City Making (ebook)

Argumento de City Making (ebook)

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2000
Winner of the Paul Davidoff Award

"City Making is particularly welcome both as a challenge to a branch of the law that desperately needs rethinking and as a starting point for a new dialogue between law and urban and regional design."--Robert Fishman, Harvard Design Magazine

"A powerful, important book. It is important not least because it showcases one of the last grand identities that seems to have evaded critical problematization--the identity of the romantic protagonist who by sheer force of imagination wills herself into a better world. Yet it is important also for the courage and vigor with which it takes on the tone and tropes of programmatic thought."--Fleur Johns, Urban Lawyer

"Gerald Frug persuasively shows how the current legal powers and divided jurisdictions of municipalities in America reproduce privileges and threaten the solidarity that strong democracy requires. Frug does not stop with critique, however, but also boldly offers an alternative vision of regionally cooperating cities that support the well-being of all their inhabitants. The argument of City Making is both rigorous and inspiring."--Iris M. Young, author of Justice and the Politics of Difference and Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy, and Policy

"This is an innovative book by one of America's leading legal scholars. Frug creates a set of legal and policy frameworks for cities to practice themselves, rather than have imposed from outside. He has found a way to talk about decentralization that makes sense for our time. . . . I admire the clarity and precision with which the author writes."--Richard Sennett, author of Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization

"Frug writes with authority and complete mastery of his subject matter, as well as with moving moral conviction. His proposals are bold and unexpected yet well bolstered by the force of his arguments and the scope of his historical and theoretical discussion. This is an excellent and important book. Very few works published in recent years deserve to be placed in the company of Lewis Mumford's classic The City in History. Frug's book is one of those few."--Richard T. Ford, Stanford University

"Frug, a top Harvard legal scholar and urban affairs expert, makes a pathbreaking effort to document how government policies have shaped the fragmentation of the American metropolis. . . . [A] tight, well-written analysis."--Choice

"The book is an important reference for those who want to explore alternative frameworks for city making. In addition, it alerts citizens to problems of their urban landscape, and how costly it is to run away from them."--Carla Braziliero Waehneldt, Journal of the American Planning Association

"Frug shows how American laws and legal traditions have hurt many cities, keeping them hobbled by state government and favoring suburbs at cities' expense. . . . Frug argues saliently that a city's character is shaped as much by its residents' perceptions of their civic responsibility as by its built environment."--Publishers Weekly

"A pleasure to read. It is well written, lively and insightful. Frug treads where urban scholars rarely go--into the law and political theory of cities--and for this he should be congratulated."--Judith A. Garber, Urban Affairs Review

"Gerard Frug provides an important and eloquent critique of the way in which the US legal system disempowers deprived urban communities. He assesses a wide range of literature on urban communities to present a picture of socially and radically divided cities adversely affected by legal constraints, the complexities of local government and entrenched local vested political interests."--Brian Jacobs, Urban Studies0Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
PART ONE: THE CITY AS A LEGAL CONCEPT 15
1. City Powerlessness 17
2. A Legal History of Cities 26
3. Strategies for Empowering Cities 54
PART TWO: DECENTERING DECENTRALIZATION 71
4. The Situated Subject 73
5. The Postmodern Subject 92
PART THREE: THE GEOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITY 113
6. Community Building 115
7. City Land Use 143
PART FOUR. CITY SERVICES 165
8. Alternative Conceptions of City Services 167
9. Education 180
10. Police 196
11. Choosing City Services 208
Afterword 219
Notes 225
Index 247