Justice and the American Metropolis attempts to call attention to the injustice of urban poverty and in some essays to suggest ways to ameliorate it. For the editors and many of the contributors this injustice is “thick” injustice. They mean by this “historic acts of discrimination—along with discriminatory practices in lending, employment and education” that help “shape contemporary conditions whereby ostensibly race-neutral policies have predictably racially biased effects”(p. 10). In fact, “not only racial discrimination but also any past injustice that shapes current relations of power—gender discrimination, for example, or exploitative or otherwise unjust labor practices … can contribute to the creation and the maintenance of stark inequalities and profound social hierarchies” (p. 12). Indeed, “injustice is ‘thick’ due not only to its deep historical roots but also to the structure of the legal and political institutions of American local governance” (p. 13).

It is not difficult to see that remedies for injustice so broadly understood, and unhinged from specific perpetrators, could become vast, endless, and difficult to challenge. The editors recognize that theirs is a left, perhaps very left of center, agenda—it reminds one of previous claims of “structural racism,” now expanded in content and time. They therefore try to show that the injustices that concern them are injustices from everyone's point of view—Marxist, Rawlsian, communitarian, and conservative. This attempt is vitiated, however, by the authors' narrow notion of conservative views and of justice generally, and by their minimal attempts to connect their proposed remedies to injustice as understood by camps other than those on the left. Their discussion is also weakened by the paucity of facts, figures, and concrete discussions of chains of causality, and by inattention to many possible causes and remedies for urban poverty that they choose to ignore.

From my standpoint, the omissions are especially surprising. There is very little discussion about school choice (the major exception is Stephen Macedo's chapter) or religion, and almost nothing about marriage, families, or single-parent households. The phenomena of habits, character, and the social institutions connected to them are insufficiently explored. There is no reference—as best as I can tell, not one—to Edward Banfield, the late James Q. Wilson, or Charles Murray. It is as if one has entered an alternative explanatory universe. Whatever one says about the importance of economic inequalities in cites—or “metropolitan areas”—a serious confrontation with the lives of the urban poor requires one to face the facts of family dissolution, carefully consider alternatives to the usual public schools, and look squarely at the place of religion. The perspective of this volume's authors leads them to push aside significant elements of happiness and flourishing.

The importance of character, family, schools, and religion should also be obvious even when the focus is economic, as it largely is in this volume, because work involves industry, responsibility, and care about the future. This does not mean that employment is magically provided by good character, but it is hard to see how even available work can lead to anything stable without it. Of course, only some of the book's contributors seem directly concerned with jobs. Rather, it is inequality that chiefly worries them, and in some cases the disparate political power that they ascribe to this.

Despite the initial suggestion that the authors will consider many views of justice, the ongoing discussion is limited almost exclusively to Rawls, and within Rawls almost exclusively to notions of fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle, and within the difference principle to (in most cases) a loose understanding that the very poor in cities are so unequally poor that this is unjust. There is no precise attempt to differentiate the urban poor by income level or by mobility and its lack. There is little analysis of ethnic differences (the major exception is Margaret Weir's chapter) and almost nothing comparing immigrant groups historically. The editors primarily have in mind what once was called the underclass, largely African American, but other authors are less explicit. This vagueness contributes to the narrow view I mentioned earlier of the causes of the problem: one needs to pay attention to the different experiences and conditions of different immigrant and ethnic groups at different times to begin to isolate the causes of continued poverty for some. What, for example, accounts for the ability of some more than others who were initially poor to start businesses and to develop inexpensive properties, despite the advantages of those who begin with more wealth? It would also have been useful to see comparative studies of different places. The book's origin is the plight of St. Louis. How specific is this plight? How is St. Louis like and unlike Indianapolis, Columbus, Kansas City, Anchorage, and so on? Few rigorous comparisons are offered.

Several other omissions and preferences also make the book less than convincing. One is the downplaying of the extraordinarily high level of goods available to almost everyone in every American city, by almost any historical standard. This high level of communication, transportation, and nutrition is as significant as any gap; indeed, it is when a standard itself is threatened—say, with health—that everyone is most concerned, whatever their view of the injustice of income inequality as such. This increase in goods is vitally connected to the intelligence and effort of individuals working in properly regulated markets. The animus of many of the authors against developers (and in favor, say, of environmentalists) is thus questionable—several seem insufficiently concerned about overall prosperity. There is also little discussion of the effect of liberal social policy on persistent urban poverty. In general, indeed, the authors have a somewhat anodyne view of government, so that its coercive power is soft pedaled and the threat to liberty of some of the equalizing regulations they recommend is ignored. This unconcern is apparent even if one judges within the Rawlsian perspective, let alone on the basis of “conservative” arguments that more firmly connect justice with liberty and excellence.

The authors are correct to be concerned about the plight of the urban poor. But their views lean too much to one side to be adequate. Rather than truly looking for common ground, they seem to favor elastic and sometimes extreme solutions based on criteria that, despite their claim to justice, give judges and lawmakers no clear limits and guidance. They advance restrictions to choice that compound the many we already have; suggest new, often obscure, voting arrangements; and are strangely inattentive to family, education, and religion. They surely do not give acceptable guidance to citizens who associate justice with self-reliance, freedom, and the virtues of character we require to attend responsibly to the common good.