ABSTRACT
The nature of the city is changing, and the very rapidity of change is producing conflict and confusion in our images and our policy. From the concern of classical theorists with the city state, from consideration of the importance of the city in the development of modern law, and from day-to-day concern with the administrative structure of urban government, they inherit a rich body of information and concepts. The images of the city deteriorate as the structure of the larger society alters through time: the economic city expands and diffuses, the political city loses autonomy and is merged in the national polity, and the social city becomes indistinct from the larger whole, a context, a sample of modern society. The crisis of the city is an intellectual crisis. The inherited images are no longer applicable; they are partial and based upon assumptions about the total society that are unexamined and frequently outmoded.
