Scholarship and Policy Applications
Regional
governance has occupied an eminent place in both the theoretical and applied literature of cities. The scholarship
on the subject is rich, vast and often geared toward political reform. Its origins go back nearly a century when Chester
Maxey (1922), Paul Studenski (1930) and Victor Jones (1942) tried to simplify
the jigsaw puzzle of the American metropolis.
These pioneers objected to the messiness of so many crisscrossed
jurisdictions, and believed the nation’s vitality was sapped by contending
towns, villages, cities and special districts.
The bane of the American metropolis was fragmentation and its remedy could
be found in the unified practices of “metropolitan government”. Only a metropolitan wide perspective could do
away with self-defeating inter-local competition, deliver service efficiencies and
provide for common metropolitan needs (Stephens and Wikstrom, 2000). The capstone of this early scholarship was
Robert Wood’s classic 1400 Governments (1961). Like his predecessors Wood lamented the profusion
of jurisdictions in the New York area that prevented it from pursuing the
benefits of collective regional policies.
Subsequent scholarship consisted of elaborating ways to
bring about metropolitan integration. A
distinct line of reasoning ushered forth from writers like Neal Peirce (1993) Myron
Orfield (1997) and David Rusk (1993) who saw fragmentation feeding inequities
and argued that only metropolitan government could resolve mounting
socio-economic problems. Their arguments
underlined how well unified government worked in some areas and how it could be
extended to other metros. At an opposite
corner a group of scholars led by Elinor Ostrom (1990) found that America’s
metropolises were already achieving inter-local cooperation, though hardly in
the manner envisioned by earlier researchers. These writers turned the vice of fragmentation
into a virtue by showing that large numbers of jurisdictions actually formed an
intricate patch-quilt of cooperative agreements. Rather than being chaotic, metropolitan areas
possessed a heterogeneous and self-generating coherence of their own. They were, in the words of Parks and
Oakerson (1989), “complexly organized systems” of governance knitted together
by diverse, ad hoc arrangements.[i]
Regional
theorists also followed up with pragmatic approaches that called for visualizing
regions as common markets and assessing local capacity for metropolitan
cooperation (Barnes and Ledebur 1998; Barnes and Foster, 2012). Scott Bollens (2003) elaborated on a gradualist
theme by showing how different regimes worked incrementally to bring about regional
governance “through the back door”. Governance through the “back door” was
credited for adopting redistributive policies and taking steps toward greater social
equity. Other writers saw “back door
regionalism” coming about via popular social movement (Pastor, Benner and
Matsuoka, 2009).
A regional approach went beyond academic
investigation, and, for a time was pursued by organizations at the pinnacle of policy
making. These included the Council on
Economic Development, the Regional Plan Association and the Advisory Commission
on Intergovernmental Relations (CED, 1966; RPA, 1967, 1980; ACIR, 1973, 1974). For a while America witnessed a period in
which “regionalism” seemed to bear fruit as Councils of Government,
Metropolitan Planning Organizations and initiatives toward metropolitan
government took hold. Metropolitan
integration had its champions among professional organizations like the
National League of Cities and the International City Managers Association (NLC,
2006, ICMA, 1989). Some foundations
contributed to this pursuit with studies and policy recommendations (Macarthur
Fund, 2014; Rockefeller, 2014). After decades
of darkness, a “new regionalism” began to see the light of day.[ii] Soon after Obama’s election in 2008, a freshly
created Office of Urban Policy put regionalism at the top of the agenda (White
House, 2009).
Some years have passed since these expectations
came to the national surface, yet little has come of them. The Obama White House has been silent about
regionalism, much less willing to put forth broader solutions to local problems. Earlier initiatives in California and St.
Louis were quietly abandoned or fell by the wayside. [iii] The
new regionalism is now fast fading and seems destined to become the old
regionalism. Tellingly, metropolitan
America has grown enormously but remains structurally unchanged and more fragmented
than before.
This
context of frustrated expectations inspires our own research. The general
questions we address lay in why, despite the clamor about excessive local
governments, metropolitan areas continue to fragment? We look into the forces that propel
fragmentation and probe into why metropolitan areas have not adopted comprehensive
and integrative institutions? By the
terms “comprehensive” and “integrative” we mean institutions that are capable
of making binding decisions on issues that touch the entire metropolis (Hitchings,
1998; Norris, 2001; Kantor, et al., 2012). Comprehensive/integrative
regionalism also conveys that a predominant regional institution initiates and coordinates
policies within defined metropolitan boundaries. [iv]
We
see the absence of this regional vision and the thwarted hopes of regionalists as
due to conditions that are deeply rooted in the American metropolis. The clue to understanding these conditions can
be found in the major institution that has survived this environment and, in
fact, managed to thrive in the fragmented environment of the American
metropolis. This is the public authority, defined here as a corporate
entity, chartered by one or more governments, administered by an appointed
board and responsible for various functions that are conducted in metropolitan
regions (Walsh, 1979; Mitchell, 1992:2).
The Paradox of Fragmented
Regionalism and the Significance of Public Authorities
Metropolitan regions
derive their energy from their central cities, and they work like common
markets by promoting the free exchange of economic resources (Jacobs, 1984;
Barnes and Ledebur, 1998). [v]
The
typical MSA of about 635,000 residents holds about 104 local
jurisdictions. This number will vary by
area of the county—the Northeast contains upwards of 150 localities while the
South holds 57 and the West a bit over 100 (Stephens and Wikstrom, 2000: 20;
Miller, 2002: 57; Calabrese and Epple, 2002).
