[Return to Catalogue]

Limits of the City

Murray Bookchin

2nd Revised Edition

The Limits of the City is something of a rarity: a book on real social problems informed by a political philosophy…

Bookchin offers, in an admirably brief space, an historical overview of the rise of the bourgeois city. His work is based upon a viewpoint which amalgamates a critical Marxism with a Kropotkinian anarchism. A few cities in the past have been vital, socially harmonious places in which to live and work. “My purpose,” Bookchin says, “is to provide the reader with an idea of what the city was once like at its best, to recover high standards of urbanism all the more to question the present lack of standards in judging the modern metropolis and the society that fosters its growth…”

Some of Bookchin’s work reminds one of the late Paul Goodman. The value of this book is that it is neither a “relevant” tract nor a “reactionary condemnation”. It is a serious piece of social philosophy that does not fear to be practical.
Terry M. Perlin, Science and Society

An antidote to superficial thinking.
Toronto Star

Valuable for its historical perspective and its discussion of the effects on the individual of the modern city.
The Humanist in Canada

“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 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…”

Table of Contents

Preface to the first edition

Introduction to the first edition

Introduction to the second edition

1. Land and City
2. The Rise of the Bourgeois City
3. The Limits of the Bourgeois City
4. Community and City Planning
5. Theses on Libertarian Municipalism

Index

ECOLOGY

194 pages, index

Paperback ISBN: 0-920057-64-0
Hardcover ISBN: 0-920057-34-9

Currently Out of Print

Prices are in Canadian dollars in Canada and in US dollars elsewhere

[Catalogue] [Ordering Info] [Top of Page] [Home]