relevant. What is relevant, however, is the fact that 27 percent of all Atlanta families with children live below the poverty line. Given the fact that "pro-business" usually equates to low service sector wages, Atlanta's pro-business policies will turn out to be a millstone around the region's neck.