A
key predicate of this study centers on the “active fragmentation” of
metropolitan regions. This idea goes
beyond numbers to convey that unlike most other nations, American localities
enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Local
governments are not just abundant, but responsible for raising most of their
own revenue and exercise a good deal of discretion on land use and economic
development. These elements provide them
with both the motive and the capability to compete with each other over
investment, employment and even sports teams.
We
can imagine the enormity of factors pushing
localities away from one another.
Fragmentation has teeth that can bite away at neighboring jurisdictions
and create cycles of bidding wars, pirated industries and a race to the bottom. This is made all the more potent by a
local resort to "defensive incorporation", where individual hamlets
lock in their own resources, revenues and land values. This often creates costs or “negative
externalities” for neighboring towns, as when affluent jurisdictions build incinerators
in poorer areas. Taken
together these characteristics describe an “active fragmentation” where
centrifugal forces continually push localities away from one another.
There
is another, contradictory side to this metropolitan picture. Also in play is a pulling together of localities because of exigencies stemming from
regional interdependence. We know that
central cities and suburbs are better off when they prosper together and many
leaders recognize this advantage (Barnes and Ledebur, 1994; Savitch, 1993;
Voith, 1998). Metropolitan areas are
effectively wrapped in common economic and physical needs. The sheer requirements of economic
development entail modernized infrastructure, educational facilities and pooled
resources that only inter-jurisdictional institutions can provide. Social needs are no less critical and require
decent housing to accommodate new families, expensive recreational facilities
to attract a well-educated labor force and a safety net for the most
destitute. At an ecological level,
environmental protection knows no boundaries.
Problems related to air pollution, water purification, storm drainage,
land preservation and sustainable development are all regional in nature.
We
have a situation where “active fragmentation” pushes against regionalism, while
pressures for interdependence pull toward it.
The result is the embodiment of both tendencies in what we call fragmented regionalism— a condition of
piecemeal, partial and highly selective processes that induce some kind of a
metropolitan-wide cooperation while guaranteeing local prerogatives.
The
paradox before us is that the success of local independence triggers
countervailing pressures which threaten that very independence. Metropolitan regions are beset by growing
centrifugal forces at loggerheads with mounting centripetal pressures. The paradox sits on two sides of the same
coin. On one side, robust economic
growth fills metropolitan regions with more differentiation and more
specialization. This invariably leads to
a more independently minded middle class with a capacity to protect its assets
(land values, revenue sources, school systems).
On the other side, the maintenance of this prosperity brings about a
need for better coordination, common policies and shared public goods.
Localities
have sought a way out of this dilemma by bundling some services that fit within
the scale of their territorial boundaries and unbundling other tasks, whose
delivery necessitate a larger geographic scale.
The obvious choice is to shift the burden to “third parties” like public
authorities with a broader territorial scope.
In a very real sense public authorities have taken up the responsibility
for the unbundled tasks that localities were unable to achieve by themselves. In the
short term muddling down this path seemed to work. But
there are no cost free exits to the regional paradox. The reliance on public authorities has not
halted a proliferation of metropolitan localities and could very well be
contributing to their disequilibrium.
We
turn to public authorities because they are the most salient institution,
filling the vacuum of metropolitan collective action. In the
absence of integrative institutions that have not materialized, we refer to another
that has surfaced and proven itself. As
we see it, examining an institution that has weathered the conditions of the
American metropolis enables researchers to better understand those
conditions. It also affords us the opportunity to
recognize why public authorities have been so resilient and why other types of institutions
have not taken root.
Public
authorities have come to dominate the metropolitan landscape as institutions
that can work across local boundaries.
These institutions have managed to traverse a rugged terrain of local jealousies
and regional pressures for economic cooperation. [vi] They
do this by conducting their operations with minimal intrusions into local prerogatives
(zoning, schools) and by carefully selecting “consensus functions” that offer
maximum benefits (highways, bridges, tunnels, air and shipping ports) What is more, public authorities have eased
the costs to local governments for building connective infrastructure by
displacing those costs to private investors, bondholders, non-local users or
other governments. This strategy has
enabled them to flourish in what is otherwise a difficult political environment. Over the decades they have become the most
realistic substitute for metropolitan “collective action”. We make use of their experience to grasp the
nettle of why it has been so difficult to achieve inter-local cooperation. [vii]
Public
authorities were established precisely because local governments were not able
to cooperate and this imparts them with considerable heuristic value. Public authorities do not “collect” the wills
of individual localities and they do not “produce” a process of inter-local cooperation, as such. But they do produce the effects of inter-local cooperation, they do manage to transcend
local interests, and they often act on their behalf. Hence, they mimic the actions of regional
actors and they carry out “metropolitan collective action”. If we
consider public authority expenditures, the nearly $1 billion spent annually within
an average MSA, has immense implications. Moreover, they raise vast amounts of money from
publicly traded money markers, they levy user charges for public functions, they
have the right to sue or be sued, they hire staffs and manage their own
personnel systems, they receive grants from state and federal governments, and
they possess the power of eminent domain (Walsh, 1979; Mitchell, 1992: 3; Axelrod,
1992). A single public authority may carry
out multiple functions and in that respect acts similarly to multipurpose governments
at a larger metropolitan scale. While we
cannot say public authorities are formal “governments”, they do very much
“govern” by exercising considerable authority over people and land. Public
authorizes are very different than special districts or councils of government
(COGs) or metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). These differences pertain to the much larger policy
scopes, the operations and the economic impact of public authorities vis-à-vis other
“special purpose governments”. Thus, if
we compare public authorities to special districts, we find the great majority of
these districts conduct business at sub-county levels (Foster 1997: 123). Special districts are typically single
function entities that manage either schools or cemeteries or libraries or some
other very particular function. Neither
are COGs and MPOs comparable to the operations of public authorities. These special purpose governments have few if
any staff, their expenditure is modest, and they largely monitor localities for
disbursements of federal aid (National Association of Regional Councils, 2013;
Vogel and Nezelkewicz, 2002).
