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.
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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.
