1st Edition

Governing Metropolitan Regions in the 21st Century

By Donald Phares Copyright 2009
    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    While government provides the structure of public leadership, governance is the art of public leadership. This timely book examines current trends in metropolitan governance issues. It analyzes specific cases from thirteen major metropolitan regions in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, all woven together by an overall framework established in the first three chapters. The distinguished contributors address such governance issues as city-county consolidation, local-federal coordination, annexation and special districting, and private contracting, with special attention to lessons learned from both successes and failures. As urban governance innovations have clearly outpaced urban government structures in recent years, the topics covered here are especially relevant.

    Prologue: On Metropolitan Government and Governance 1. Introduction: Contextual Factors Affecting Who Will Govern Metropolitan Regions in the Twenty-First Century 2. Metropolitan Government in the United States? Not Now . . . Not Likely 3. Why Metropolitan Governance Is Growing, as Is the Need for Elastic Governments 4. Who Will Govern American Metropolitan Regions, and How? 5. Moving Toward Regional Governance Incrementally: The St. Louis Case 6. Governance and the Struggle for the Downtown: St. Louis, 1952–2005 7. Governmental Fragmentation and Metropolitan Governance: Does Less Mean More? The Case of the Baltimore Region 8. Consolidated and Fragmented Governments and Regional Cooperation: Surprising Lessons from Charlotte, Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas 9. Louisville Transformed but Hardly Changed: A Survey of a City Before and After Merger 10. Regional Roles and Relationships: A Fifty-Year Evolution of Governance in Metropolitan Phoenix, 1960–2008 11. New Orleans, Land of Dreams: Metropolitan Governance After Hurricane Katrina 12. A Review of Canadian Metropolitan Regions: Governance and Government 13. Even Greater Vancouver: Metropolitan Morphing in Canada’s Third-Largest City Region 14. Some Reflections on Metropolitan Governance in Contemporary Mexican Cities

    Biography

    Don Phares is professor emeritus of economics and public policy at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of the books Who Pays State and Local Taxes? and State-Local Tax Equity: An Empirical Analysis of the Fifty States; co-author of Municipal Output and Performance in New York City; and editor of A Decent Home and Environment: Housing Urban America and Metropolitan Governance without Metropolitan Government? He also has written more than seventy articles and book chapters and scores of technical and government reports. He has consulted for and done research with the federal government, numerous states, local jurisdictions, research organizations, businesses, foundations, and universities. He has also served as an expert witness in legal cases pertaining to state and local taxation; the projection of future income; and the analysis of social, demographic, fiscal, and economic trends. He has done numerous economic and fiscal impact studies for both public and private organizations. His administrative experience includes positions as chairperson of a department of economics, director of a public policy research center, dean of a college of arts and sciences, and vice chancellor for a university campus. He received his BA from Northeastern University and his MA and PhD from Syracuse University.