Sprawl and Jurisdictional Fragmentation
The subject of sprawl as it relates to jurisdictional fragmentation begs for analysis in the tradition of industrial organization. There are obvious advantages to the comparison between general purpose local governments in a metropolitan area and firms in an industry. At least some dangers are equally apparent.
Sprawl means excessive suburbanization. Excessive means more than can be utility enhancing.1 Of course, how much suburbanization is utility enhancing depends on context. Suburbanization, nearly universal during the last fifty or sixty years, has been evident in the United States for more than a century. Among the best-studied causes of suburbanization are rising incomes and falling commuting costs. Beyond doubt, both of these factors have been important, but neither relates directly to local government actions. Suburbanization has been both inevitable and mostly utility enhancing, but it can also be excessive.
My measure of sprawl is conceptually simple. Zoning, as it applies to housing, lowers the density-distance function, increasing the radius of the urban area for a fixed population. Thus on average, workers must commute farther to and from work than if there were no controls. Residents may be willing to commute farther as the price of controlled lower density, but no worker is willing to commute farther with controls than he or she would need to commute by moving far enough out to obtain the same density without controls. If the average commuting distance increases more than would be needed to achieve the same density without controls, controls impair welfare. [End Page 231]
My measure of sprawl, which is in the context of fixed and centralized locations of jobs, is dramatically contrary to fact. There are many studies of employment suburbanization, but none that I am aware of places employment and population suburbanization in a model that carefully analyzes their interaction. I would welcome a study of this topic. Employment and population suburbanization not only influence each other, but are also likely to be influenced by other similar variables. Transportation improvements seem to be obvious candidates, but jurisdictional fragmentation may be another.
Fragment of Institutional Background
In the U.S. context, a government is an organization directed by elected officials. At the federal and state levels, there is no ambiguity. At the local level, there are general and special purpose governments. Counties and municipalities are general purpose. Special purpose governments have more limited duties, and school districts are the prime example. There are many other examples, most of which are appointive (that is, agencies of local governments) in some states and elective in other states. The Chicago metropolitan area, which has more local governments than most large metropolitan areas, includes six or seven counties, several dozen municipalities, and hundreds of elective special districts (school districts, water districts, forest preserves, and so on). Chicago is reputed to have more local governments than any other U.S. metropolitan area. Why Chicago has so many local governments is the topic for another paper. Here I am concerned only with municipalities.
Local governments have no national constitutional status in the United States. They are incorporated by state governments and have powers that states assign them. Although the U.S. federal government has no formal authority over local governments, the national government influences local governments in many ways, by providing both money and regulations (especially in the areas of education, transportation, health care, and the environment.)
States tell municipalities what taxes they can levy and how they can spend their money. Although municipalities are constitutionally impotent, larger ones (especially central cities) are politically powerful. States grant municipalities almost exclusive power over land use allocation and regulation, partly pursuant to 1960s national legislation that urges land use controls to be in the context of a comprehensive plan for the development of the municipality. Clearly, this is not the case in Chicago. The most intrusive state action is the establishment of so-called growth boundaries around metropolitan areas, but they are almost [End...
