American metropolitics : the new suburban reality / Myron Orfield.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Orfield, Myron.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Metropolitan areas--United States.

Metropolitan areas.

United States.

Metropolitan government--United States.

Metropolitan government.

Urban policy--United States.

Urban policy.

Sociology, Urban--United States.

Sociology, Urban.

Physical Description:

xvi, 221 pages, 44 unnumbered pages of plates : color maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution Press, [2002]

Summary:

Once a country of farms, small towns, and big cities, the United States today is a nation of metropolitan regions, with nearly half the population concentrated in the 25 largest areas. In the past decade, a growing chorus of scholars has published influential studies on the costs of sprawl, the interdependence of cities and suburbs, and the virtues of metropolitan governance. Perhaps no one has done more to advance the possibilities of new metropolitan coalitions than Myron Orfield. His groundbreaking book, Metropolitics, combined demographic research with state-of-the-art mapping technology to illustrate socioeconomic disparities and articulate innovative solutions in metropolitan minneapolis-St. Paul.

American Metropolitics applies the same cutting-edge research on a much broader scale. Using maps and other methods to document social, racial, fiscal, land use, and political trends in the nation's top 25 metropolitan areas, the book details the evolution of social and geographic stratification and wasteful development in the United States -- and offers an alternative. In the process, Orfield develops an important new typology for America's suburbs. He finds that 40 percent of metropolitan America (or more than half of suburban populations) lives in at-risk suburbs -- places characterized by significant fiscal and social stresses similar to larger cities. Another 25 percent (or more than a third of suburban populations) live in bedroom suburbs, where dramatic population growth, high proportions of school-age children, and modest fiscal resources place significant fiscal stress on the local community. Finally, just 7 percent of metropolitan America lives in affluent job centers, where residents seem to have it all but which often are in revolt against growing congestion and loss of open space. Using election data, Orfield shows that it is the at-risk and bedroom-developing suburbs that are most likely to be swing districts and, hence, pivotal to political reforms.

Divided into three sections, American Metropolitics illustrates the increasing social separation and wasteful, sprawling development common to all U.S. metropolitan regions; lays out a comprehensive regional agenda to deal with concentrated poverty, sprawl, and inequitable distribution of resources; and finally, outlines a political strategy to pursue this agenda. Based on cooperation among metropolitan communities, the plan would strengthen all communities and regions, opening opportunities for economic advancement and social mobility for all citizens. This book will go a long way toward altering the conventional views of the role, function, and composition of central cities and their suburbs. It explodes the lingering myth that suburbs are monolithic and points the way to new city/suburban alliances aligned around true self-interest rather than outmoded ideologies and divisions.

Contents:

Introduction

PART 1 METROPATTERNS. 1. Schools and tax wealth : leading indicators of community health. Elementary schools. Taxes. Measuring fiscal capacity. 2. The new suburban typology. Poverty and race in the central cities. Tax capacity, needs, and costs in the central cities. The myth of the suburban monolith. Cluster analysis of suburbs. Distribution of community types within metropolitan areas. 3. A comparative analysis of segregration, fiscal inequality, and sprawl. Racial and social segregation. Why should we care about this stratification? Fiscal inequality. Sprawl. Conclusions

PART 2 METROPOLICY. 4. Federal urban policy. The political nature of urban policy. Limitations of federal urban programs. History of major federal urban policies. 5. Fiscal equity. Government finance and fiscal disparities. The pros and cons of promoting regional equity. Policies to promote fiscal equity. An agenda for reform. 6. Land-use reform. Existing state and regional efforts to manage growth. An agenda for reform. 7. Metropolitan governance reform. Fragmentation of metropolitan governance. Toward more effective regional governance. Federal support for regional planning. Strategies for moving toward greater regional governance

PART 3, METROPOLITICS. 8. Metropolitics and the case for regionalism. Metropolitan swing districts. Making the case for regionalism. Conclusion. 9. An agenda for regionalism. Step 1: place regional reform on Party agendas. Step 2: Build an association of at-risk suburban communities. Step 3: Strengthen the environmental movement's efforts to reform state land-use laws. Step 4: Renew the civil rights movement around a campaign to end housing discrimination. Lessons on regional coalition building. Conclusions

Appendixes. A. Tax-capacity calculations. B. Tax-base-sharing simulations. C. MARC projects completed or in progress

References

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-210) and index.

ISBN:

0815702485

0815702493

0815766408

0815766394

OCLC:

48536745