Given
these conditions, it is difficult to see a realistic alternative to public
authorities. Their exercise of power and
simultaneous ability to ride through the regional paradox gives them an
exceptional window onto the American metropolis. For these reasons public authorities are
useful proxies for understanding why metropolitan regions allow for some type
of collective action, how collective action is produced and what are its effects.
Propositions
of Fragmented Regionalism
On behalf
of this paradox we offer three distinct propositions or claims. First, fragmentation
has continued to increase, occurring concomitantly with greater inequalities between
and within metropolitan regions.
Our indices of fragmentation show it is
not a passing phenomenon, but has continued at a slightly accelerating
pace. The steady increase in numbers of
localities that dot metropolises exceeds their demographic growth, and this tells
us something about the diffuse configuration of metropolitan growth. Rather than local consolidation the predominant
trend is toward a profusion of more political jurisdictions.
This
pattern has occurred simultaneously with greater metropolitan inequalities. Evidently, some areas are better able to
prosper than others by making use of location, capital, resources, talent and
economic agglomeration. This is manifested both when comparing MSAs to each
other and in the internal composition of individual MSAs. Yet metropolitan development is not always
the same. More severely stricken metropolises in the “rustbelt” may grow at
their peripheries, as their urban cores sink into distress. A few metropolises that house “global cities”
boom at the centers while their hinterlands fall into stagnation. Whatever
the particular outcomes may be, the broader pattern is one of highly uneven development
with greater prosperity occurring alongside deeper decline.
Second, public
authorities are irregularly bounded institutions whose existing and increasing
emphasis on economic development has filled MSAs with hot spots of development.
Here we see the territorial purviews of
public authorities and local governmental cross cutting and overlapping with
one another—sometimes in seemingly random fashion. The architecture of public authorities
resembles Hooghe’s and Marx’s (2003) Type 2 institutions of governance. They
often jump across local and state jurisdictions. These disjunctive boundaries tend to balloon
investment in some areas and depress it in others, especially as public
authorities insert mega projects into already highly invested “hot spots”. Investigators have noted that the
geo-structural basis of public authorities often lead to greater spottiness in
urban growth and development (Foster, 1997: 76; Twells and Sheff, 1992).
Third, metropolitan areas that already enjoy
high levels of prosperity and economic vitality receive a significantly greater
proportion of public authority expenditures (investment) than those that are
less well off. As unequal investment pours
into metropolitan regions, so too does it reinforce an existing splintering of
metropolitan America.
Public authorities are the essential
vehicles for bringing about public investment in metropolitan areas. Our propositions suggest where there is
selective investment there are selective benefits and perforce even sharper territorial
polarization. [viii] Metropolitan splintering is not just a circumstance
of the past, but an ongoing consequence of current practices. This observation may also explain why
regionalism has never been able to achieve its integrative promise. The very difference in economic wherewithal between
MSAs feeds an asymmetrical relationship between public authorities and the
metropolitan areas in which they function.
We often witness a rhetoric that
promotes regional collective action, but the realities of disparate economic
status and investment push against it. Thus, false starts and unfulfilled promises
have been quite common in the past and they may very well continue in the
future.
Approach, Methods and Data
We
employ a longitudinal analysis of socio-economic conditions in 51 MSAs and join
that data to the activities of public authorities. Our MSAs were selected on the basis of
population and consisted of all those areas having one million or more
residents based on 2000 Census data.[ix] The data
for economic characteristics of the population were collected from decennial
census between 1990 and 2010. Metropolitan fragmentation is measured by an
index on the numbers of local government that are gleaned from the five years Census
of Governments (1992 -2012). [x] MSAs are logical choices for examination
because they are the official census designates of “metropolises”. As such they encompass central cities at
their core with smaller localities at their peripheries.[xi] Our data are derived from 246 public
authorities covering these MSAs and listed in the Census of Governments.
To
test our first proposition of increased jurisdictional proliferation coupled to
deeper economic disparities we construct a fragmentation index of metropolises;
we then match it against GINI coefficients.
Our fragmentation index is calculated as the number of local governments
per 10,000 people and provides a numerical expression of jurisdictional
proliferation that characterize MSAs. A higher numerical value of governments to
population ratios indicates greater fragmentation.
We
focus on GINI coefficients that capture inequality at two different levels––1)
inequality between MSAs and 2)
inequality within MSAs. A GINI
index between MSAs quantifies these differences by per capita personal income
and compares MSAs with one another. GINI coefficients within MSAs are calculated by
using average income of selected cohorts within each territorial unit and
measures internal disparities.[xii] The numerical value of a GINI coefficient
ranges from 0 to 1. For better readability
we have presented GINI index in terms of percentage where coefficients near 0
are closer to equality and those near 100 represent more disparity. To
provide a fuller picture we also show growth in the absolute numbers of local
jurisdictions, changes in MSA per capita income and increases in per capita as
well as total public authority expenditures.
To
examine our second proposition we go directly to public authorities within our
51 MSAs. We focus on their boundaries,
functions and expenditures. We use spatial mapping to trace the boundaries of
public authorities in three major metropolitan areas, chosen because of their
importance, settlement variation, and geographic distance from one another (see
below). Next
we turn to the actual functions and expenditures of public authorities. This enables us to establish their
development led priorities and examine how they have evolved over the years.
Our
third proposition constitutes the crux of fragmented regionalism and deals with
ongoing patterns of highly uneven investments.
