Gerald E. Frug is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard University. He is the author of Local Government
Law.
Review
"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
Summary
American metropolitan areas today are divided into neighborhoods of privilege and poverty, often along lines
of ethnicity and race. City residents traveling through these neighborhoods move from feeling at home to feeling
like tourists to feeling so out of place they fear for their security. As Gerald Frug shows, this divided and inhospitable
urban landscape is not simply the result of individual choices about where to live or start a business. It is the
product of government policies--and, in particular, the policies embedded in legal rules. A Harvard law professor
and leading expert on urban affairs, Frug presents the first-ever analysis of how legal rules shape modern cities
and outlines a set of alternatives to bring down the walls that now keep city dwellers apart.
Frug begins by describing how American law treats cities as subdivisions of states and shows how this arrangement
has encouraged the separation of metropolitan residents into different, sometimes hostile groups. He explains in
clear, accessible language the divisive impact of rules about zoning, redevelopment, land use, and the organization
of such city services as education and policing. He pays special attention to the underlying role of anxiety about
strangers, the widespread desire for good schools, and the pervasive fear of crime. Ultimately, Frug calls for
replacing the current legal definition of cities with an alternative based on what he calls "community building"--an
alternative that gives cities within the same metropolitan region incentives to forge closer links with each other.
An incisive study of the legal roots of today's urban problems, City Making is also an optimistic and compelling
blueprint for enabling American cities once again to embrace their historic role of helping people reach an accommodation
with those who live in the same geographic area, no matter how dissimilar they are.
Table of Contents
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
