The Government of Interstate Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

SOMEONE ONCE sought to ridicule the expanded scope of the clause in the federal Constitution with the comment that under present court interpretation one cannot take a shower bath without being in the of interstate commerce and thus becoming subject to federal regulation. A far more plausible comment, but no less shocking to states' righters, would be that a metropolitan area cannot grow across a state line without being in the flow of interstate and thus becoming subject to federal regulation. Thus far, neither private shower baths nor interstate metropolitan areas have come under the jurisdiction of the federal government, per se, but in the case of the latter, recent urban developments have removed such a possibility from the category of the ridiculous and unthinkable. The 1950 census report has made some startling revelations about the increasing spill-over of metropolitan areas across state boundary lines, out of reach of the central city's planning and regulatory powers, its service agencies, and its tax collectors. In 1950 there were twenty-three standard metropolitan areas1 extending across one or more state boundary lines, and an additional twenty-eight metropolitan areas bordering but not crossing a state line (see Tables I and II). The population of those areas which already cross a state line amounts to nearly 33,000,000, over one-fifth of whom reside in a different state from the one in which the central city is located. The six largest of these interstate metropolitan areas2 account for more than 26,000,000 persons, or over one-sixth of the total population of the United States. The twenty-eight metropolitan areas bordering state lines account for a little less than 10,000,000 additional persons, making the combined population for the two groups nearly 43,000,000. More than one out of every four persons in the United States now lives in a metropolitan area which crosses or borders a state line. With the bulk of our population increase presently taking place in the suburban fringes of metropolitan areas, there may well be more people living in interstate metropolitan areas than in intrastate cities of all sizes within the next generation or two. Already fifty-one metropolitan areas crossing or adjacent to state boundary lines account for 55.1 per cent of the total population of the one hundred sixty-eight standard metropolitan areas in the United States.