Beyond the basic project of redistribution lies a more ambitious undertaking: What if we could collectively decide what society produces, instead of letting market logic dictate our needs and desires?

In April 1947, the architect Percival Goodman and his brother, the social critic Paul Goodman, published what would become a classic in urban planning: Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life. Exploring the form cities have taken and how they have been envisioned over the centuries, they argued that far more is at stake in urbanism than technical functionality.

Cities always express the moral and cultural values of their inhabitants. How “men work and make things,” they added, is crucial to determining “how they live.” The aim of Communitas was therefore to try to imagine the city

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