Regionalism, Localism, and Metropolitan Governance: Suggestions from the Research Program on Local Public Economies

LIKE MOST NEW intellectual or political movements, the recent movement called New Regionalism is a mixed bag of old prescriptions and new remedies to address problems both new and longstanding, not to mention both real and imaginary. Part of New Regionalism is hardly new at all. Instead, it is the long-abiding faith in metropolitan consolidation and central city expansion (see Rusk 1995) applied to the latest generation of metropolitan problems. Part of the movement responds to growing problems that occur on a more regional scale and that seem to require some sort of regional solution—in particular, transportation and infrastructure problems that derive, at least in part, from sprawling patterns of development. New Regionalism also represents progress in conceptualizing the general problem of metropolitan governance, reflected in the very choice of the term “governance” (and the associated complexities it implies) rather than “government” (Altshuler et al. 1999). Yet, some of those who now embrace institutional solutions other than metro government do so mainly because of the political infeasibility of massive jurisdictional consolidation (see Downs 1994), not out of an intellectual conversion to alternative approaches. Regionalism, Localism, and Metropolitan Governance: Suggestions from the Research Program on Local Public Economies