The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society

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Synopsis
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.
Copyright:
2002

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9781598132328
Related ISBNs:
9781598130324
Publisher:
Independent Institute, The
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
The Independent Institute
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Politics and Government, Sociology
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.
Edited by:
David T. Beito
Edited by:
Peter Gordon
Edited by:
Alexander Tabarrok

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