Reddit reviews The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy

Hi, I have a bachelors in Social Ecology from UC Irvine.

What are you asking? Whether or not the political philosophies of Bookchin are grounded in some kind of empirical science?

I'll look at it this way - Bookchin is a communalist, which emphasizes that land, economy, policies be owned/managed by indigenous communities (not just Natives - indigenous, meaning, locally placed communities). He says that an increase in the power of municipal governance would be the stepping stone to bring us to this state. Local communities in cities exercise their power - changing the structure of their town through their political agency. We are currently moving in this direction with a Metropolitan Revolution. Under Trump, whose administration will likely be removing federal programs, will increase the need for local political programs. Personally I'm excited to see what localities do given these circumstances.

At UC Irvine they have 3 departments composing the 'school' of Social Ecology - Criminology, Planning, Policy, and Design, and Social-Behavioral Psychology.

Each of these departments have various lenses through which they explore the human existence and our Social Ecology. Being apart of one, bigger school the faculty have access to one another and, in my experience, often find overlap between issues.

• Criminology, Law, and Society: Department of Criminology, Law and Society (CLS) study three related topics: (1) law making—the social, political, economic and cultural factors that lead to the development of law and explain the structure of our legal system; (2) law breaking—the causes and consequences of crime; and (3) the justice system—how (and how well) our system of justice is working and how it might be improved.
  
  
• Planning, Policy, and Design: Department of Planning, Policy and Design’s (PPD) unique mission at UC Irvine is to teach and undertake scholarship and community service at the intersection of three distinct areas: the natural environment, the built environment (including community design), and public policy implementation. This mission allows the department to creatively explore practical solutions to problems at the interstices of environmental protection, social justice, and community health, well-being, and security.
  
  
• Psychology and Social Behavior: Department of Psychology and Social Behavior (PSB)includes the developmental, social, personality, health, and legal aspects of psychology as well as biological, clinical, cultural, community, environmental, and ecological psychology. The faculty has an overarching interest in understanding the origins of human behavior as it develops across the life course and in diverse socio-cultural contexts.
  
  Social Ecology is one of many different disciplines through which the world is organized. It's a worldview, certainly, and I believe a grounded one at that.
  
  
  tl;dr: all knowledge is socially constructed and 'truth' is dependent on the community you are apart of. That said, there are empirical patterns to all processes, but the meaning behind those processes is determined by the meaning-constructing Human Being. Truth is relative, all things are relative, everything is relative, the Earth is alive, animals are conscious, the wind is driven by the moving currents of the Rivers in the Sky, the water we drink has been here since the dinosaurs, fossil fuels are the fossilized remains of ancient sunlight, humans have never been so far removed from nature in the history of mankind; and here we are, talking about it, through a technological device constructed through manipulated physical processes.