City Making : Building Communities Without Building Walls - 99 edition

Frug, Gerald E. : Harvard University

Gerald E. Frug is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard University. He is the author of Local Government Law.

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

Princeton University Press Web Site, May, 2002

Acknowledgments
Introduction

PART ONE: THE CITY AS A LEGAL CONCEPT

1. City Powerlessness
2. A Legal History of Cities
3. Strategies for Empowering Cities

PART TWO: DECENTERING DECENTRALIZATION

4. The Situated Subject
5. The Postmodern Subject

PART THREE: THE GEOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITY

6. Community Building
7. City Land Use

PART FOUR. CITY SERVICES

8. Alternative Conceptions of City Services
9. Education
10. Police
11. Choosing City Services
Afterword
Notes
Index