Scope and Patterns of Metropolitan Governance in Urban America

Abstract

The author explores the scope and patterns of metropolitan governance in the Kansas City region by examining how 46 cities deliver 28 different public services. The hypotheses that intergovernmental service-delivery arrangements will be more common than in-house delivery and contracting with the nongovernmental sector, that intergovernmental service-delivery arrangements will be more common for system maintenance services than for lifestyle services, and that central cities and at-risk suburbs will be more likely to enter into intergovernmental service-delivery arrangements than are bedroom developing and affluent job centers are examined and tested. The findings support the first hypothesis but not the last two hypotheses.