City is a
relatively permanent and highly organized centre of population, of greater size
or importance than a town or village. The name city is given to certain urban
communities by virtue of some legal or conventional distinction. It also refers
to a particular type of community, the urban community, and its culture, often
called “urbanism.” In legal terms, in the United States, for example, a
city is an urban area incorporated by special or general act of a state
legislature. Its charter of incorporation prescribes the extent of municipal
powers and the frame of local government, subject to constitutional limitation
and amendment. In common usage, however, the name is applied to almost every
American urban centre, whether legally a city or not, and without much regard
to actual size or importance. In Australia and Canada, city is a term applied
to the larger units of municipal government under state and provincial
authority, respectively. New Zealand has followed British precedent
since the abolition of the provinces in 1876; the more populous towns are
called boroughs under the Municipal Corporations Act of 1933 and earlier
legislation. In the United Kingdom itself, city is merely an official
style accorded towns either in their historical identity as Episcopal sees or
as the beneficiaries honoris causa of a special act of the crown (the
first town so distinguished was Birmingham in 1889). Except for the ancient
City of London (an area of about 677 acres in central London under the
jurisdiction of the lord mayor), the title has no significance in local
government in the United Kingdom. In all the other countries of the world, the
definition of city similarly follows local tradition or preference.
City
government is almost everywhere the creation of higher political authority,
state or national. Some European countries have adopted general municipal codes
which permit centralized administrative control over subordinate areas through
a hierarchy of departmental prefects and local mayors. Socialist countries also
employ a hierarchical system of local councils that correspond to, and are
under the authority of, governing bodies at higher levels of government. In
English-speaking countries, devolution of powers to the cities occurs through
legislative acts that delegate limited self-government to local corporations.
As a type
of community, the city may be regarded as a relatively permanent
concentration of population, together with its diverse habitations, social
arrangements, and supporting activities, occupying a more or less discrete
site, and having a cultural importance that differentiates it from other types
of human settlement and association. In its elementary functions and
rudimentary characteristics, however, a city is not clearly distinguishable from
a town or even a large village. Mere size of population, surface area, or
density of settlement are not in themselves sufficient criteria of distinction,
while many of their social correlates (division of labour, nonagricultural
activity, central-place functions, and creativity) characterize in varying
degree all urban communities from the small country town to the giant
metropolis.
It was no accident that the earliest
of man's fixed settlements are found in the rich subtropical valleys of
the Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Indus, and the Yellow rivers or
in such well-watered islands as Crete. Such areas provided favorable
environmental factors making town living relatively easy: climate and soil
favorable to plant and animal life, an adequate water supply, ready materials
for providing shelter, and easy access to other peoples. Although man with
ingenuity has been able to utilize almost any environment for town living,
environments favorable to the production of food and shelter and ease and
comfort of living clearly possessed advantages for the beginnings of urban
life.
A distinguished historian, Ralph E.
Turner, has suggested that various pre-urban developments made possible the technology
and organization permitting city life. These included psychological elements
such as recognition of “in-group” versus “out-group” interests; the notion of a
universe, even if mysterious, that could be controlled; and belief in the
existence of a soul. The in-group and out-group differentiation provided a
basis for respect for the rights of others and for life, property, and family
values. The notion that man could control the world in which he lived was of
great importance, even if the methods of control were primitively based on
magic and religion. The belief in a soul helped make life on Earth more
acceptable, even if hard, for life became then only an incident in a long
journey.
Pre-urban developments that paved the way
for urban life also included such factors as traditionalism, a power
structure, and a form of economic as well as social organization.
Traditionalism lay in the acceptance and transmission of what had worked in the
life of the group and was therefore “right” and to be retained. Some form of
power structure involving subordination was necessary, for leadership was a
vital element in urban living in that it was essential to the performance of
such vital functions as sustenance, religious practices, social life, and
defense. Also prerequisite to group life were new economic and social
institutions and groupings such as property, work, the family, a system for
distribution of commodities and services, record keeping, police for internal
security, and armed forces for defense.
