City Making: Building Communities Without Building Walls

Has it become all too easy to fight City Hall? Why can't cities and suburbs get along? And how can we fix the laws that set them at odds? Where other urban reformers concentrate on bricks and mortar, or jobs and welfare, Harvard Law School professor Frug (Local Government Law) shows how American laws and legal traditions have hurt many cities, keeping them hobbled by state government and favoring suburbs at cities' expense. Zoning laws can undermine diversity and aggravate segregation, separating the poor from the rich and placing valuable services beyond reach of the poor. Writing as a legal academic, Frug takes welcome account not only of the relevant court decisions but also of urban history, sociology and political and literary theorists, from Hannah Arendt to Judith Butler. His commanding abstractions produce plausible policy recommendations, too. Recognizing how hard it would be to change how states and businesses operate, Frug recommends that American cities ""transform city services into vehicles for community building,"" using schools, police forces and other government functions to help citizens recognize mutual interests. Residents ought to learn to think of themselves as political and ethical actors, rather than as mere consumers; policy makers can help them do so. Frug argues saliently that a city's character is shaped as much by its residents' perceptions of their civic responsibilities as by its built environment. If his prose is less than action-packed, his points come through clearly: they're all worth making, and readers who find his first chapters too theoretical will be happier later, when he gets down to cases. (Oct.)