After centuries of accelerating growth, the economy continues to be promoted for endless growth when the effects increasingly become economically counterproductive, ecologically devastating, and socially generated crises. Yet society, Kenneth Schneider demonstrates poignantly, continues to seek blind, endless, and reckless growth---leaving in waste vast human possibilities not attainable through personal expenditures.

Once the standard of living reaches affluence, continued growth becomes increasingly destructive and economically suicidal, confining the human career to productions and...

Cities today are the weakest link of both democracy and modern affluence. Their explosive sprawl wastes land that promotes both urban social crises and environmental decay through mass auto movement on outrageously costly freeways--contradicting the inherent role of cities to minimize even the need to travel.

The immense sprawl unnecessarily assures human isolation (with the consequent dependence upon television), undermines sustainable ecology, and abandons huge areas of the old inner city. Consequently cities are waste-generating environments that arbitrarily promote production and...

"American Communities" centers upon a critical missing dimension of modern progress: an organizational equivalent to the corporation. The concept rests upon unified, integrated, socially beneficial community living that is comparable to a cruise ship on the inside and opens to a spacious recreational environment like a country club on the outside.

This new Community "corporation" serves its members who control its services and programs, from health care and education to commerce and cultural programs. Its social spaces, built around interior plazas and promenades, offers efficient yet...