New value orientations and ideologies may
also have affected the course of urbanization, though their importance is still
highly conjectural. There are those who have felt that urbanization depended on
a new outlook; it meant that people had become more rationalistic (and less
mystical); it meant that, for purposes of building, they were more willing and
able to defer immediate for more desirable later gratification; it meant more
emphasis on achievement and success as distinguished from status and prestige;
it meant a cosmopolitan as distinguished from a parochial outlook; and it meant
that relations between people were more ordered, impersonal, and utilitarian,
rather than only personal and sentimental.
About 10,000 years ago in the Neolithic
Period, man achieved relatively fixed settlement, but for perhaps 5,000
years such living was confined to the semi-permanent peasant
village—semi-permanent because, when the soil had been exhausted by the
relatively primitive methods of cultivation, the entire village was usually
compelled to pick up and move to another location. Even when the village
prospered in one place and the population grew relatively large, the village
usually had to split in two, so that all cultivators would have ready access to
the soil.
The evolution of the Neolithic village
into a city took at least 1,500 years—in the Old World from 5000 to 3500 BC. The technological
developments making it possible for man to live in urban places were, at first,
mainly advances in agriculture. Neolithic man's domestication of plants
and animals eventually led to improved methods of cultivation and stock
breeding and the proliferation of the crafts, which in turn eventually produced
a surplus and freed some of the population to work as artisans, craftsmen, and
service workers.
As human settlements increased in size,
by reason of the technological advances in irrigation and cultivation, the need
for improving the circulation of goods and people became ever more
acute. Pre-Neolithic man leading a nomadic existence in his never-ending search
for food moved largely by foot and carried his essential goods with the help of
his wife and children. Neolithic man, upon achieving the domestication of
animals, used them for transportation as well as for food and hides. Then came
the use of draft animals in combination with a sledge equipped with runners for
carrying heavier loads. The major technological achievement in the early
history of transportation, however, was obviously the invention of the wheel,
used first in the Tigris–Euphrates Valley about 3500 BC and constructed
first with solid materials and only later with hubs, spokes, and rims. Wheels,
to be used efficiently, required roads, and thus came road building, an art
most highly developed in ancient times by the Romans. Parallel improvements
were made in water transport—with rafts, dugouts, the Egyptian reed float,
eventually wooden boats, and of course canals used for both navigation and
irrigation.
By 3500 BC urban populations
were distinguished by literacy, technological progress (notably in metals),
social controls, political organization, and emotional focus (formalized in
religious-legal codes and symbolized in temples and walls). Such places, dated
by historical means, existed on the Sumerian coast at Ur and in the Indus
Valley at Mohenjo-daro during the 3rd millennium and, before 2000 BC, had also appeared
in the Nile and Wei-ho valleys. Cities proliferated along overland trade routes
from Turkestan to the Caspian and then to the Persian Gulf and eastern
Mediterranean. Their economic base in agriculture (supplemented by trade) and
their political-religious institutions made for an unprecedented degree of
occupational specialization and social stratification. From central vantage
points, cities already gave some coherence and direction to life and society in
their hinterlands.
The growth of cities, however, was by no
means the inevitable outcome of a succession from primitive life to
civilization. As S. Piggott pointed out in “Role of the City in Ancient
Civilizations” (in Metropolis in Modern Life, ed. by E.M. Fisher
[1955]), an alternative and, in some ways, inimical type of community had
arisen in the steppe-lands of Asia based upon animal husbandry: the nomadic
encampment. Like their urban contemporaries, the nomads were no longer
“primitive” men. In addition to pastoralism, they had developed great oral
traditions, abstract art styles, and numerous crafts, albeit no formal
architecture. Led by warrior chiefs, these self-sustaining migratory peoples
encroached upon the settled agricultural-trading areas to the south.
