At a time when peak oil, peak credit (see http://www.opencapital.net/peakcredit.htm) and climate change are on the front-burner of any rational agenda worth discussing, it might be helpful to consider the place of what is arguably the most fundamental, dynamic and vital social, economic and political infrastructure on this planet:the city and its region roundabout.
Ah, yes, cities are very important, no doubt, but aren't cities among the things responsible for the present good, ugly and bad state we find ourselves in?
Allow me to humbly join my voice to that of Jane Jacobs and others, such as Kenichi Ohmae, to suggest that our present state of global affairs is driven by empire and by centralized nation-states, both of which are presently dying a death-by-a-thousand-cuts, having bled themselves bone dry to shore up our lamentably defective monetary and banking systems which even in the best of times are in a constant state of crisis. These governments have subsidized corporate and consumer behaviours that no truly free market economy would support. Here in the United States of America we blast efforts to fund mass transit while at the very same time we pour funding into subsidizing automobile transportation. Our federal government subsidizes the cost of lumber and thereby crowds out what would otherwise be cost-effective building alternatives. Agricultural subsidies enable "profitable" food production that must be transported hundreds, nay thousands of miles to their general markets in far-away cities. There are literally hundreds of such examples that one can give. The result of such subsidization is, among other things, a lot of faulty feedback that is monitored by the business community....not just faulty, but murky and overly aggregated. It's tough to determine what the market (that's us, the masses of humanity) truly wants and needs when the data you get is so tangled up by with deficit-financed subsidies.
Cities on the other hand are where real people gather in real places to get real work done. The more people that gather to the marketplace in the city the merrier....the more diverse and self-reliant the city will be in terms of products and services, and the more innovative as well. What might this mean to those who are committed to a green pattern of human development in the cities?
Assuming that people are rational creatures and have something resembling enlightened self-interest, it means that the more the nation-state and the last existing empires on the planet are decentralized and power placed back into the hand of cities and of the people the more likely the people, including people organized in the marketplace, will have the tools and proper feedback to act on their true self-interest. In practical terms this means turning the power of credit creation to the cities rather than to continue to leave it in the hands of our national and supranational central banks. In the ultimate sense there really is no such thing as national trade. Global trade is trade conducted between cities, mostly on the same places on the economic ladder. Global trade is now tangled in the monetary mess created by a few national players that are not really directly involved in the trade for which our currencies are meant to provide relevant feedback.
Therefore, our centralized governments and the Wall Street casino establishment should step aside and let Main Street do what Main Street and the city do best:solve problems, create solidarity and community and generate a constant stream of innovation that allows us to do more with less. In other words, a Green City must have at its foundation an empowered city that values liberty, fairness, trust and justice and that is capable of designing and developing the co-lLABORorative institutions and the checks and balances of interests that allow citi-zens to build trust and to govern and self-organize themselves in an open economy, without compulsory means.