Boomburbs: The Rise of America's Accidental Cities

Chapter 6: The Small Town Politics of Big Cities

Boomburbs are now technically big cities but have often arrived at this status accidentally. Chapter 4 shows how this is true for the boomburb business landscape. The boomburbs’ commerce, unlike that of more traditional cities, is not centered in downtown but lies instead along major highways and exit ramps. Many of the elements of a big city economy are typically there but arrayed in a pattern that few would recognize as urban. The same accidental imagery applies to boomburb government—they are big cities yet are run in many ways as small towns. Chapter 6 shows that this big city–small town governance split is both a strength and weakness for boomburbs. Boomburbs offer a surprising mix of governance. Residents seek both more and less government than residents of suburbs around big cities in the Northeast and Midwest.1 Boomburb municipal governments are usually much smaller than those of comparably sized old-style big cities, but filling the gap are often private governments, such as homeowners associations, and various shadow governments, such as special improvement districts. Almost all boomburbs have part-time mayors, who work under a professional city manager–council system. That boomburbs have part-time mayors is not a shock considering that many Sunbelt core cities such as Dallas and San Diego use the same system.2 But most big Sunbelt cities that maintain part-time mayors are debating the switch to full-time officeholders , or to the so-called strong mayor system.3 Within this decade many big Western cities will be run by full-time mayors. No similar debate over a 6 The Small Town Politics of Big Cities 121 strong mayor is occurring in boomburbs. It is likely that these cities will have part-time (and technically nonpartisan) political leadership well into this century. Boomburbs are inventive places that devise numerous strategies to adapt governments intended for small towns to the realities of big cities. In many cases, private solutions lessen the burden of urban management. Boomburbs are fortunate in that their rise occurred at the moment when multiple alternatives to traditional government also appeared. These accidental cities are testing labs for quasi-government instruments that complement municipal management. For now the system is working, but a day of reckoning may not be far off in some of the largest and more densely built boomburbs. At some point, big boomburbs may be forced to switch governance methods as service demands overwhelm their small staffs. Chapter 6 covers the various ways that boomburbs are managed and publicly financed. It touches on a range of topics in both the public and private spheres. The blend of public and private worlds makes the boomburb an especially complicated, although interesting, political terrain. From condo boards, to city hall, to the state legislature the debate over growth also de- fines boomburbs. The big issues include where growth will occur, what form it will take, and who will pay for new development—especially its costly infrastructure. Chapter 6 ends with a look at the impact that boomburbs have on regional cooperation and governance. The Biggest Small Towns in the World For cities with over 100,000 residents, boomburbs feature rather modest governments. Most residents prefer it that way; there is no groundswell for radical change. How this system came into existence and compares to the governments of other suburbs in major metropolitan areas that lack boomburbs is key to understanding how boomburbs are run. Of course, not all boomburbs are governed the same, but there is enough commonality among them for key themes to emerge. The City Manager System and Reform Government The city manager system dates to the early-twentieth-century Progressive Era.4 Big city governments in the East and Midwest were often corrupt and captured by political machines that used public revenues for patronage or personal gain. As Western and Southern cities developed at the turn of the last century, they adopted reform governments that hired professional management to run city affairs and limited political leadership to part-time 122 THE SMALL TOWN POLITICS OF BIG CITIES (essentially volunteer) jobs.5 The reforms mostly worked. Western central cities, and later boomburbs that also use this system, were typically not plagued by the type or level of corruption sometimes found in the East. The more than two dozen boomburb mayors interviewed for this book were all competent people who generously gave their time and clearly have...