DescriptionCity 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 cough, and, indeed, city life makes many of them psychotic, 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.
