Cities w/o suburbs: Every metro area in America should have consolidated metro government

[BrainGlutton]

Relevant to this ongoing GD thread, and this one, and this one.

I’m not talking about taking a bulldozer to the suburbs or disturbing their physical existence – only ending their political-and-taxing independence from the cities they surround.

See Cities Without Suburbs, by David Rusk:

Cities without Suburbs, first published in 1993, has influenced analysis of America’s cities by city planners, scholars, and citizens alike. David Rusk, the former mayor of Albuquerque, argues that America must end the isolation of the central city from the suburbs if it is to solve its urban problems.

Rusk’s analysis, extending back to 1950, covers all metropolitan areas in the United States but focuses on the 137 largest metro areas and their principal central cities. He finds that cities that were trapped within old boundaries during the age of sprawl have suffered severe racial segregation and the emergence of an urban underclass; but cities with annexation powers—termed “elastic” by Rusk—have shared in area-wide development.

The fourth edition updates Rusk’s argument using the 2010 Census and the American Community Survey. It provides new material on the difference between population trends and household trends, the impact of Hispanic immigration, and the potential for city-county consolidation. The fourth edition also brings added emphasis to “elasticity mimics”—a variety of intergovernmental policies that can provide some of the benefits of regional consolidation efforts in situations where annexation and consolidation are impossible.

Let every city annex its suburbs – or, put another way, let all incorporated cities and unincorporated areas in its metro area be merged/consolidated into one metropolitan city government. The Jacksonville solution, city and county governments merged. City and suburbs and exurbs all available as its tax-base; urbanites and suburbanites and exurbanites all get voting and representation in it; and it can plan and govern and deal with the land-use, economic, social and transportation problems of the whole metro region, which is, just on its face, a single local economy already. And the economies of scale will save money.

I’m talking one metro government for each of the 381 Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the U.S., and I’ll go one further: The 10 or 20 largest-by-population on that list should be broken out as separate states, with metro governments that have the full sovereignty and plenary police power of a State of the Union. E.g., let the NY Metro Area, including adjacent areas of CT and NJ and PA, be the new State of New York, and let the remainder of NY be renamed “Hudson” or something. Of course, a metro government that big would still require subdivision into counties/boroughs with some measure of local autonomy; but it need not have any municipal governments below the county/borough level.

Now, not everyone likes this kind of thinking. But I’m not entirely clear why.

Twin Cities suburbs should beware of the Met Council
Article by: KATHERINE KERSTEN Updated: August 3, 2013 - 4:48 PM
Crusaders for ‘regionalism’ want a more concentrated, centrally planned Twin Cities. Those who don’t may never know what hit them.

The Twin Cities of 2040 will likely be starkly different from the place you live now. People will increasingly live in dense, urban concentrations, even if they’d prefer a house with a yard outside the 494 beltway.

Government planners will have power to steer new jobs into central cities and first-ring suburbs, and to set what amounts to quotas for people of different incomes and races in neighborhoods and schools throughout the metro area. Outside the urban core, highway conditions will deteriorate and congestion — encouraged by government — will get worse.

As these changes unfold, you’ll never be sure how the freedom and quality of life you once took for granted slipped away. Plenty of elected officials will be as frustrated as you are. But mysteriously, they too will stand powerless as choices constrict.

What will be the engine of this transformation? An out-of-the-limelight agency we generally think of as running the buses and occasionally approving a new runway at the airport: the Metropolitan Council.

<snip>

Regional planning of service delivery and infrastructure is important, of course. But “regionalism,” as an ideology, is not, as its name suggests, about promoting the good of a region as a whole. It’s about metro centers — the urban core and inner-ring suburbs — usurping control over outer-ring communities to advance their own interests and, in the process, effectively replacing local elected officials with a handful of regional governments.

In the case of the Twin Cities, the ramifications for democratic self-rule are profound. The Met Council’s 17 members are not elected. Though they come from different parts of the seven-county area, they don’t represent the needs and interests of voters there. They are all appointed by Gov. Mark Dayton, and they owe their allegiance to him.

[shrug] OK, if that’s your objection, replace it with an elected metropolitan governent; the outer-ring communities would still get to vote in that and defend whatever they perceive as their regional interests within the whole.

[Ravenman]

Speaking as a resident of a city that is not a state, but would love to be one, and is surrounded by governments that want nothing to do with us, I find the idea of breaking off urban areas into either regional government or states to be completely and totally unrealistic. People who live in the city don’t want to be told to do by people who live in the suburbs, and vice versa.

[BrainGlutton]

@Ravenman

Speaking as a resident of a city that is not a state, but would love to be one, and is surrounded by governments that want nothing to do with us, I find the idea of breaking off urban areas into either regional government or states to be completely and totally unrealistic. People who live in the city don’t want to be told to do by people who live in the suburbs, and vice versa.

