2 the Common Good : Assessing the Performance of Cities ]

John Friedmann is Professor Emeritus at UCLA and currently lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. His most recent book, co-edited with Mike Douglass, is Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society in a Global Age (Wiley,l998). His current work revolves around the theory of citizenship, metropolitan governance, urbanization in Asia, and the problem ofrepresentation in planning. The question of the state has recently reappeared on the development agenda. After nearly three decades of neo­ liberal rhetoric, in which the state figured as Enemy No. 1, even the World Bank has come around to acknowledge that, without a strong and active national state, sustainable development is impossible. "An effective state," thus the World Bank in its updated collective wisdom, " is vital for the provision of the goods and services-and the rules and institutions-that allow markets to flourish and people to lead healthy and happier lives" (World Bank, 1997, I).