During the 2nd millennium the Indus
civilization was engulfed by an onslaught of Aryan nomads, while other peoples,
using horses and chariots, penetrated the urban heartland from Mesopotamia to
Egypt. In these circumstances of prolonged upheaval, survival required the
perfection of warlike arts and predatory supply systems, which transformed the
urban communities into paramilitary states—e.g., the Hittite, Egyptian,
and Mycenaean empires. Citizenship, though still a ceremonial service, was
increasingly associated with the bearing of arms. After 1200 BC even the
city-empires (a city-camp hybrid) lapsed into chaos and disorder until the
lifting of the Hellenic “dark ages” during the 8th century BC and the
transplanting of the syncretic city-state beyond the eastern Mediterranean by
Phoenicians and Greeks.
The heterogeneous peoples that created
the Greco-Roman world inherited a technological and nonmaterial culture from
southwestern Asia which helped mollify barbarism and nourish the growth of
cities. Their trading colonies, from the Crimea to Cadiz, eventually brought
the entire Mediterranean within the orbit of civilization. It was in the Greek
city-state, or polis, however, that the city idea reached its
peak. Originally a devout association of patriarchal clans, the polis
came to be a small self-governing community of citizens in contrast to the
Asian empires and nomadic hordes. For citizens, at least, the city and its laws
constituted a moral order symbolized in magnificent buildings and public
assemblies. It was, in Aristotle's phrase, “a common life for a noble end.”
When the old exclusive citizenship was
relaxed and as new commercial wealth surpassed that of the older landed
citizenry, social strife at home and rivalry abroad gradually weakened the
common life of the city-republics. The creativity and variety of the polis
gave way before the unifying forces of king-worship and empire epitomized by
Alexander the Great and his successors. To be sure, many new cities were
planted between the Nile and the Indus through which the amenities and forms of
city-culture were carried back to the east, but the city itself ceased to be an
autonomous body politic and became a dependent member of a larger
political-ideological whole.
The Romans, who fell heirs to the
Hellenistic world, transplanted the city into the technologically backward
areas beyond the Alps inhabited by pastoral-agricultural Celtic and Germanic
peoples. But, if Rome brought order to civilization and carried both to
barbarians along the frontier, it made of the city a means to empire (a centre
for military pacification and bureaucratic control) rather than an end in
itself. The enjoyment of the imperial Roman peace entailed the acceptance of
the status of municipium—a dignified but subordinate rank.
Initiatives passed to the centre; and, in the east, the culture of provincial
cities became imitative, their politics trivial. They contributed little to the
larger economic life beyond the needs of their social elites and the payment of
taxes; they tapped the surpluses created by local agriculture and trade in
rents and tribute. As Roman citizenship became more universal and formal, the
idea of public duty gave way to private ambition. Municipal functions
atrophied; and, except for their fiscal duties, it was in a passive role that
the city survived into the Byzantine era.
In Latin Europe neither political nor
religious reforms could sustain the Roman regime. The breakdown of public
administration and the breach of the frontier led to a revival of parochial
outlook and allegiance, but their focus was not upon the city. Community life
now centred on the fortress (burgum) or castle (castellum);
the term city (civitas) was attached to the precincts of the episcopal
throne, as in Merovingian Gaul.
Early medieval society was a creation of
camp and countryside to meet the local imperatives of sustenance and defense.
With Germanic variations on late Roman forms, communities were restructured
into functional estates, each of which owned formal obligations,
immunities, and jurisdictions. What remained of the city was comprehended in
this feudal-manorial order, and the distinction between town and country
was largely obscured when secular and ecclesiastical lords ruled over the
surrounding counties (comté, Grafschaft) as the vassals of mock
emperors or barbarian kings. Social ethos and organization enforced submission
to the common good of earthly survival and heavenly reward; the true city, civitas
Dei, was not of this world. The attenuation of city life in most of
northern and western Europe was accompanied by provincial separatism, economic
isolation, and religious otherworldliness. Not before the cessation of attacks
by Magyars, Norsemen, and Saracens did urban communities again experience
sustained growth.
