Gary Sauer-Thompson has an interesting comment that deserves to stand on its own; "Urban space and urbanity are important concepts and any republicanism that is worth its salt needs this built into its conception of freedom."

Urbanity is particularly strong in Australia as most people live in urban areas. More than half the population in nearly every state lives in a city. If you put Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane together in isolation then you have half the population of the country.

Gary continues;

American republicanism, for all its emphasis on freedom is anti-urban.It's a ruralism and so stands in opposition to the tradition of Greek origin: The City of civilisation, culture and art, maintained through Roman influence and, later, Spain

Jeffersonian republicanism certainly was anti-urban. It was the moral strength of the nation being in a yeomanry. Which even in that time was being overtaken by industrialism. This was why Jefferson and Hamilton came to such political blows over a central state-backed bank. Hamilton saw the manufactures and trading of the northern economy as the path to future wealth. This needed secure capital and non-volatile liquidity to establish itself. Jefferson, a farmer, and constant debtor, was aghast at any political control of capital. Banks might tell him what to plant, how to raise his crops etc. History has proved Hamilton's policy as correct.

This also raises the Greek idea of the polis or the Roman Forum. Where politicians met the citizenry in public areas and hashed out policies in the public eye and under the exposure of public scrutiny and interjection. While Jeffersonian Republicanism was an elitist form of policy making, the Republicanism of Sam Adams in Boston was not. Adams took every slight he perceived from the King of England to the Town Hall forums across the state. These were raucous affairs where the public interjected, yelled, added their ideas and eventually gave or removed their support. It was the republican polis in action.

Gery writes:

Neo-liberalism in relation to ubanism simply means submitting everything to circulation and finance.

Republicanism is first and foremost a 'social organisation' as Dan Deniehy and Charles Harpur would describe it. Government is a social form of organisation that has policies in the spheres of laws, peace and good order. This can mean it has economic and social policies.

Deniehy for instance saw no conflict between government education and government orphanages with republicanism itself. And this was before the welfare-state or social democratic form rose in the early 20thC to dominate governance. Arguably we are now at the point where government has no public legitimacy amongst its stakeholders - which has been increasing in number with increasing enfranchisement - unless it has a social democratic structure.

Government is a collective and social structure which will immediately bring it into conflict with personal freedom and abuse of violence from the state. Liberalism attempts to deal with this by replacing violence with competition, deliberation and debate. Ideally this would be performed in a public space; maybe parliament, maybe the old soap boxes in the Domain in Sydney; or maybe the old theatres and coffee houses of the late 19thC which were hotbeds of political speeches and discussion. We do not have those physical spaces today. The nearest thing is the political blogosphere. An online polis.

Gary writes:

The city is a place where different groups can meet, where they may be in conflict but also form alliances, and where they participate in a collective oeuvre based on individual freedom. The city has an autonomous reality. It has a life, an existence which cannot be reduced to the distribution of land or space, the street, the square, meeting places, fetes.

The complexities and richness of urban life, especially of everyday public life orders itself principally around exchanges of all kinds: material and non-material, objects and words, signs and products. Exchange and commerce are never reduced to a strictly economic and monetary aspect, but the life in the city is an essential domain of liberty.

Urbanity becomes an intimate expression of liberalism. I have always believed that the suburbs get a bad rap, they are derided for their physical uniformity and materialism. But there is much social strength in the suburbs. They are an intertwined expression of community. Like urbanity, the suburbs are an essential domain of liberty as well.