Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century. By Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf, and Todd Swanstrom. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. 328p. $35.00 cloth, $15.95 paper

Abstract

Place Matters provides a deep, nuanced, and comprehensive summary of the new regionalist perspective on urban governance. Ably authored by a trio of accomplished students of urban politics, the book's thesis (p. 21) is that “where we live has a powerful effect on the choices we have and our capacity to achieve a high quality life.” That is, the often complex and fragmented jurisdictional arrangements of many American metropolises both exacerbate the social and economic ills that can be associated with urban life and delimit the range of opportunities available to all of their citizens for addressing these problems. This theme, of course, is not new. Indeed, the last two decades have seen a slow but steady emergence of the new regionalist perspective as a counterbalance to the now dominant public-choice emphasis on the virtues of jurisdictional fragmentation. Previously, the regionalist perspective was perhaps best reflected in David Rusk's Cities Without Suburbs (1993) or Anthony Downs's New Visions for Metropolitan America (1994). But neither of these books fully integrated the ideas of the new regionalist perspective into the broader range of theories about urban politics. Place Matters does so in a thorough and readily accessible manner.