Max Weber’s work on cities suggests that cities are not always rational, and that they are entangled with irrationality from their origins. He believed that the city is a place where the process of rationalization takes place, but that this process inevitably brings out the contradictions of rationality.
In his 1921 book The City, Weber examined urban life and its implications for economic, social, and political structures. He believed that cities are a symbol of human civilization’s potential in peril, encapsulating the complexities and contradictions of social life.
Weber also believed that cities are not always as rational as they seem, and that the city’s contradictions are a reminder that it was originally a usurpation. He believed that justice is never really fair, bureaucratic organization is never functioning properly, and the market is not as rational as it pretends to be.