What is the role of the city in determining the evolution of society? How can we understand the political economy of the city, and thus situate the relationship to the economy as a whole? Why is the self-determination of the city impeded by the other levels of the State, so that the city has so little power to affect change? What are the objectives of community-organising movements in cities like Montreal, Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa, and New York? From what perspective do people fight to improve public transportation, housing, health facilities, and in general, the quality of urban life? What are the accomplishments of these grass-roots citizen movements? How have ideas like participatory democracy, decentralisation, and the creation of neighbourhood self-government evolved?

This book is a collection of outstanding essays dealing with the dynamics of the new forces for social change in our urban milieu. It presents well-documented material on how new ideas are contributing to an urban insurgency which could lead to a new city, and a new concept of citizenship. To do this all levels of the power structure have to be challenged and transformed.

"For many years Dimitri Roussopoulos has been one of Canada's most distinguished political analysts of the left... (he) has taken an interest in urban politics in Montreal since opposition to Jean Drapeau's regime began to develop in the late 1960s."
  --City Magazine

Table of contents

• Introduction : From Then to Now by Dimitrios Roussopoulos
• New Urbanism by Constant Nieuwenhuys
• The Urban World of Manuel Castells by Fred Caloren
• Understanding the City and Radical Social Change by Dimitrios Roussopoulos
• On Housing by Lucia Kowaluk
• Reform and the Fall of New York City by Walter Johnson
• The Crime Against Public Transportation by Stephen Geisler
• Hamilton: How the City was Built by Bill Freeman
• Urban Politics in Capitalist Society by Stephen Schecter
• City Politics: Some Possibilities by Henry Milner
• Reformism and the Urban Question by Dimitrios Roussopoulos
• "One Step Forward, Two (Three?) Steps Back" by Jean-Guy Läigue
• The Montreal Economy: The Drapeau Years by Abe Limonchik
• Neighbourhood Councils by Dimitrios Roussopoulos
• On Neighbourhood Self-Management
• The Future of Montreal and the MCM by Marc Raboy
• The Anatomy of Urban Reform in Toronto by Michael Goldrick
• Toronto's Sewell and Urban Reform by Bill Freeman
• Highrises and Super Profits - The Marriage of State and Capital by Helen Deachman and Joy Woolfrey

8.5 in x 5.5 in; 352 pages

The City and Radical Social Change Retail Prices

Paperback: 978-0-919618-82-4 $15.99
Ebook: 978-1-55164-807-1 $9.99