Multiverse Minutiae

Laboratories of Municipal Law: Case Studies in Technological Innovation and Environmental Protection     Cities are the new laboratories of democracy and it is important to utilize municipal law to empower municipalities as hubs of technological innovation and environmental protection. As sites of political innovation, cities have been locations of experiments in policy as well as invigorators of civic life. From an international law perspective, cities have become part of the cast of non-state actors. Yet they remain governmental actors that are forming cross-networks for greater collaboration and new exercises of power relationships. These cities are thus the locus of a new cosmopolitan citizenship divergent from the Westphalian nation-state. This is what is meant by the political innovation of the “right to the city.”  In the context of the United States, municipal home rule is the doctrine by which cities are granted local autonomy and some degree of independence from...

We no longer fully appreciate how essential urban squares (plazas) are for facilitating a civilized exchange of opinions and divergent points of view. This was, indeed, the essence of the ancient Greek agora, crucible of democracy. It was, “the constant resort of all citizens, and it did not spring to life on special occasions but was the daily scene of social life, business and politics.” It was a combination of marketplace and park, a center for teaching and for gossip, for recreation and for religion, for entertainment and for public demonstrations. The Greeks were proud of the public dialogue on the agora, and attributed to it their unique, democratic form of government. As Thucydides said: “Our citizens attend both to public and private duties, and do not allow absorption in their own various affairs to interfere with their knowledge of the city’s. We … decide or debate, carefully and in person, all matters of policy, holding, not that words and deeds go ill together, but that act...