Nevertheless, Barackton, DC, is an excellent example. Washington as a city-state all on its own would not be an economically viable state; and a state with that large a working population commuting there from out-of-state, who pay taxes in the city-state but can’t vote there, makes little sense. It would be both more viable and more sensible if the State of Columbia included all NoVa, and Maryland’s Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties. All of those counties and their residents have a common interest in the health of the City of Washington – and vice-versa; and all together have a common interest in the health of the whole region. Fuck Richmond, fuck Annapolis.

[panache45]

If this includes merging all the school districts, good luck getting the suburbanites on your side.

[BrainGlutton]

I once heard of an Illinois politician’s gaffe to the effect that high crime figures for Illinois were misleading because “Chicago skews the results” – as if Chicago were not really properly part of Illinois. Well, perhaps that would be for the best. Let the consolidated-metro State of Chicagoland deal with all the urban and suburban and exurban problems of that metro area; and let the government of the remainder of Illinois deal with its small-city and small-town and rural problems, no longer using Chicago’s tax base, and no longer spending money or worry on Chicago’s problems either.

[BrainGlutton]

@panache45

If this includes merging all the school districts, good luck getting the suburbanites on your side.

Organization of the metro area’s school districts would be a matter for the metro government to decide; and the metro government includes suburbanite representatives – it plays out however it plays out.

[Telemark]

@BrainGlutton

Organization of the metro area’s school districts would be a matter for the metro government to decide; and the metro government includes suburbanite representatives – it plays out however it plays out.

It plays out with the rich suburbanites moving further away from the city so they’re not involved.

[Ravenman]

@BrainGlutton

Nevertheless, Barackton, DC, is an excellent example. Washington as a city-state all on its own would not be an economically viable state; and a state with that large a working population commuting there from out-of-state, who pay taxes in the city-state but can’t vote there, makes little sense. It would be both more viable and more sensible if the State of Columbia included all NoVa, and Maryland’s Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties. All of those counties and their residents have a common interest in the health of the City of Washington – and vice-versa; and all together have a common interest in the health of the whole region. Fuck Richmond, fuck Annapolis.

Look, if BG thinks something makes sense to put various geographical entities within one little neat box so it’s easier to think about things that are inside the box, and the things that are outside the box, that’s great for BG.

But nobody here supports you. People in DC don’t want to be lumped in with people from McLean. People in Bethesda are happy they don’t have have to deal with DC nonsense like Marion Barry being taken seriously. How much clearer can it be stated? Nobody here wants what you’re selling. It’s not a matter of convincing a few people who are swing voters; the only people with real heartburn over the current situation are DC voters. Everyone else is more or less happy with the way things are.

So, DC is a terrible example for you to use.

[BorgHunter]

My understanding is that they tried this (to some extent) in Toronto, and it led to Mayor Rob Ford. See this op-ed.

[BrainGlutton]

@Telemark

It plays out with the rich suburbanites moving further away from the city so they’re not involved.

If the metro government has an established “elasticity”-based annexation-power, that should take care of that. Besides, just how far do they want to commute anyway? Even if they only commute locally, the further out from the core they get, the lower the density, the more of a bitch it is to drive from Exurb A to Exurb B twice a day.

[Shagnasty]

@BrainGlutton

Even if they only commute locally, the further out from the core they get, the lower the density, the more of a bitch it is to drive from Exurb A to Exurb B twice a day.

Why? I drive from an outer Boston suburb (that happens to be a historical small city in its own right) to an even more distant exurb for work. I don’t even see Boston proper more than once or twice a year and that is the way I like it. There are lots of people like me. We live in a general metro area but don’t have anything to do with the city itself. Why should someone like me support your proposal? All the suburbs (towns) around me existed literally for hundreds of years before the Boston metro area engulfed them so I don’t see any obligations to the areas that were encroached upon.

[miss_elizabeth]

I think that, rather than force the people who chose not to live in the city to become a part of it by force, we should continue to improve urban areas and tout their benefits so people want to be there. I don’t think force is very effective. Besides, the trend is already swinging towards a revitalization of urban areas, so let’s just stick with what’s working. The last time the government tried to force people to interact (forced busing) it completely backfired.

[RickJay]

They tried this in Toronto, and surprise, surprise, it caused as many problems as it solved. Rob Ford was not the beginning of the problem; it was clearly not a fantastic solution to begin with.

On top of that, it’s now (inevitably) the case that what defines Toronto’s “suburbs” are simply moving outwards, beyond the city’s new expanded borders. Now half the people in the area live outside the newly huge city, in Mississauga, Markham, Vaughan et al. What to do?

