The giant city of today is a unique phenomenon. Never before have such acute problems of government, the provision of essential services, planning, social life, and civilized living arisen from uncontrolled urbanization. In the West and in the East, in the more developed and in the less developed countries, in capitalist and communist states, the great metropolis represents a problem of the first importance which challenges the statesman, the official, the town planner, the political scientist, the sociologist and, above all, the intelligent citizen.

The editor has here assembled an authoritative series of studies describing the growth, significance, government, politics adn planning of twenty-four great cities of the world. They show how these widely scattered cities faced essentially similar problems. Each study deals with the actual working of one city in the 1950s, how its elective adn executive bodies are organized, the kind of political forces which motivate their activities, the scope and character of the municipal services, how they are finiance. The cities dealt with include Bombay, Amsterdam, Moscow, Montreal, Stockholm, Rome, New York, London, Sydney and Tokyo.

This book was first published in 1954.