Administrative and Fiscal Considerations in Urban Development

Abstract

The urban government administrator may soon receive much greater help from science, which can provide him with informational and rational bases from which to strive for excellence. Urban interaction analysis, end-product-oriented program budgeting, effectiveness analysis, and computerized information flow systems for planning and operating purposes hold promise for better decisions. Large-scale metropolitan consolidation has turned out to be an unlikely remedy for metropolitan problems. New voluntary forms of co-operation, made effective by state and federal financial inducements, are being proposed and tried. Many considerations point to a government serving 100,000 to 2 50,000 people as being of ideal size. Because of certain fiscal considerations, the sug gestion is that the federal government should assume increasing financial responsibility for those services with major interstate benefit and cost spillovers and in which income redistribution plays an important role. By the same rule, federal financing of public housing, urban renewal, community development, air- pollution control, urban transportation, and water projects should be de-emphasized, except in multistate areas. Greater assumption of financial responsibilities by the federal govern ment for such costly services as education, health, and welfare should free state funds. In turn, states would be in a position to act more aggressively in guiding and aiding cities, townships, and counties.