Legal and Political Forums for Urban Change

Abstract

American legal institutions, and especially the judicial process, have been accustomed to dealing with an urban economic order characterized primarily by small units of economic power. As our economy has been increasingly dominated by larger aggregates of economic concentration, however, the judicial process has found it increasingly difficult to deal with the policy issues in urban resource management which these larger aggregates of economic power have raised. Policy issues of this kind are best resolved in the political rather than in the judicial forum. The law can assist the political decision-maker who must deal with these issues, but it cannot do so without redefining its traditional role.