The Voluntary City: Choice Community and Civil Society

About this book

Assembling a rich history and analysis of large-scale private and voluntary community-based provision of social services urban infrastructure and community governance this book provides suggestions on how to restore the vitality of city life. Historically the city was considered a center of commerce knowledge and culture a haven for safety and a place of opportunity. Today however cities are widely viewed as centers for crime homelessness poverty unemployment traffic pollution and other social ills. In many cities government increasingly dominates life consuming vast resources to cater to special interest groups. Decision-making has become intensely politicized bureaucratic and largely unaccountable to the populace. The Voluntary City provides a rich history and analysis of private locally based provision of social services urban infrastructure and community governance. Such systems have offered superior education transportation housing crime control recreation health care and employment by being more effective innovative and responsive than those provided through special interest politics and bureaucracy. The Voluntary City reveals how the process of providing local public goods through the dynamism of freely competitive market-based entrepreneurship is unmatched in renewing communities and strengthening the bonds of civil society. A refreshing challenge to the orthodoxy that government alone can improve community life The Voluntary City will be an essential reference for anyone interested in the future of cities including scholars and students policy-makers civic and business leaders and urban citizens.