We begin with the socio-economic status of MSAs. We use various indicators of MSA development
such as gross metropolitan products, employment by sectors, educational
attainment and the like. We then compare
data on these indicators with public authority expenditures over time. The statistical techniques used to conduct our
investigation include multivariate and bivariate analyses, correlation
coefficients, direction of relationships, coefficients of determination, and
tests of statistical significance.
Growth and Persistence of Fragmented
Regionalism
The Predicate of
Fragmented Regionalism
We begin with the point
that fragmentation is a moving process, undergirded by powerful economic and
social forces. These forces are integral
to metropolitan growth and are reinforced by substantial differences
between the capacity of metropolitan areas to attract investment and human
capital. Indeed, our own findings tell us that
metropolitan fragmentation has increased over the decades.
Table 1 brings the picture
to light by showing the progressions of MSAs over the last twenty years or more. Shown is the continued splintering of 51 metropolitan
areas, as summarized by the rising number of governments and a higher fragmentation
index. The table also depicts GINI coefficients to
measure economic inequality between within and between MSAs.
Table
1
Fragmentation and
Inequalities Between and Within MSAs: 1990s-2000s
Variables
|
Year
|
Average
|
%
Change (1992-2012)
|
Number
of Local Governments
|
1992
|
305.35
|
+
21.72 %
|
2002
|
345.74
|
||
2012*
|
371.69
|
||
MSA
Population
|
1992
|
2746046
|
+
13.48 %
|
2002
|
2933552
|
||
2012
|
3116177
|
||
Per
Capita Income
(in
dollars)
|
1992
|
22567.73
|
|
2002
|
27991.13
|
||
2012
|
27293.01
|
+20.94%
|
|
Fragmentation
Index
|
1992
|
1.25
|
+
4.0 %
|
2002
|
1.27
|
||
2012*
|
1.30
|
||
GINI
Coefficient
(between
MSAs)**
|
1990
|
6.81
|
+
13.95 %
|
2000
|
7.24
|
||
2010
|
7.76
|
||
GINI
Coefficient
(within
MSAs)**
|
1990
|
36.9
|
+29.38%
|
2000
|
46.44
|
||
2010
|
47.74
|
Sources:
Number of Local Governments for 1992 from Table-28,
1992 Census of Government, Vol-1, No.-1, Government Organization (http://www.census.gov/prod/2/gov/gc/gc92_1_1.pdf);
Number of Local Governments for 2002 from Table-16, 2002 Census of Government,
Vol-1, No.-1, Government Organization (http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/gc021x1.pdf);
1992 and 2002 numbers of local government by State are obtained from Table-3
Census of Government, Vol-1, No-1 Government Organization 1992 and 2002; Number
of Local Governments for 2012 by State are obtained from US Census Bureau, 2012
Census of Governments: Organization Component Preliminary Estimates (http://www2.census.gov/govs/cog/2012/formatted_prelim_counts_23jul2012_2.pdf);
MSA Population Counts are obtained from the American Community Survey 5-Year
Estimates published by the Census Bureau for
the years 1992, 2002, and 2011 (latest available); 1990 Population in
Household income cohorts for MSAs (for calculation of GINI coefficient) and Per
Capita Income are obtained from Social and Economic Characteristics, 1990
Census of Population (http://www.census.gov/prod/cen1990/cp2/cp-2-1c-3.pdf);
Per Capita Income and Household Income for 2000 are obtained from Summary Social, Economic, and Housing
Characteristics, 2000 Census of Population and Housing (http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/phc-2-1-pt1.pdf); Per Capita
Income and Household Income for 2010 are obtained from the American Community
Survey 2010, 1-year estimates (http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t#none); Public Authorities Expenditure for 1992
obtained from the Census of Government, Government Finances 1992, Vol.4, No.2 (http://www.census.gov/prod/2/gov/gc92-4/gc924-2.pdf);
Public Authorities Expenditure for 2002 obtained from the Census of Government,
Government Finances 2002, Vol.4, No.2 (http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/gc024x2.pdf)
*Based on 2012 Census of Governments: Organization
Component Preliminary Estimates
** The GINI
index is reported in double digits. GINI index within MSA are calculated for
each MSA using information from household income cohorts. GINI index between
MSA is a single numeral (not an average) that has been calculated using
information on per capita personal income across all 51 MSAs.
***Per Capita Income adjusted to 2010 dollars.
****2012 Values are estimated using linear
regression method on the basis of data from four previous consecutive time
periods.
Note
that in our selected metropolitan areas, the average number of local
governments began with 305.35 in 1992, increased to 345.74 in 2002, and rose
further to 371.69 in 2012. Local
governments increased by 21.7 percent and this occurred as population increased
by a lesser rate of 13.5 percent. Aside from any population increase,
government continued to fragment during this recent period. Our fragmentation
index also shows a rise of 4 percent between 1992 and 2012. The fragmentation
index is constructed on a relatively low population base of just one
jurisdiction per 10,000 people, making this quite a significant increase.
We
should put these findings in context.
For decades other scholars have found metropolitan America to be
fragmented, and much of this was attributed to the rise of
suburbanization. The logic for this
rested on burgeoning demographic migration and commercial growth outside
central cities. Fragmentation was
thought to have been a function of efforts to achieve better services, retain low
tax rates and preserve racial homogeneity (Jackson, 1988; Burns; 1993; Teaford,
2008) . Our own observations show that
fragmentation is not a not a passing phenomenon nor is it confined to a
particular era of development. Fragmentation
persists regardless of extant policies. This
persistence tells us that fragmentation is a product of local government
practices, regional political economies, and, as we shall see the expenditures
of public authorities.
