Metropolitan governance in urban America: A study of the Kansas City region

The purposes of this study are to (1) explore the scope of inter-governmental relations (metropolitan governance) in the Kansas City metropolitan area by looking at how 46 cities deliver 28 essential public services, (2) test theories of cooperation by examining whether the dominant governance pattern in the region is cooperation and/or avoidance and conflict, (3) examine the ex post outcomes of metropolitan governance and assess whether metropolitan governance can overcome the disarticulation of the state and reduce fiscal stress, (4) determine whether metropolitan governance can be described as picket-fence sub-regionalism or regionalism by involving locally elected officials and professional administrators, bridging fiscal stress, and unifying central cities and suburbs, (5) assess whether metropolitan governance is comprehensive and integrated enough to solve fundamental metropolitan problems and substitute for regional government, (6) explore the attitudes of area city managers about regionalism, and (7) make recommendations about how to achieve a more integrated, cohesive, and equitable regional community.; This study makes it possible to better understand urban governance and build theory by using both qualitative and quantitative research techniques, creating a sub-regional and regional service delivery typology and assigning a sub-regional and regional inter-governmental relations score to each city in the study, assessing the nature of and the ex post outcomes of metropolitan governance, operationalizing picket-fence regionalism and sub-regionalism, and developing an integration index for each public service included in this study.; This study demonstrates that (1) cities frequently participate with other public entities in the delivery of a wide range of public services; (2) the nature of metropolitan governance generally reinforces theories of cooperation; (3) metropolitan governance outcomes make it possible to overcome the disarticulation of the state and reduce fiscal stress; (4) metropolitan governance can be described as picket-fence regionalism in that inter-governmental activity is sufficiently comprehensive and integrative to include elected and appointed local officials, transcend fiscal stress, and unify central/at-risk and bedroom developing/affluent cities; (5) metropolitan governance is not comprehensive or integrated enough to substitute for metropolitan government or solve metro-wide problems that have regional externalities and/or involve social and economic social equity issues; and (6) city managers in the area support the suburban dependency/interdependency thesis, are optimistic about unifying the region around common goals, support a second bi-state sales tax, support taxing authority for a regional agency but do not support land use authority for a regional agency or a regional property tax sharing program. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...