edited by David T. Beito, Peter Gordon and Alexander Tabarrok

Foreword by Paul Johnson

Historically, the city was considered a center of commerce, knowledge and culture, a haven for safety and a place of opportunity. Today, however, cities are widely viewed as centers for crime, homelessness, poverty, unemployment, traffic, pollution, and other social ills. In many cities, government increasingly dominates life, consuming vast resources to cater to special interest groups. Decision-making has become intensely politicized, bureaucratic, and largely unaccountable to the populace.

The Voluntary City assembles a rich history and analysis of private, locally based provision of social services, urban infrastructure, and community governance. Such systems have offered superior education, transportation, housing, crime control, recreation, health care, and employment by being more effective, innovative, and responsive than those provided through special interest politics and bureaucracy.

The Voluntary City reveals how the process of providing local public goods through the dynamism of freely competitive, market-based entrepreneurship is unmatched in renewing communities and strengthening the bonds of civil society.

A refreshing challenge to the orthodoxy that government alone can improve community life, The Voluntary City will be an essential reference for anyone interested in the future of cities, including scholars and students, policy-makers, civic and business leaders, and urban citizens.

"The exciting and pioneering book, The Voluntary City, sketches out a provocative vision for communities based on civil cooperation and entrepreneurship. Drawing upon a fascinating history of city innovations, the book shows why the de-bureaucratization of urban life is crucial to fostering thriving markets, vibrant neighbors and educational excellence. A book worth reading."
— JERRY BROWN, Mayor, City of Oakland; former Governor of California

"The Voluntary City focuses on the extraordinary variety of ways that non-governmental institutions have collaborated to meet social and community needs. The authors demonstrate in compelling fashion that the private sector has historically provided a broad range of what we traditionally think of as ‘public services.’"
— LEE P. BROWN, Mayor, City of Houston, Texas

David T. Beito is Associate Professor at the University of Alabama. He received his Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin in 1986. Professor Beito is the author of Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression and From Mutual Aid to the Welfare state: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967. An urban and social historian, he has published in the Journal of Southern History, and the Journal of Urban History, among other scholarly journals. He is currently writing a biography of Dr. T. R. M. Howard, a black civil rights pioneer, entrepreneur, and mutual-aid leader.

Peter Gordon is Professor in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development and in the Department of Economics at the University of Southern California. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971. Professor Gordon has published in most of the major urban-planning, urban-transportation, and urban-economics journals. He has consulted for local, state, and federal agencies; the World Bank; the United Nations; and many private groups. Professor Gordon is coeditor of the journal Planning and Markets, an all-electronic refereed journal (<www.pam.usc.edu/>).

Alexander Tabarrok is Vice President and Research Director for The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University, and he has taught at the University of Virginia and Ball State University. Dr. Tabarrok is also the editor of the Independent Institute book, Entrepreneurial Economics (Oxford University Press). His scholarly articles have appeared in the Journal of Law and Economics, Public Choice, Economic Inquiry, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Review of Austrian Economics, Kyklos and many other journals. Dr. Tabarrok is the recipient of the Snavely Award, and he has been an Earhart Foundation Fellow and George A. and Frances Ball Foundation Fellow.