Urbanization is undoubtedly a key driver of development-cities provide the national platform for prosperity, job creation, and poverty reduction. But urbanization also poses enormous challenges that one is familiar with: congestion, air pollution, social divisions, crime, the breakdown of public...

The past three decades have been characterized by vast change and crises in global financial markets—and not in politically unstable countries but in the heart of the developed world, from the Great Recession in the United States to the banking crises in Japan and the Eurozone. As we try to...