Cities, real and ideal : categories for an urban ontology / David Weissman.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Introduction; Chapter One Theories of social structure; 1. Three theories; 2. Contentious history; Chapter Two Systems, Individuals, and the Whole; 1. Systems; 1.1 Systems created and stabilized by their constitutive relations; 1.2 Two kinds of systems; 1.3 Systems, classes, and castes; 1.4 Relations among systems; 1.5. Aims; 1.6 Members; 2. Individuals; 3. Regulating the array of individuals, systems, and networks; 4. Qualifications and details; 4.1 What is each factor's principal virtue or vice?; 4.2 How is each factor reconciled to the other two?; 4.3 Are there limits to accommodation?

4.4 Is there an ideal proportion-a balance-among the three factors?4.5 What are the circumstantial conditions for balance among the threefactors?; 4.6 Why do settlements, cities especially, vary in the prominence of one oranother of the three factors?; 4.7 Criteria for appraising social life; 5. Anomalous perspectives; Chapter Three Motivation; 1. Motivational structure: are motives episodic or abiding?; 2. Inspection or inference?; 3. Function/Structure; 4. Animators; 5. Character; 6. Deliberation; 7. Education; 8. Goals, volition, and rewards; 9. A useful metaphor; 10. Systems and the whole

Chapter Four Circumstances1. Climate and site; 2. History; 3. Culture; 4. Technology; 5. Government; 5.1 Government's tasks as regulator; 5.2 Regulating dense networks of systems; 5.3 Regulation's effects on individual freedom; 5.4 Regulating change; 5.5 The status and character of the regulators; 5.6 Regulative styles; 6. Economy; 7. A determinable and its determining conditions; Chapter Five Values; 1. A taxonomy; 2. Historical referents; 3. The three variables; 3.1 Systems; 3.2 Individuals; 3.3 Corporate self-regulation; 3.4 A harmony of parts; 4. Balance; 5. Spiritual and aesthetic values

Cities are conspicuous among settlements because of their bulk and pace: Venice, Paris, or New York. Each is distinctive, but all share a social structure that mixes systems (families, businesses, and schools), their members, and a public regulator. Cities alter this structure in ways specific to themselves: orchestras play music too elaborate for a quartet; city densities promote collaborations unachievable in simpler towns. Cities, Real and Ideal avers with von Bertalanffy, Parsons, Simmel, and Wirth that a theory of social structure is empirically testable and confirmed. It proposes a versi.

English.

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