Metropolitan Subsidies-An Appraisal

Abstract

INCE city dwellers first began to move outside the boundaries of the original municipal corporations, metropolitan areas have been beset by core city-suburban discord -discord which, like many human problems, has its roots partially in financial matters. Core city dwellers often think of suburban areas as parasites, prospering with the help of core city services and facilities for which they do not make reimbursements; suburbanites retort that they carry the full burden of their own urban development, from which the central cities benefit as commercial and industrial opportunities expand. Despite suburban efforts to plead their case, the case of the core cities has won greater public sympathy, if only because core cities have usually taken the initiative in pressing the argument and because their current fiscal difficulties are easily understood by the casual observer. Thus, the core city argument wins support because it can be expressed in terms such as An End to Freeloading, 1 and [core city residents] pay an estimated $6.3 million each year for services benefiting only the suburbs. 2 The problem is usually put through questions such as: Who is subsidizing whom in metropolitan areas? or Are suburban areas really freeloaders? Although frequently posed, such queries have not been readily answerable because (1) to date there has been a dearth of sytematic research directed at them, and (2) the problem can be viewed from several different perspectives, each of which might produce somewhat different conclusions. The few studies which have been made are reviewed and their findings on subsidization summarized.