Government And Governance In American Metroplitan Areas

My chief concern in this dissertation is metropolitan problems in perspectives of metropolitan regionalism and their resolutions in the historical background of Metropolitanization. This paper analysed forms and motives of relationship among local governments and significance of state-local relations, probed causes of contemporary metropolitan issues and presented origination, patterns and characteristics of regionalism aimed at these issues. The paper tried to recommend a interpretation to the evolution of governing system of metropolitan America.I suggested that public service and social issues in metropolitan areas can directly impute to sprawl. Meanwhile, decentralized local government system was concluded as institutional obstacle to deal with such issues by regionalists who insisted on unified metropolitan governing system. Although decentralized multicentral system might provide residents with efficient public services, and seek a relative democratic outcome of local government, it dodged social troubles such as poverty in central cities and residential segregation in metropolitan areas.Regionalists surposed interdependence relations between cities and suburbs, based on which they argued that suburbs should surport economic redevelopment in central cities and help cities to lighten social pressure. For the sake of regioanal development, two sorts of propositions were introduced by regionalism. First was centralized regionalism. The centralized regionalism advocated reconstruction of local governments in metropolitan areas and establishment of metropolitan government. On the one hand, metropolitan government could make unified planning for the public services supply, get high level service efficency in regional score. On the other hand, metropolitan government could dispose of economic-social problems in central cities by using tax sharing tool, improve investment environment and promote regional economy.The second proposition is decentralized regionalism. This pattern of regionalism inclined to maintain existing local government system. It focused on adjustment of local government relations, gave more effective collaboration to governmental actions, adopted approaches contributed to economic, socail and environmental coordinative development. In the meantime, the cooperation among state and local governments, private sectors and non-profit organizations should put different social resoures together, improve effectiveness of metropolitan governance in the field of environmental and social issues.