Our urban leaders’ belief in autonomy as the ultimate goal must be unset writes Richard Sennett. The seductive idea of a place controlling its own fortunes is out of date If you were a traveller to Florence in 1414, the moment you passed through the city’s gates you entered a world of its own: the thick dialect Florentines spoke was hard for a Venetian to understand; the local ways of doing business were strange to travNoble Peace Prizeellers from Genoa; local crimes and punishments were unfamiliar even to migrants from nearby Siena. Above all, at that date Florence was a polity in which the majority of its citizens could participate – Medici rule was yet to come. This was the classic city-state: a place which shaped itself. Today, Singapore and Hong Kong are the two city-states which come immediately to mind. They are very different – Singapore seeming much more in the classic mode of self-control; Hong Kong a city which did keep a certain degree of autonomy even during colonial terms, but is struggling to hold on to it today.

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