Take note of a column in today's Globe and Mail by Doug Saunders (subscription required) about what Mark Purcell, an urban design and planning professor at the University of Washington, calls the local trap. Writes Purcell, "The local trap equates the local with 'the good'... It is founded on the assumption that devolution of authority will produce greater democracy. It is assumed that the more localized governing institutions are, the more democratic they will be." I think Saunders hasn't read Purcell closely enough, so I suggest exploring his very readable essay on your own. I share Purcell's rejection of what has become a ritualistic fetishization of quite unrealistic notions of "local" while at the same time calling for greater community capacity building.