Government In Metropolitan Areas Research Articles

The Study of City Governance and Public Policy Making: A Critical Appraisal

M unicipalities have traditionally been assigned a large role in our federal system by politicians, administrators, and citizens alike. Today, however, the very worth of cities as appropriate governmental structures is severely challenged. Banfield, in The Unbeavenly City, argues that urban citizens are better off than they realize and that do-gooder efforts, including most current urban-oriented programs, often only serve to make matters worse; public policy (at all governmental levels) has minimal impact (10). Written essentially in the tradition of metropolitan reform advocates, the Committee for Economic Development report, Reshaping Government in Metropolitan Areas, advances a solution to metropolitan problems in which existing municipal governments would play little or no role (20). To similar effect, some advocates of community control have implicitly relegated cities to a role of nonimportance by suggesting structural changes which either largely ignore city government or attempt to wrest away its powers (49). Yet, when contrasted with the range of formal powers exercised by cities and their apparent potential for affecting citizens' lives, any proposal deprecating the role of cities needs to be carefully

Reshaping Local Government Abroad: Anglo-Canadian Experiments

IT IS OF MORE THAN PASSING CURIOSITY to note that the CED's latest report on Reshaping Government in Metropolitan Areas contains an elaborate case study description of The Metropolitan Toronto Experience. 1 This paradox highlights the fact that whereas Americans have become perhaps the world's most prolific writers of how-to-do-it manuals on metropolitan governmental reform, we must still gaze beyond our own borders to see one of those full-blown metro governments in action. With the exception of the now historic Dade County and Nashville experiments-supplemented by recent stirrings in such areas as Minneapolis and Indianapolis -the metropolitan government movement in the United States has languished in a post-war state of suspended animation for a full quarter century. As a result, many of our original metropolitan reform advocates have abandoned all hope of entering into significant programs of structural reorganization, and most have turned instead to more modest council of government cooperative approaches. Obviously something very basic must have gone wrong with the earlier calculations and expectations of the metropolitan government reformers. For one thing, they seriously underestimated the extremely tough political obstacles that have stood in the way of their reorganization proposals. Political opposition to metropolitan government has been so widespread in the United States that it has united such highly divergent groups as the white suburbanites (who have been reluctant to assume their fair share of the central city tax burden) and the black ghetto dwellers (who have been reluctant to give up their growing political control over the central city now that such power is almost within their grasp).2 In contrast, it is significant to note that this same issue has split the theoreticians to a point where,

Interactions of School and Local Non-School Governments in Metropolitan Areas

Interactions of School and Local Non-School Governments in Metropolitan Areas

How Metropolitan Are Federal and State Policies?

IKE THE weather, everybody talks about the need for restructuring local government in metropolitan areas but nobody does anything about it. In the words of Thomas Reed, So far we have accomplished little more than the world's record for words in proportion to cures effected. 1 The problems are real enough: uneven allocation of fiscal resources among the many local governments in a metropolitan area, disparities in levels of service among central city and suburban jurisdictions, economically inefficient scale of operation, excessive spillover of costs and benefits, and unresolved areawide problems. Heavy emphasis in the extensive literature to date has been on the use of intra-metropolitan machinery-annexation, extraterritorial powers, interlocal contracting, councils of governments, urban counties, control of special districts, and city-county consolidations, etc. 2 Less attention has been given to the vertical (Federal-State-local, Federallocal, State-local) dimension in which all governments in metropolitan areas must also operate; yet both the horizontal and the vertical systems of intergovernmental relationships should be understood before crea-

Politics and Policy-Making in Metropolitan Toronto

The purpose of this paper is to describe the way in which policy decisions have been made by the government of Metropolitan Toronto during its first twelve years of operation, and to set policy-making in the broader context of interest-group and electoral politics in the Toronto area. I begin with some comments on the structure of Metro government and on the current debate over Metro’s successes and failures.The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto was a major breakthrough in the post-war drive for reorganization of local governments in metropolitan areas. As the inability of small, autonomous local governments to deal with metropolitan problems became apparent, most North American metropolitan areas began considering various devices for meeting region-wide needs. Metro Toronto, created in 1953 by an act of the Ontario legislature, is the oldest example of what has become known as the metropolitan federation plan, a device subsequently adopted for the Miami and Winnipeg metropolitan areas.The 1953 provincial statute setting up Metro brought the City of Toronto and twelve suburbs under the umbrella of a new regional government, but did not alter any municipal boundaries in the area. A few powers were shifted to the Metro level, a few were left solely with the municipalities. A majority of powers, however, were to be shared by both levels of government. Metro was dominant in the fields of public transportation, property assessment, capital borrowing, highway construction, and the construction of water and sewer facilities; the municipalities were dominant in the fields of zoning, housing, welfare, police, fire, licensing, and traffic control. The only major change in this 1953 division of powers occurred in 1956, when policing and licensing functions were amalgamated–that is, shifted from the municipal to the Metro level.

