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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Introduction to The Transaction Edition -- Acknowledgments -- 1. The City in Crisis -- 2. Order and Change in Metropolitan Society -- 3. The Citizen in the Urban Worlds -- 4. The Community of Limited Liability -- 5. The Urban Polity -- 6. The Problems of the Metropolis -- 7. The Changing Image of the City -- Notes -- Index

"This book is an effort to summarize many studies of politics and government in metropolitan areas. It rests upon the work of scores of scholars, actors, and observers. It is by no means complete. Metropolitanization has come upon us so rapidly that we are still struggling to understand it. Undoubtedly many complexities are omitted, many generalizations are debatable. I have followed the strategy of sacrificing detailed documentation to the demands of intellectual order. Thus the book is more than a photograph of big city government; it aims to be an analysis"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

This article argues that the Economic Adjustment Programmes (EAPs) that came with loans to peripheral Eurozone members Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and now Cyprus, are very similar to the loans with conditionality, also known as Structural Adjustment Programs, that international financial institutions used as a policy tool in the 1980s and 1990s. It defines structural adjustment programs and then shows how Eurozone rules plus the EAPs resemble them. It then canvasses the literature evaluating structural adjustment in the developing world in order to formulate expectations for its performance in Europe. The conclusions from the large literature on structural adjustment policies suggest that the EAPs will: be badly implemented; be neutral or bad for growth; be bad for equity and the poor; have unpredictable policy consequences; and will allow incumbent elites to preserve their positions. Preliminary evidence from the four peripheral countries confirms that the same problems are afflicting EAPs.

The author argues that the design of decentralized political institutions shapes the effect of economic crisis on the welfare state. He proposes a simple framework for understanding the effects of crisis on areas under the responsibility of regional governments: their responses and mediating effects will vary with the financial system, degree of regional input into central decisions, and legal framework. Further, the ways in which territorial political institutions channel economic pressures should lead to changing territorial politics as the relative resources and credibility of governments change. The author discusses the influence of territorial political institutions on responses to economic crisis in Germany, Spain, and the UK. It is concluded that Germany is most likely to proceed unchanged, Spain might see the hardest landing due to the difficult finances of many regional governments, and devolution in the UK is economically sustainable and limits negative welfare-state effects but might be politically unsustainable. The conclusion suggests that welfare-state analysis should take more account of specific territorial political institutions, that further analysis should include local government, and that economic pressure might reshape territorial politics in at least some countries.

The functions of cities in societies are discussed in this essay, the specialized functions performed and the integration of functions. The cities are seen as marketplaces of ideas, attitudes, artifacts, and consequently, innovation; they are driving wheels of great cultures. Then the modem city is considered—as it emerges as a vast collection of "small towns" around a small urban center deserted by night with various islands of intense cultural activity. The question is raised: What will be the consequence of the loss of the city as it has developed during the 200 years of modern civilization in the West? Some speculations suggest an isolation of functions and elites, a growing social distance among them, and a situation conducive to fragmentation of culture.