Sch-Rise Urbanztn/de

Once arenas for humanly scaled interactions in distinctive neighborhoods, our cities are fast being swallowed up by sprawling metropolitian entities designed to serve corporate needs. To reverse the city's dehumanization, social thinker Bookchin (The Ecology of Freedom) here advocates an agenda for participatory democracy. The new political culture he envisions is built around citizens' assemblies and decentralized cities. Bookchin takes on socialists and liberals who scoff at the idea of decentralization. Rooting his arguments in a historical survey of cities, he reviews the ways people mingled in ancient Athens, the vigorous city states of medieval Italy, Swiss communes, the Paris Cummune and New England towns. It is significant that thousands of European free cities rebelled against the arrival of the modern nation-state. (June 25)