The Geography of Community

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Abstract
In this article, Professor Frug argues that the current urban policy adopted by every level of American government promotes the fragmentation of America's metropolitan areas. The federal government's support for highways and home ownership, like the state-created rules of local government law, nurtures suburban autonomy, while the suburbs use their zoning power, and central cities their redevelopment authority, to isolate the poor in general and racial minorities in particular. As a result, fewer and fewer Americans encounter on a regular basis people whose opinions, values, and culture are radically different from their own. This prevailing urban policy, he contends, has fostered an increasing suspicion and mistrust of people considered ''other'' in America and has thereby undermined the possibility of solutions to urban problems. Professor Frug proposes that cities take the lead in rejecting this urban policy and that they replace it with one designed to promote community building-with the sense of ''community'' being based on the characteristic experience of living in a diverse city rather than on the romantic notion of togetherness often associated with the term. There are many people who live in metropolitan areas, he suggests, who would benefit from such a ''new urbanism,'' and he identifies four overlapping groups who could help bring it about: women, residents of declining working and middle-class suburbs, the elderly, and African Americans.

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