Recovery after the 10th century was not
confined to the city or to any one part of Europe. The initiatives of monastic
orders, seigneurs, or lords of the manor, and merchants alike fostered a new
era of increased tillage, enlarged manufacture, money economy, the growth of
rural population, and the founding of “new towns,” as distinguished from those
“Roman” cities that had survived from the period of Germanic and other
encroachments. In almost all the medieval towns the role of the merchant was
central: his needs and aspirations had a catalytic effect and, largely as a
consequence of mercantile enterprise in the long-distance staple trade,
cities were to flourish once more. Under commercial stimulus, feudal
obligations were relaxed and European society was made over anew by the city
and the marketplace in pursuit of self-government and economic gain.
Before the year 1000 contacts with rich
Byzantine and Islamic areas in the Levant had revitalized
the mercantile power in Venice, which commanded the profitable route to the
Holy Land during the Crusades. Meanwhile, merchant communities had attached
themselves to the more accessible castle towns and diocesan centres in northern
Italy and on the main travelled routes to the Rhineland and Champagne. They
later appeared along the rivers of Flanders and northern France and on the
west–east road from Cologne to Magdeburg.
It was no coincidence that the 12th and
13th centuries, which saw the founding of more new towns than any time between
the fall of Rome and the Industrial Revolution, also witnessed a singular
upsurge toward civic autonomy. Throughout western Europe, towns acquired
various kinds of municipal institutions loosely grouped together under the
designation “commune.” Broadly speaking, the history of the medieval
towns is that of the merchant elites seeking to free their communities from
lordly jurisdiction and to secure their government to themselves. Wherever
monarchical power was strong, they had to be content with a municipal status,
but elsewhere they created city-states. Taking advantage of renewed conflict
between popes and emperors, they allied with local nobility to establish
communal self-government in the largest cities of Lombardy, Tuscany, and
Liguria. In Germany the city councils sometimes usurped the rights of
higher clergy and nobility; Freiburg im Breisgau obtained its exemplary charter
of liberties in 1120. The movement spread to Lübeck and later to the net of
Hanse towns on the Baltic and North seas, touching even the Christian
“colonial” towns east of the Elbe–Saale rivers. In the 13th century the “Great
Towns” of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, creditors of the counts of Flanders,
virtually governed the entire province. In France, revolutionary
uprisings, directed against nobility and clergy, sometimes established free
communes, but most communities were perforce content with a franchise from
their sovereign more limited than those enjoyed by English boroughs under the
Norman Conquest. Finally, the corporate freedom of the towns brought
emancipation to individuals. When bishops in the older German cities treated
newcomers as serfs, the emperor Henry V affirmed the principle Stadtluft
macht frei (“City air brings freedom”) in charters for Speyer (or Spires)
and Worms; “new towns” founded on the lands of lay and clerical lords offered
freedom and land to settlers who took up residence for more than “a year and a
day.” In France the villes neuves, or “new towns” (e.g., Lorris),
and bastides (e.g., Montauban) likewise conferred rights on
servile persons.
In the 14th century, the urban movement
subsided as Europe entered on a period of political anarchy and economic
decline that did not much abate before the 16th century. At a time when local
specialization and interregional exchange required more liberal trade policies,
craft protectionism and corporate particularism in the cities tended to hobble
the course of economic growth. The artisan and labouring classes, moreover, now
challenged the oligarchical rule of the wealthy burghers and gentry, disrupted
local government, and ultimately destroyed the basis of civic autonomy: prolonged
social warfare led to “popular” despotisms and fiscal bankruptcy. Visitations
of plague, fanatical crusades against heresy, and Turkish encroachments on the
routes to Asia worsened conditions in town and country alike. Europe turned
inward upon itself; and, except for a few large centres, activity in the
marketplace was depressed: the cities surrendered their liberties and their
population. These centuries of decline were relieved only by the slow process
of individual emancipation and the cultural efflorescence of the Renaissance,
which laid the intellectual basis for the great age of geographical and
scientific discovery exemplified in the new technologies of gunpowder, mining,
printing, and navigation. Not before the triumph of princely government, in
fact, did political allegiance, economic interests, and spiritual authority
again become centred in a viable unit of organization, the absolutist
nation-state.