A Municipal Services Market Model of Metropolitan Organization

Abstract The centralization of government in metropolitan areas has been aw often proposed but seldom attained goal. A review of the organizational assumptions upon which these proposals are based, and the findings of recent research, both suggest that a re-evaluation of the capacities of centralized and decentralized systems of government is in order. Past writings have provided little basis for explaining the viability of or understanding the characteristics of fractionized government. With a theoretical model of decentralized government in which service units compete under quasi-market conditions, it is possible to explore the operation of such a system and its capacity to respond to local and metropolitan needs.

Financing Local Government in Metropolitan Areas--A Case Study of Madison, Wisconsin

Financing Local Government in Metropolitan Areas--A Case Study of Madison, Wisconsin

The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry

Allusions to the “problem of metropolitan government” are often made in characterizing the difficulties supposed to arise because a metropolitan region is a legal non-entity. From this point of view, the people of a metropolitan region have no general instrumentality of government available to deal directly with the range of problems which they share in common. Rather there is a multiplicity of federal and state governmental agencies, counties, cities, and special districts that govern within a metropolitan region.This view assumes that the multiplicity of political units in a metropolitan area is essentially a pathological phenomenon. The diagnosis asserts that there are too many governments and not enough government. The symptoms are described as “duplication of functions” and “overlapping jurisdictions.” Autonomous units of government, acting in their own behalf, are considered incapable of resolving the diverse problems of the wider metropolitan community. The political topography of the metropolis is called a “crazy-quilt pattern” and its organization is said to be an “organized chaos.” The prescription is reorganization into larger units—to provide “a general metropolitan framework” for gathering up the various functions of government. A political system with a single dominant center for making decisions is viewed as the ideal model for the organization of metropolitan government. “Gargantua” is one name for it.

The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry

Allusions to the “problem of metropolitan government” are often made in characterizing the difficulties supposed to arise because a metropolitan region is a legal non-entity. From this point of view, the people of a metropolitan region have no general instrumentality of government available to deal directly with the range of problems which they share in common. Rather there is a multiplicity of federal and state governmental agencies, counties, cities, and special districts that govern within a metropolitan region.This view assumes that the multiplicity of political units in a metropolitan area is essentially a pathological phenomenon. The diagnosis asserts that there are too many governments and not enough government. The symptoms are described as “duplication of functions” and “overlapping jurisdictions.” Autonomous units of government, acting in their own behalf, are considered incapable of resolving the diverse problems of the wider metropolitan community. The political topography of the metropolis is called a “crazy-quilt pattern” and its organization is said to be an “organized chaos.” The prescription is reorganization into larger units—to provide “a general metropolitan framework” for gathering up the various functions of government. A political system with a single dominant center for making decisions is viewed as the ideal model for the organization of metropolitan government. “Gargantua” is one name for it.

The Urban County: A Study of New Approaches to Local Government in Metropolitan Areas

The Urban County: A Study of New Approaches to Local Government in Metropolitan Areas

U. s. needs a program

National Municipal ReviewVolume 46, Issue 8 p. 394-400 Article U. s. needs a program Robert H. Connery, Robert H. ConnerySearch for more papers by this authorRichard H. Leach, Richard H. Leach Dr. Connery is professor of political science and Dr. Leach is assistant professor of political science at Duke University. Both are participating in the Study of Government in Metropolitan Areas being conducted by the Governmental Affairs Institute, Washington, D. C., and the Institute of Public Administration, New York City.Search for more papers by this author Robert H. Connery, Robert H. ConnerySearch for more papers by this authorRichard H. Leach, Richard H. Leach Dr. Connery is professor of political science and Dr. Leach is assistant professor of political science at Duke University. Both are participating in the Study of Government in Metropolitan Areas being conducted by the Governmental Affairs Institute, Washington, D. C., and the Institute of Public Administration, New York City.Search for more papers by this author First published: September 1957 https://doi.org/10.1002/ncr.4110460803 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume46, Issue8September 1957Pages 394-400 RelatedInformation

Local Government in Metropolitan Areas. Washington, D. C., U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Governments Division, 1954. 24 pp. 25 Cents

National Municipal ReviewVolume 43, Issue 6 p. 318-318 Book Review Local Government in Metropolitan Areas. Washington, D. C., U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Governments Division, 1954. 24 pp. 25 Cents WILLIAM N. CASSELLA,JR., WILLIAM N. CASSELLA,JR.Search for more papers by this author WILLIAM N. CASSELLA,JR., WILLIAM N. CASSELLA,JR.Search for more papers by this author First published: June 1954 https://doi.org/10.1002/ncr.4110430614AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume43, Issue6June 1954Pages 318-318 RelatedInformation

Government in the Future City

public policies for the entire city. Instead, within these 140 cities are to be found 172 central municipalities, 1,697 suburban municipalities, 302 counties, and a large number of special districts. Local government in metropolitan areas is becoming further dispersed into units too small to plan, finance, and administer public services. More than 52 per cent of suburban municipalities in 1940 were places of less than 5,000 population, and more than 45 per cent were so small that the United States Bureau of