The city is where European identity has always been most fully realized and most legible. Not the nation-state, not the region, not the countryside — the city. From the Greek polis to the medieval commune to the Enlightenment capital, the European city has been the laboratory in which the characteristic European combination of civic life, intellectual exchange, and cultural production was developed and tested. This is not coincidental. The European city is physically organized around the assumption that public space is where citizens meet as citizens — not as consumers in a mall or commuters in a parking structure.