>What do you mean by "city"? My impression is that in large urban U.S.
>inner cities, the police is not very accountable to the local
>citizens, who are in fact largely armed. Here there does seem to be
>scope for substantial improvement by having a more local "subcity"
>police with laws and enforcement chosen by locals to be tuned to local
>circumstances.
I would agree. A city needs to be fairly small for the government and its
agents to be "us", even in a democracy. I think 50,000 - 100,000 seems to be
the upper limit. I haven't personally analyzed the exact numbers, but the
current planned communities going up around here (Orange County, CA)
generally plan for about 50,000, so I figure that's a good number. Modern
metropoli of 1 Meg or more are certainly too big.
Inner cities have additional problems, in that they often have weak civil
societies and business communities. No, I don't have any pat answers for
these kinds of problems; in the absence of an outside state I see
difficulties in their creating either a functional traditional community
police or a "police-for-hire" situation. The situation there with an
external state supposedly enforcing laws is pretty gruesome as well.