Noah Toly review of Benjamin Barber's new book If Mayors Rules the World offers critical insight and originality into current discussions regarding the future of urban governance in a globalized world.
From economic protectionism to police brutality to plain old corruption, small governments get into a lot of big brotherish kind of trouble. But if local government is sometimes bad, the alternative is not always better.
The Greeks believed humans could only achieve their full potential in the context of a city and perhaps no city built by Greeks aspired to this goal more enthusiastically than Constantinople. As a truly natural city, could this former Byzantine capital serve as a paradigm for sustainable urbanization and green growth in cities today?