Making a Place for Community: Local Democracy in a Global Era

This is a wonderful book that traces out the organic, deep connection between local democracy and its economic underpinnings, which are under threat by neoliberal globalization, corporate relocation, and urban sprawl. Beyond the critique, however, it sets out the alternative institutional possibilities in a wide-ranging survey of production cooperatives, ESOPs, publicly-owned (and profitable) businesses, community-supported agriculture, and other sustainable alternatives that work. My only caveat is that the book is at times dryly written, like a survey. A few more judiciously chosen, in-depth case studies of the most successful alternatives would go a long way to making it more readable and digestable for, say, university undergraduates (whom I have used it with in my teaching). That said, the book does such a superb treatment of a topic great in scale with many alternatives that need to be set out -- which this does so very well -- that the book is a real "keeper" and user in classes -- WHEN supplemented by more lively case studies and related readings. One book can't do everything for everybody -- but this one lays out the fundamental agenda for connecting local democracy to sustainable economics and ecologies. In that sense, it's a tour-de-force.

This is one of the first books to tie together disparate concerns about globalization, job loss at home, and suburban sprawl into a coherent theoretical and practical framework. It's also an incredibly informative and hopeful look at the ways local communities can use alternative economic structures to provide jobs that are really rooted in communities. This book does more than just critique the system--it offers serious ideas about a positive vision for the movement. A must read--