Another
component of this picture lies in a marked increase in economic disparity between
as well as within MSAs. The table shows
that GINI coefficients also continued to increase. The ratio of inequality between MSAs rose
from in 6.81 in 1990 to 7.24 in 2000 and by 2010 the index stood at 7.76. Over a recent 20 year period, inequality
between metropolitan regions increased by almost 14 percent. Even sharper increases occurred within
metropolitan regions. The average GINI
coefficient within an MSA remained at 36.9 in 1990, but by 2000 it had climbed to
46.4 and it increased slowly to 47.7 in 2010.
In total, inequality within metropolises rose by an astonishing 29
percent during barely a generation. One
might have thought these trends would occur during a period of depression, but
in fact they transpired while per capita income had increased by more than a
fifth.
By
loose association and without implying any causality, we have concomitant
increases in fragmentation and income inequality and occurring while
metropolises were generally going through a period of prosperity. We should keep this picture in mind, but
before taking up these variables again we proceed to a brief discussion of
public authorities.
Public
Authorities and Type 2 Systems
As we have already recognized public
authorities have overlaid their own irregular patterns onto an existing “crazy
quilt” of local jurisdictions. The
reasons hinge on their functional exclusiveness and capital structure. For one, public authorities are rarely
comprehensive and confined to taking on relatively narrow activities. Each activity requires a separate public
authority, thereby necessitating a proliferation of “regional” institutions
with each relegated to its own functional boundaries. For another, public authorities are run very
much like private businesses, borrowing money through bond sales in capital
markets and repaying loans by investing in profitable ventures (airports, toll
bridges, office plazas). In effect
public authorities intensify existing market opportunities where uneven
development is already extant. It
should then come as no surprise that these efforts at regional improvements are
also piecemeal.
Public authorities are also referred to as
“public benefit corporations” as well as “off budget” or “state owned”
enterprises. By and large these
organizations have highly differentiated territorial scales and are unevenly
distributed. This pattern is extensively
supported by the literature (Aron, 1969; Walsh, 1979; Bailey 1987; Axelrod,
1992; Foster, 1997). While the very
numerous public authorities across the nation do not permit us to capture all
of this variation, we can illustrate it by pointing up features in three of the
country’s most important metropolitan areas––New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
These
areas bear noteworthy similarities (large, irregular) as well as significant differences
(geographic location and varying densities).
As such they give us a notion of how public authorities might looks
elsewhere and they typify the combined boundary/function problems posed by
these institutions.
Figures 1, 2 and 3 show the territorial
configurations of public authorities in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Despite the recognition accorded by the
Census Bureau, none of these organizations is fully contiguous with their
respective MSAs. As we can see the
figures overlay different public authorities onto an existing MSA (designated
in grey). Each public authority is
represented by a different symbol, enabling the reader to observe their cross
cutting and overlapping locations. Notice that some areas are represented by a
single type of line (indicating just one public authority); others are cross-hatched
or additionally crisscrossed (indicating multiple intersecting public authorities);
and, other areas are designated by an asterisk (superimposed on other public
authorities). Areas with the heaviest
density of vertical, horizontal, diagonal lines or asterisks contain the most
overlapping public authorities.
Figure 1 Selected
Public Authorities in the New York MSA
Figure 2
Selected Public Authorities in the Los Angeles MSA
Figure 3
Selected
Public Authorities in the Chicago MSA
Within New York’s metropolis we see different
authorities working along different boundaries, pursuing different missions and
serving different constituencies. The New York/New Jersey Port Authority
(NYNJPA) works as a bi-state compact to operate bridges, tunnels, and airports,
mainly for national or international commerce; the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority (MTA) operates within portions of the state to serves nearby suburbs;
the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) functions within the entire
state to stimulate housing and commercial production; and, the Long Island
Power Authority (LIPA) concentrates on a particular segment of suburban
households. None of these institutions
treat the entirety of the MSA, but instead deploy their resources on different
pieces of the metropolis. For the most
part, their efforts are geared to development “hot spots”––mainly in and around
Manhattan’s central business district and suburban “edge cities”.
Los Angeles holds much the same
pattern. That MSA is covered by
different housing, community development, power and transportation authorities. Again, different symbols show different
public authorities operating within different realms of the MSA. For example, Los Angeles County is the most
densely saturated area in Southern California, while public authorities in the
rest of region thin out as we move further north or south. One public (power)
authority that covers Los Angeles jumps over other jurisdictions into Santa
Clara County. We should also mention the
importance of infrastructure in determining paths of development. This is true of New York, but especially
pertinent in California where water is at a premium, often dictating where
development can or cannot occur.
Chicago’s
MSA also shares a boundary choppiness that is comparable to New York and Los
Angeles. Out of the 14 county tri-state metropolitan region, Cook County is the
most densely populated and has the greatest concentration of public authorities.
Two of the most prominent are the Chicago
Transit Authority which runs a network of train and bus lines connecting the
most populated pockets in the county. On
the other hand Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) of Chicago runs its own
network of local and regional railway providing services to six Illinois
counties, one Wisconsin county, and one county in Indiana. The RTA shares some of its infrastructure with
CTA in Cook County and is the sole provider of public transportation services
in the rest of seven county/tri-state area. Six outlying counties of the MSA are not
covered by any of these public authorities.
Equally important is what public
authorities do. At their inception,
public authorities were supposed to fill development gaps, mitigate regional
imbalances and even take up the task of re-distribution through low and
moderate income housing (Walsh, 1979). In
practice, they have become instruments of economic development with a heavy
focus on the “hot spots” of development (Aron, 1969; Danielson and Doig, 1982; Axelrod,
1992). This general finding has been
reinforced by what Kathryn Foster called an “upward spending bias” toward building
an infrastructure for economic development.
Over time this author found that “spending bias” of special purpose
governments had grown stronger and sharply contrasted to the social welfare
priorities of general purpose governments (Foster, 1997: 165-184, 214).
