In November 2023, Daniel DiSalvo, authored an essay titled, “The Unsolvable City” in City Journal. He notes that “[r]evisiting the still-controversial work of urbanist Edward Banfield can help put race relations, education, housing, crime, and other policy debates into a broader perspective.”

Importantly, Banfield’s book reminds us that American cities have always been raucous places, and their problems may be managed but cannot be solved. “The foundation of Banfield’s urbanism is an interconnected argument: most of what we view as urban ‘“’problems’ are not really problems at all, and the genuinely serious issues are not amenable to ‘policy solutions’ that are technically feasible and morally legitimate in a democratic society.”

Read more at https://www.city-journal.org/article/reassessing-edward-banfield.

Note: DiSalvo, a professor at City College of New York-CUNY, also wrote “Edward C. Banfield Revisited,” for the autumn 2023 issue of National Affairs.

~

An earlier retro review (May 2020) was written by Craig Trainor at Quillette: “Return to ‘The Unheavenly City’.” He writes,

“The Unheavenly City leaves the reader in little doubt that only one of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s two “truths” is actually correct. Culture—the habits of mind, conduct, beliefs, and values—“determines the success of a society,” and that politics is far too limited an enterprise to change the deeply ingrained cultural orientation of those who comprise it. That is a lesson it is never too late to learn.”

Read the full review at https://quillette.com/2020/05/17/return-to-the-unheavenly-city/.

~

Mark G. Brennan reviewed The Unheavenly City in the May copy of Chronicles.

“In The Unheavenly City, Banfield suggested, like Plato did, that we judge society “by its tendency to produce desirable human types.” He grounded his analysis of urban decay in the primacy of culture over bureaucratic edifices, government tinkering, and liberal do-gooderism. Unlike today’s Ivy League professors with their Ph.Ds and New York Times subscriptions, Banfield grew up on a Connecticut farm where common sense trumped an academic CV. As such, he could distinguish a muddy pigsty from an urban slum, which he defined not by the decrepit nature of its housing but rather by its “squalid and vicious” style of life.”

You can see the review at