The Good City and the Good Life
In this earnest, cordial meander, Kemmis (Community and the Politics of Place) draws on his own experience?as mayor of Missoula, Montana, and visits elsewhere?to explore the notion of community. People who label themselves taxpayers, he observes trenchantly, do not see themselves as democratic citizens. Similarly, he notes that urban critics such as Jane Jacobs view politicians only as obstacles, while he considers them "entrepreneurs" of power. Citing various civic and cultural initiatives around the country, Kemmis suggests that communities can and must seek to achieve such abstractions as wholeness, grace, character and healing. He's basically right, but his not-so-deep survey fully engages neither the current debates about communitarianism nor the endemic economic and racial problems of America's large cities.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.