Why “City Scale” Matters

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Reading Benjamin Barber’s suggestive If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities (Yale UP, 2013) reminds me of the lofty aspirations Mayor Richard M. Daley had for the One Book One Chicago program in its early years.

In a prefatory note in the guide for the third season, fall 2002, on Willa Cather’s My Antonia, he wrote: “One Book, One Chicago encourages all our citizens to read the same book at the same time to create a citywide book club. … One Book, One Chicago cultivates a culture of reading and discussion by bringing our diverse city together around one great… Read more