The Limits of the City

"City air makes people free." With this medieval adage, Murray Bookchin begins a remarkable essay on the evolution and the dialectics of urbanism. In an age when city air makes people cought, and, indeed, city life makes many of them psychoticc, there is a certain grim irony to the saying. But with a wealth of learning and a depth of passion, Bookchin convincingly argues that there was once a human and progressive tradition of urban life, and that this heritage has reached its "ultimate negation in the modern metropolis".