While the official profile of public
authorities does not list economic development as a distinct category, common understanding
holds that investment in “infrastructure” is a useful way to represent that
activity. The typical proxies for
economic development embrace highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, shipping
ports and public utilities. Past and
current research relies on infrastructure investment to reflect levels of economic
development (Henderson, 1985; O’Sullivan, 2009).
[xiii]
More specialized articles find that
“economic development provides a
“compelling justification for continued infrastructure maintenance” (Rives
& Heaney, 1995: 69; Arsen, 1997: 86).
Paul Peterson (1981) based his classic work on infrastructure expenditures
as a basis for jusifying a city’s purusit of development policies. Education is a relative latecomer to the
development agenda, though it has been seen as essential for digital or post
industrial economies (Reich, 1992).
Table 2 displays the varying priorities of
public authorities. These are defined by
their designated missions (functions) and expenditures for 1992 and 2002. All monetary amounts have been adjusted for
inflation. Also listed are the
percentage changes between these periods.
Table 2
Public Authorities by
Function: 1992
We see an increased emphasis on
infrastructure during the last decade. Taking
the latest period transit, airports and ports took the highest priority,
amounting to more than a 20 percent share in designated missions and 50 percent
of expenditures. Other functions related
to economic development like public utilities accounted for an additional 7.3
percent of designated missions and 6.6 percent of expenditures for the latest period. When combined these economic development categories
accounted for more than 28 percent of designated missions and 57 percent of
total expenditures. By contrast, the
redistributive policy of housing remained stagnant in the range of 13 percent
of expenditures. The share of expenses for water and environment also remained
fairly stable at 10 percent.
Further, already significant investments
in economic development were boosted over this decade. Expenditures for transit, ports and airports
rose by nearly 27 percent, while expenditures for utilities rose by nearly 20
percent. In their totality public
authorities were major investors in metropolitan areas. Expenditures for all
functions amounted to more than $49 billion, nearly a third more than the
previous decade. Last, taking public
authority expenditures on a per capita basis we find they increased from
$198.40 in 1990 to $255.56 in 2000 to an estimated $306.37 in 2012. All told, this amounted to a 54.42 percent
jump in per capita metropolitan investments (U.S. Census Bureau, 1990, 2002,
2012). During the last two decades we also know that public
authorities have consolidated while also growing in their scope of activity. Fewer yet bigger public authorities have been
investing more heavily in MSAs.
In sum public authorities exert a good deal
of weight in metropolitan areas. Within
this context we discern highly proliferated metropolises coupled to irregular/specialized
public authorities, whose activities are heavily centered on economic
development. We now turn to an
explanation of the inter-relationships between these factors.
The Dynamics of Fragmented
Regionalism
Central
to our understanding of fragmented regionalism is the relationship between public
authorities and metropolitan areas. We
approach this linkage by examining the effects of public authority expenditures
on metropolitan regions.
Table 3 displays a correlation matrix
comparing major characteristics of our 51 MSAs against per capita public
authority expenditures as a measure of their “activity”. The MSA characteristics
include gross metropolitan product (GMP) and others that are closely associated
with advanced economies (Bell, 1976; Sassen, 2001). These include educational
attainment (bachelor, graduate or professional degrees) and employment associated
with advanced post industrial economies (finance, insurance and real estate or
FIRE, professional, scientific and technical and information services).
Table 3
Metropolitan Characteristics and Per Capita Public Authority
Expenditures
As we can see, the variables of education
and “post-industrial” employment (professional, high tech, services) are
strongly associated with the most active public authorities. Educational attainment varies by level of
higher education, and almost all levels show
moderate to high correlations with the strength of relationship above 0.3. The relationships are positive for all of
these variables and their statistical significance is upwards of a 95 percent
confidence interval.
Similarly, post-industrial employment
explains roughly 20 percent of the variance in public authority expenditures for
1990, almost 15 percent in 2000, and about 18 to 28 percent for 2010. The only sector that deviates from this
pattern is “FIRE”, which still has a moderately strong correlation coefficient
for 1990. These relationships are statistically
significant at upwards of 95 percent confidence intervals. Finally, GMP for 2000 and 2010 are also
positively correlated with public authority activity. These correlation coefficients reach .344 and
.369 with significance at 95 percent confidence intervals.
While we do see some fall-off in levels of
correlation over the decades, they remain strong. Clearly, in this context of fragmented
regionalism those MSAs benefiting from public authorities have the best
educated and the most advanced economies.
While we cannot ascertain where the causal arrows point we can establish
that even these limited instances of metropolitan collective action are highly
uneven.
Looking at this in greater detail we
obtain a better notion of the extent to which income plays a role in producing metropolitan
collective action. Table 4 taps directly
into this connection with bivariate figures on per capita income and public
authority expenditures.
Table 4
Metropolitan Affluence and Collective Action
Despite slight declines over the years the relationships are positive. In
1990 the correlation between per capita income and expenditure of public
authorities per capita stood at .308. By
2000 it had declined to .236 and by 2010 it had risen slightly to .239. While this particular relationship is quite modest,
the data do matter and suggest that collective action is economically stratified.
Last, we
find that it is not only the internal advantages of a metropolitan area that
matter, but the extent of inequality between them. Table 5 sheds some light on these
disparities. Here we turn the variables
around by showing how per capita income and public authority expenditures
relate to income inequalities within those MSAs.
Table 5
Metropolitan
Income, Disparity and Public Authority Expenditures
The data confirm
the strong relationship between higher income and higher GINI
coefficients. As affluence increases
within MSAs so too does income inequality. The correlations are strong, and we see
variances upwards of 40 percent accounting for this relationship. That wealth grows within advanced economies
while distress seeps into other MSAs may come as no surprise. More revelatory about these data are their
connections to public authority expenditures.
