The Complex Web of Urban Governance

Abstract

The logic inherent in the design of the American political system is based upon a presumption that overlapping jurisdictions will give citizens access to multiple sets of officials to tend their interests. That logic also presumes that authority must be divided or fragmented if those who exercise governmental prerogatives are to be held accountable for their actions. It may well be that the most critical problems of urban government have derived from excessive efforts to simplify political structures [Bish and Ostrom, 1973: 93-94].

[G]iven its present political organization and decision-making processes, the city is fundamentally ungovernable. By ungovernable I mean that the urban policy- making system is incapable of producing coherent decisions, developing effective policies, or implementing state or federal programs.... City government is an intractable jigsaw puzzle because of the inherent fragmentation of urban service delivery and the historical fragmentation of urban policy-making processes [Yates, 1977: 5,7].

Democracy in the United States is subverted at the local level by a unique development-the cordoning off of various subclasses into political units popu lated by their own kind wherein constituents equally escape the costs that might be imposed by participation of those worse off. Central city populations are left the privilege of voting to impose the costs of social-capital and class-containment expenses upon themselves.... Real class differences under capitalism are obscured by a subdifferentiation of class enhanced by segregating residence and by the particular consumption and class-reproduction activities that accompany that residence [Markusen, 1978: 109].