Some Cities Are Abnormal

City Politics, by Edward C. Ban-field and Janies Q. Wilson. Harvard, $6.95 American conservatives usually say they favor decentralization and liberty in local government, but they seldom write about cities. They do not ask whether cities are normal or abnormal, that is, whether anything can be done about them, or whether they should just be described while the more irresponsible reformers are held at bay. Curiously, this year is going to be a great season for New York slums in our television contributions to dramatic culture. It would appear that the Western gunman is being replaced by the slum social worker, coach, or psychiatrist. All of these characters succeed in their social work, but it will be some time, of course, before the recipients of their therapy have reached maturity.

Banfield and Wilson have written a book which does not fit in with the new enthusiasm for social work in the New York slums, or in any other slum area. This is a book about cities; it deals with social forces in the whiplash of politics, not with the theory of the community. In contrast, writing about cities has for long been largely the preserve of the melioristic and progressive writer of political science textbooks. The city has been the playground of those who are urging some particular reform. Though the conservative can get his facts from this book, the professional reformer of the municipal associations will not find his ideology supported. Instead, the authors tell us that government cannot do much about some of the most exasperating of human situations, that greater evils (unspecified) are perhaps ahead, and that professional staffs of groups and associations, being Liberal intellectuals, often read their conclusions into reports when those who provide the money think quite otherwise. While the authors suggest that city cleavages do not fit into the Liberal-conservative pattern, the impact of this pattern on the city through the national bureaucracy is not adequately profiled.

FW

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Francis G. Wilson

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City Politics, by Edward C. Ban-field and Janies Q. Wilson. Harvard, $6.95 American conservatives usually say they favor decentralization and liberty in local government, but they seldom write about cities. They do not ask whether cities are normal or abnormal, that is, whether anything can be done about them, or whether they should just be described while the more irresponsible reformers are held at bay. Curiously, this year is going to be a great season for New York slums in our television contributions to dramatic culture. It would appear that the Western gunman is being replaced by the slum social worker, coach, or psychiatrist. All of these characters succeed in their social work, but it will be some time, of course, before the recipients of their therapy have reached maturity.

Banfield and Wilson have written a book which does not fit in with the new enthusiasm for social work in the New York slums, or in any other slum area. This is a book about cities; it deals with social forces in the whiplash of politics, not with the theory of the community. In contrast, writing about cities has for long been largely the preserve of the melioristic and progressive writer of political science textbooks. The city has been the playground of those who are urging some particular reform. Though the conservative can get his facts from this book, the professional reformer of the municipal associations will not find his ideology supported. Instead, the authors tell us that government cannot do much about some of the most exasperating of human situations, that greater evils (unspecified) are perhaps ahead, and that professional staffs of groups and associations, being Liberal intellectuals, often read their conclusions into reports when those who provide the money think quite otherwise. While the authors suggest that city cleavages do not fit into the Liberal-conservative pattern, the impact of this pattern on the city through the national bureaucracy is not adequately profiled.