Here we see that public authority expenditures are consistent with
income inequalities within metropolitan regions. The correlations during two time periods
stand at .395 and .326 showing us the extent to which public authorities
reinforce these imbalances.
All told, we find that public authorities are very much connected to
uneven development; that collective action is selectively stratified; and that
fragmented regionalism is a dominant motif of metropolitan America. A rising tide may not lift all boats, but
leave many behind with cumulative disadvantages for both inter-jurisdictional
cooperation and investment.
What Fragmented Regionalism Tells
Us
We
do not see fragmented regionalism as a product of happenstance or a result of
political manipulation, but rather as the outcome of long term, deeply embedded
structural traits. Its politics is
based on a historically rooted system of local autonomy, while its economics depend
increasingly on specialized localities, requiring a modicum of
cooperation. It is no coincidence that
public authorities have filled the inter-jurisdictional gap. Compared to other metropolitan institutions,
they are enormously resilient and over the long term they have been very effective
in building infrastructure and acquiring power.
This is quite evident when viewing their expanding number of missions
and their fiscal abundance, since the
first public authority began in 1921 and especially over the last two decades
(Foster, 1997:13; Mitchell, 1992)
More than anything, the piecemeal
attributes of public authorities reflect the environments that have nurtured
them. They have targeted selected
territories with limited, though very tangible and achievable goals. For these reasons public authorities are relatively
popular in the Unites States.[xiv] We
suggest that it is not the absence of regional governance that describes
metropolitan regions––public authorities already occupy that space––but its
incompleteness, its partiality and its omnipresence that hinders real integration
While
fragmented regionalism may be accentuated in the United States, it has gained traction
in advanced or advancing societies. It
is no coincidence that public authorities have also taken their place in
metropolises around the world. In the
United Kingdom, quasi autonomous non-governmental corporations (QUANGOs) play a
major part in bridging local governments.
In France établissements publiques d’aménagements (EPADs) serve as
inter-jurisdictional authorities to build infrastructure, new towns and
commercial districts (Savitch and Kantor, 2002). In South America more advanced societies in
Argentina and Chile also find themselves fragmenting. As a result, Buenos Aires and Santiago
progressively rely on public authorities to fill the inter-jurisdictional gap. Even
traditionally unified metropolitan regions in Australia, Israel, Japan and
China have experienced greater fragmentation and rely on functional, piecemeal,
non-democratic institutions to bring about inter-jurisdictional cooperation (Axelrod,
1992; Kantor, et al. 2012; Ye, Savitch and Gross, 2014).
These patterns tell us that fragmented
regionalism and its concomitant institutions may well be an inevitable
consequence of advancement. For good or
bad we should recognize this and understand that comprehensive, integrative
regionalism may no longer be feasible.
The regional future will continue to be decided by individual localities
struggling for local advantages, but tempered somewhat by public authorities or
their equivalents. Trying to move in an integrated direction may simply mean
trying to sail against too powerful a counter-current and too strong a wind.
Conclusions
Our study concludes that over the course of two
decades or more metropolitan fragmentation has increased. The thwarted hopes of some scholars and
practitioners, described earlier in this article, can best be explained by their
mistaken assumptions about the evolution of collective action in metropolitan
regions. Scholars who observed events assumed
they were the embryos of a larger movement that would grow into a force to
comprehensively regulate growth and redistribute resources. As we have shown the very much the opposite
trends have taken hold as metropolitan regions have become more fragmented and
more unequal.
What explains these miscalculations is
that writers were drawing conclusions about regionalism’s sideshows, its short
term occurrences, and about practices that were inherently stunted. Metropolitan regionalism was not about a
concern for comprehensive planning and redistribution that were about to enter
from the “back door”, but one of piecemeal development that followed
marketplace currents.
At the institutional helm of metropolitan
regions is the public authority. In
examining public authorities, we find their priorities have been selective,
disproportionate and conducive to fragmented regionalism. We recognize that public authorities are not
the sole cause of regional imbalances; they may be a partial effect of it and
they most frequently interact with other pressures that breed imbalances. To be
sure, numerous socio and geo-political factors account for this condition, and
we do not suggest any sole causal explanations.
Nevertheless, as the most important institutional actors within
America’s metropolises, public authorities heavily contribute to those
imbalances. Their weight counts for a
great deal in shaping the physical/ economic contours of the metropolis. They
accomplish this through and exercise of broad discretionary powers and a
sizeable amalgam of megaprojects, highways and infrastructure. Most of these create selective benefits for
an array of actors (local governments, developers, labor unions). All
this is accomplished without much controversy and while avoiding the hazards
posed by the “regional paradox”.
Last, our use of the term “fragmented
regionalism” not only conveys the continued splintering of metropolitan America
but its highly competitive nature, where benefits and liabilities accumulate. The
most advantaged metropolises enjoy the most heavily invested public
authorities. Public authorities expend
the highest resources in MSAs with the best educated, highest income citizens,
who also partake in advanced economies and enjoy an abundance of local
amenities. In short, quality of life goes hand in hand with a capacity for
collective action. All this makes for highly unequal conditions between MSAs
which have a cumulative effect on the ability of less well-off metropolises to
access resources.
Finally, we observe that metropolitan
fragmentation is not just prevalent in the United States, but appears to be a
condition of advanced or advancing societies.
The more a society advances, the more it is likely to undergo
fragmentation. It is not by mere coincidence that public authorities of one
sort or another are increasing in other advanced economies. We see fragmented regionalism as a long term
fixture of the metropolis and as best explained by the push/pull paradox that
operates in metropolitan regions and makes public authorities indispensable.
