Private City,Public City

Abstract

The successes and failures of the American city have resulted from struggles over the uses of public power as much as from a capitalist culture of “privatism.” Public visions of the city's possibilities have, at times, proved as powerful as private economic interests in shaping the city's future. Examined in relationship to one another, Sam Bass Warner Jr.'s The Private City and Zane L. Miller's Boss Cox's Cincinnati illustrate the clash between economic interest and civic aspiration. Both argued for the necessity of civic spirit and public action if we were to build better cities. The Private City told the story from the point of view of failure, while Boss Cox's Cincinnati examined it from the point of view of success. Miller's analysis of the politics of an urban crisis serves as an essential, hopeful complement to Warner's powerful indictment of the American tradition of privatism.