Study Guide How the City Sank since 1980 s cities have not put the money into its infrastructure that it should o the cost for up keeping a city is high investing the money that is needed for upkeep is not a good political move The Chicago Machine Traditional City Government o Strong Mayor elected as partisan o Single member district less expensive o Has appointment power police chief fire chief city govt civil service o Leads to machine politics inefficient more equity in machine politics Uses city services to provide benefits people like this and show it by Complaint of machine politics voting for you The benefits can be very small Expensive high overhead for service delivery kickbacks How do political organizations run in traditional city govt o Cohesively organized operation to create loyalty Reform Movement Purpose gridlock 1800s created in response to traditional city govt machine politics o To be more efficient and stop being so wasteful At large elections more expensive dilutes minority votes women do better often Created nonpartisan labels City council is elected City manager based on merit weaker Mayor o Lose upward mobility Trade off equity v efficiency Progressive Era Focused on the end of machine politics Fredrick Taylor scientific management one best way to do something Anderson each urban area should be one unit of government o No long ballots Lindbalm we muddle through try different things to see if they work Govt should be run as a business o Separate admin and politics o Neutral beauracrats The Making of an Alderman Hierarchal campaigning top down make decisions quicker Door to door campaigning Provide services directly to the citizens traditional city govt Morgan and Polasaro Does Political Structure Matter o Research question Longitudinal design Interrupted time series 11 cities that changed structure over the Expectation less efficient Research cities with change against those that didn t change and a control Result no evidence to support hypothesis years Two Reforms 1 Consolidation Maddison federalist 10 public participation is bad we need a centralized government giant government no competition efficient 2 Community Control Jefferson anti federalist localized govt farmers required citizen input social capital competition with other communities people often intimidated bureaucrats to get what they wanted Solution to two reforms a mix of the two Mixed approach based on the scale of needs o Big where needed and small where needed o Scale institution to decision Performance and Evaluation in public goods services Efficiency benefit should be greater than the cost Equity fairness how equally distributed are benefits Responsiveness Supply and Demand Public Choice Approach 3 assumptions 1 Act on knowledge of alternatives 2 Assumptions about goods and services a Private goods b Club goods All hard to measure c Common pool resources d Public goods 3 Assumptions about organizations a Free rider problem How do citizens decide what they want Voting clear preferences initiatives referendums Why would public employees innovate Prestige power professionalism money Tiebout Peterson Vote with your feet choose where to live based on services exit option People will never reveal their true preferences to avoid paying taxes 7 assumptions mobility full knowledge options no employment restrictions no spill over some fixed factor seek growth optimum Goal of cities healthy ecomomy distinguish itself attract and keep affluent individuals 2 models bargaining and unitary Goal of city maximize its economic well being make city a good place to be social standing compete Unitary factors of production Size and quality of workforce Location Capital zoning attractiveness of city Invest in education Cities kind of specialize and compete among like cities Job of local government improve economic development Peterson critique of Tiebout can t use all the services we pay for people look for the sweet spot pay a little less for the services they provide How do cities make money Property taxes problem govt buildings and schools don t pay these Policy Arenas Redistributive welfare social security cities don t want to provide this should only be done at the fed state level because of politics Allocational trash police house keeping stuff easiest to provide Developmental most beneficial most desired benefits the working class Glaesar Invest in people not infrastructure Cities are more efficient We are incentivizing sprawl with policy choices New urbanism walk ability Poor paradox the more you help the poor the more poor you will have Jane Jacobs missed the role of economics in Eyes on the Street Instead of permits he prefers o Fees o Limit historical preservation o Neighborhood control over preservation but regulated Sprawl is caused by cars and policy incentives like mortgage tax deductions o And flat land cheap transportation no regulation Woodlands Texas example o Why bad Runoff carbon spreads out the productive people How to make sprawl more costly Toll roads raise gas prices remove home mortgage deduction Brueckner 3 market failures 1 Failure to value farm land appropriately 2 Social cost of congestion 3 Failure to account or the cost of expansion Solutions Cost benefit analysis of farm land hard to put a monetary value on it Decentralize telecommute charge tolls Impact fees Environmental problems of sprawl Owen Sprawl What is Sprawl Dispersed development outside of compact urban and village centers along highways and in rural countryside Indicators of sprawl Declining urban population Change of land from rural to urban Increase of miles driven per capita Increase in vehicle population Effects of sprawl Expensive public services Higher unit cost of public facilities Lower density development with greater environmental problems Balkanized communities Loss of sense of place Threat to farmland Car dependency Health impacts water runoff Obesity and environmental impacts Causes Zoning Planning Highway building Housing Competition for taxes Preferences Another View Everything you do to limit sprawl reduces the availability of affordable housing Sprawl is not a problem lots of empty land it s economic development in action