Magazine

We all suffer from city envy from time to time, especially upon witnessing some other city’s brainlessly elegant solution to a vexing problem — be it traffic, crime, affordable housing or inner-city education.

But before you get too down on your hometown, read the newest book by Harvard Law professors Gerald Frug and David Barron, who, in City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation, reveal the gaping chasm that often exists between what a city should do, given the needs of its population, and what it can do, given its legal authority to enact reform. For instance, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s much-discussed proposal to introduce congestion pricing for cars entering Manhattan below 86th Street died because the city itself had no authority to implement such a plan; the real power lay with the state legislature.