The Prospects for Administrative Decentralization in Our Cities

Abstract

Mudd has produced more than a simple case study of New York. Most of the themes he develops could-with no difficulty-be applied to the state or federal planes when such jurisdictions attempt to achieve any measure of decentralization within their respective administrative hierarchies. For example, the vertical functional autarchies-to use a descriptive phrase we have heard frequently over the past decade-emerge in the paper as the chief obstacle to decentralization. This problem, of course, is a familiar one. The federal people face it. So do the states, and increasingly the same dilemma is being encountered by certain urban counties. Its treatment in the New York City context suggests lessons for many large jurisdictions.