What is the good city?

This Spring brings us yet another local city council election, bringing with it a slew of candidate forums, yard signs, and Facebook fights. By the time this discussion comes around, we'll have considered views on affordable housing, street construction, zoning, economic development, homelessness, and other issues of great importance to our citizenry. But underneath it all is a question that has been asked repeatedly for the last 2000 years - a question so important, so foundational, yet it is too often ignored in the political discourse of our day: what is the good city? I will invite all the candidates and I imagine some of them will come. But isn't a forum for them, it's for you, the citizen.