The Uses of Disorder

The distinguished social critic Richard Sennett here shows how the excessively ordered community freezes adults--both the young idealists and their security-oriented parents--into rigid attitudes that stifle personal growth. He argues that the accepted ideal of order generates patterns of behavior among the urban middle classes that are stultifying narrow and violence-prone. And he proposes a functioning city that can incorporate anarchy diversity and creative disorder to bring into being adults who can openly respond to and deal with the challenges of life.