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Notes
[i] “Complex systems theory has been updated by a
other theories of voluntary cooperation based on networks (Feiock, 2009), These
networks are limited often disjointed and confined to system maintenance
functions like more efficient trash collection or sharing recreational
facilities.
[ii] Unlike the “old regionalism” the
new form was more flexible and underscored that localities could be pulled
together in different ways—sometimes by de jure institutions of government and
at other times by flexible de facto governance.
Flexibility also meant that cooperation would not be imposed from the
top down, but that localities could work together laterally and as a matter of
choice (Savitch and Vogel, 2000; Alexander, 2011).
[iii]
In California––one of the
most fragmented states in the nation–– a large assortment of regional
alternatives was promulgated and local government encouraged to implement
them. In greater St. Louis––one of the
most fragmented metropolises in the nation––lateral partnerships between
localities were promoted as a way of achieving regional integration
(Fischesser, 2006).
[iv] Comprehensive or Integrative regionalism also entails broader policy
ambitions and multipurpose
services. It is also organized for the purpose
of bringing together different centres of power in order to achieve transformative goals and typifies the regional governance of
France, Germany and the Netherlands
(Jouve and Lefevre, 2002; Savitch and Kantor, 2002).
[v] In establishing this point we
compare primary cities to their MSAs by using an indicator of economic vitality.
The data available are limited to counties within MSAs and we have located
twelve primary cities that are coterminous or close to coterminous with their
counties. Comparing the data we find
that primary cities accounted for an average of 42.7 percent of MSA
income. Four primary cities held more
than half the MSA income (Los Angeles, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh and
Louisville). Another five primary cities
held a third of the MSA income (New York, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Portland and
Miami). Granted, the data do show a
somewhat declining proportion of primary city to MSA income between 1990 and
2010, but primary cities are still the predominant income earners in this
sample. See Table 1 A
[vi]
The metaphor to be employed is that of two automobiles that must travel over
mountain roads, ruts and gullies. One
vehicle is sleek and luxurious with rear wheel drive and gear ratios fitted for
high speed highway cruising. Another is
a bulky, four wheel-drive Jeep with a gear ratios built for pulling power
rather than speed. Using the Jeep over
this rugged terrain tells us a great deal about the nature of that topography. It also reveals how the Jeep functions in
this terrain relative to its luxurious, speedy counterpart. The capacity of the Jeep tells us a great
deal about the relative properties of the environment and its own capacity to
deal with those conditions. In much the
same way the public authority tells us what it takes to survive under current
metropolitan conditions and why it is that integrative regional institutions
have not done nearly as well. It is not
the absence of collective action that mark metropolitan regions––public
authorities fill that void in their own particular way. Rather, it is the improbability that
integrative regional institutions can fulfill that task in the current
environment.
[vii] From
a logical and methodological viewpoint,
whether or not public authorities produce inter-local cooperation or
merely supplant it has nothing to do with the validity of using public
authorities as surrogates for inter-local cooperation. The important point is whether they
undertake an important function related to the challenges of bringing about
collective action. If so, they are
indispensable for understanding the conditions and impact of forging some kind of collective action.
[viii] Scholars have often noted growing disparities
between metropolitan areas but had not tied it to public authorities (Voith,
1992, Savitch, Collins and Markham, 1993). Other writers often claimed a
linkage existed between these disparities and the practices of public
authorities, but have not been empirically established it (Axelrod, 1992; Brenner, 2002; 2004)
[ix]
Population figures were selected as of the 2000 census, which was the
midpoint between data collected for 1990, 2000 and 2010.
[x] Since the census of government
expenditure data for 2012 had not been published the values have been estimated
through linear regression methods using data from the four previous time
periods. The data for government counts by state is already available for 2012.
Similar counts by states for 1992 and 2002 have been used to calculate MSA to
State government ratios for those two years and assuming the rate of change to
be constant, ratio method has been applied to convert 2012 State numbers into
MSA estimates. We expect the data will be published in the near future.
[xi] Metropolitan Statistical Areas,
as defined by the Census Bureau, are geographic entities defined by the Office
of Management and Budget for federal statistical purposes. A metro area
contains a core urban area of 50,000 or more population and consists of the
counties containing the core urban area as well as any adjacent counties that
have a high degree of social and economic integration with the urban core
measured in terms of commutation to work across these jurisdictions.
[xii] A GINI coefficient for analysis
within MSAs has been calculated based on the number of households that fall
within census designated income categories. The categories for 1990 ranged from
“Less than $5000” to “$100,000 and more” whereas those in 2000 and 2010 range
between “less than $10,000” and “$200,000 and more”. Some income cohorts in
1990 have been merged to bring uniformity in data structure between the three
time periods. All households within a
particular income cohort are assumed to be earning the median dollar value of
their respective income range. This calculation method was developed by Angus Deaton (Deaton, 1997)
which can be summarized by following expression:
Where,
u is mean income of population, Pi is the income rank P of household i, with income X. The
richest household (with highest median dollar value) receives a rank of 1 and the poorest a rank of N. A GINI coefficient comparing inequalities between MSAs
has been calculated using the same expression shown above with only difference
being the use of per-capita personal income for each MSA to calculate the
index.
[xiii] The rationale goes back to Alfred
Marshall’s economics and well beyond.
The principles state that the clustering of functions makes industry more
productive, efficient and innovative.
Infrastructure investment is necessary for clustering. Also, supply side economics lends its weight
to infrastructure investment because it increases profits and furthers
incentives for industry. This, in turn, leads to more economic development
(Marsahll, 1920, Porter, 1995 and Glaeser, 2011).
[xiv]
In
New York State the number of public authorities increased from just the single
authority begun nearly a century ago between New York and New Jersey to 730
today (New York State Comptroller, 2005).
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