The Political Philosophy of the European City

The Political Philosophy of the European City is a courageous and wide-ranging panorama of the political life and thought of the European city. Its novel hypothesis is that modern Western political thought, since the time of Hobbes and Locke, underestimated the political significance and value of the community of urban citizens, called civitas, united by local customs, or even a formal or informal urban constitution at a certain location, which had a recognizable countenance, with natural and man-made, architectural marks, called urbs. Recalling the golden age of the European city in ancient Greece and Rome, and offering a detailed description of its turbulent life in the Renaissance Italian city-states, it makes a case for the city not only as a hotbed of modern democracy, but also as a remedy for some of the distortions of political life in the alienated contemporary, centralized, Weberian bureaucratic state. Overcoming the north-south divide, or the core and periphery partition, the books material is particularly rich in Central European case studies. All in all, it is an enjoyable read which offers sound arguments to revisit the offer of the small and middle-sized European town, in search of a more sustainable future for Europe.

Ferenc Hörcher isresearch professor and head of the Research Institute of Politics of the University of Public Service in Budapest.

Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. From the Reason of the City to the Practical Wisdom of the City

Chapter 2. The City of The Italian Renaissance and the German City

Chapter 3. The City of Ancient Greece and Christian Europe

Chapter 4. From the Megalopolis to the City of Human Scale

Conclusion: The City as a Work of Art