Now, having a metro government on top of existing city governments is not a bad thing - that is in effect that Toronto used to be. Trying it again, to bring Halton, Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan and the like on board with realistic transit plans, might be a great idea. But eliminating the city governments did not work in Toronto, really, and seems to cause more strife and trouble than it was worth.

It’s also worth noting that what we see in Toronto is as much a failure of the Province of Ontario as it is the City of Toronto. The PROVINCE, ultimately, wields the power as a Constitutionally sovereign government (just as does the State of Minnesota) and with the right political leadership could do what needs to be done to fix Toronto’s problems, which I’m not suggesting are like Detroit’s but, still. But the Province is a horrible, dysfunctional mess.

On top of that, miss elizabeth is right. Downtown Toronto is a very livable city, a highly desirable place to be, not because of government opposition to suburbs but because residential growth is encouraged there. A similar case can be made for Manhattan, which was once such an undesirable place to live that it was pretty much the pop culture go-to reference for “urban dump” and is now a place everyone wants to be. That transformation happened decades and decades after the Five Boroughs were amalgamated, so it had nothing to do with government structure; it was simply a conscious effort by influential leaders to make Manhattan a nice place to live.

[Mdcastle]

Why is it so puzzling that people might disagree with you and agree with the editorial. I agree completely with it. If I wanted to live in an efficiency apartment above a yuppie coffee shop on the light rail line in Minneapolis I would live there. I don’t want that. I want a house with a backyard an SUV in the garage with a reasonable investment in freeways so I’m not wasting gas stuck in traffic (and not have it broken into if I park it on the street, which has only happened to me in Minneapolis). Met Council has declared war on what I see as the American dream and is only supporting people who choose to live in the cities.

I’ve been out my car in the downtown area 3 times in two years, 2 of those because my company had a mandatory meeting there. There’s simply nothing downtown that makes it worth the hassle of me going there.

[ITR_champion]

@BrainGlutton

Now, not everyone likes this kind of thinking. But I’m not entirely clear clear why.

Allow me to explain why.

Firstly, small governments tend to be more responsive and intelligent than large ones. Which state government serves its people better: Vermont or California?

Secondly, it’s a fact of life in today’s USA that many big-city governments are incredibly corrupt, wasteful, intrusive, and ineffective. Millions of people have moved to the suburbs partially to escape from such governments, so why would they want to be put under the same governments that they fled from?

[BrainGlutton]

@ITR_champion

Allow me to explain why.

Firstly, small governments tend to be more responsive and intelligent than large ones. Which state government serves its people better: Vermont or California?

OTOH, bear in mind Lind’s Law: “The lower the level of government, the more crooked and inefficient the public employees.”

Agreed, however, that CA is too big. Break out the LA-SD and SF metro areas as states, and divide the rest into two or three rural states. More responsive and intelligent, no?

@ITR_champion

Secondly, it’s a fact of life in today’s USA that many big-city governments are incredibly corrupt, wasteful, intrusive, and ineffective. Millions of people have moved to the suburbs partially to escape from such governments, so why would they want to be put under the same governments that they fled from?

So they can change them, as voters.

[BrainGlutton]

@RickJay

Now, having a metro government on top of existing city governments is not a bad thing - that is in effect that Toronto used to be. Trying it again, to bring Halton, Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan and the like on board with realistic transit plans, might be a great idea. But eliminating the city governments did not work in Toronto, really, and seems to cause more strife and trouble than it was worth.

Well, that’s another way to do it – see the OP: “The fourth edition also brings added emphasis to “elasticity mimics”—a variety of intergovernmental policies that can provide some of the benefits of regional consolidation efforts in situations where annexation and consolidation are impossible.”

[John_Mace]

I agree with BG. People need to be forced to do what’s easiest for government, even if those people don’t want what the smarter people think they need.

[Ravenman]

Hey, BG, I’m sure this isn’t your intent, because I know you really would prefer to do away with quite a few features of the Constitution’s organization of government… But you do realize that this proposal would seem to be perfectly oriented to giving Democrats an unbeatable edge in the Senate and the Electoral College, right? It’s basically a gerrymandering of Federal elections, unless enacted with all your other proposals for unicameral legislatures, etc.

Add another reason to the list why making metropolitan areas into states is a non-starter.

[BrainGlutton]

@Ravenman

Hey, BG, I’m sure this isn’t your intent, because I know you really would prefer to do away with quite a few features of the Constitution’s organization of government… But you do realize that this proposal would seem to be perfectly oriented to giving Democrats an unbeatable edge in the Senate and the Electoral College, right?

Well, only the part about breaking out the largest metro areas as separate states, which is only tangential to the whole idea here. If that were done, then of course those new metro-states would have senators. I assure you the fact that those states/senators would be reliably D plays no role in my thinking here, I want the Senate and the EC abolished anyway, you know that. But if they would be, it only seems fair and fitting. And of course this has no effect on the House.