The virtue of absolutism in the
early modern period lay in its ability to utilize the new technologies. Through
the centralization of power, economy, and belief it brought order and progress
to Europe and provided a framework in which individual energies could once more
be channeled to a common end. While the nation stripped the cities of their
remaining pretensions to political and economic independence (symbolized in
their walls and tariff barriers), it created larger systems of interdependence
in which territorial division of labour could operate. Though new mercantilist
policies built up national wealth, they did not necessarily foster the growth
of cities. All too often the wealth of nations was dissipated in war. Much of
the income produced in town and country went to bolster the monarch's
power and advertise his fame; the splendour of court life and the baroque glory
of palaces and churches were paid for by merchant enterprise and the toil of
peasants and craftsmen. Only in colonial areas, notably the Americas, did the
age of expansion see the planting of many new cities, and it is significant
that the capitals and ports of the colonizing nations experienced their most
rapid growth during these years. Under absolutist regimes, a few large
political and commercial centres grew at the expense of smaller outlying communities
and the rural hinterlands.
By the 18th century, the mercantile
classes were increasingly disenchanted with monarchical rule. They resented
their lack of political influence and assured prestige. They objected to
outmoded regulations that hindered their efforts to link commercial operations
with the systematic improvement of production. Eventually, they would unite
with other dissident groups to curb the excesses of absolutism, erase the
vestiges of feudalism, and secure a larger voice in the shaping of public
policy. In northwestern Europe, where these liberal movements went furthest,
the city populations and their bourgeois elites played a critical role out of
all proportion to their numbers. Elsewhere, as in Germany, the bourgeois were
more reconciled to existing regimes or, as in northern Italy, had assumed a
passive if not wholly parasitical role.
With the exceptions of Great Britain and
the Netherlands, however, the proportion of national populations resident in
urban areas nowhere exceeded 10 percent. As late as 1800 only 3 percent of
world population lived in towns of more than 5,000 inhabitants. No more than 45
cities had populations over 100,000, and of these fewer than half were situated
in Europe. Asia had almost two-thirds of the world's large-city population, and
cities such as Peking, Canton, and Edo (now Tokyo) were larger than ancient
Rome or medieval Constantinople at their peaks. Clearly, the mere presence of
large cities or merchant elites anywhere in the world did not ensure the
development of a dynamic social economy: the decisive factor was industrialism.
Before 1800, innovations in agricultural
and manufacturing techniques had permitted a singular concentration of
productive activity close to the sources of mechanical power—water and coal. A
corresponding movement of population was accelerated by the perfection of the
steam engine and the superiority of the factory over preindustrial business
organization. From the standpoint of economy, therefore, the localization of
differentiated but functionally integrated work processes near sources of fuel
was the mainspring of industrial urbanism. Under conditions of belt-and-pulley
power transmission, urban concentration was a means of (1) minimizing the costs
of overcoming frictions in transport and communications and (2) maximizing
internal economies of scale and external economies of agglomeration. Although
the intellectual and social prerequisites for industrialization were not
uniquely present in any one nation, an unusual confluence of commercial,
geographic, and technological factors in Britain led to far-reaching
changes in such strategic activities as textiles, transport, and iron. Britain
became “the workshop of the world” and London its “head office.”
Differentiation went so far that the cotton, woollen, and iron districts became
more specialized and productive, each proceeding within its own cycle of
technical and organizational change. By the mid-19th century, similar if less
comprehensive industrial organization was evident in parts of France, the Low
Countries, and the northeastern United States.
The concentration of the manufacturing
labour force in “mill towns” and “coke towns” gradually undermined traditional
social structures and relations. Age-old problems of public order, health,
housing, utilities, education, and morals were aggravated by the influx of
newcomers from the countryside. High rural birth rates combined with the
industrialization of agriculture to release not only the country's foods and
fibres but its children as well. Though the lowering of mortality in the 19th
century was later offset by declines in fertility, the population of the more
industrialized nations boomed into the 20th century, and the greater part of the
increment migrated to the larger towns. The outcome was rural depopulation and
the urbanization of society. Local institutions, often of medieval origin, were
unable to cope with conditions that exaggerated poverty, disrupted family life,
and complicated personal adjustment. Piecemeal reforms did little to improve
the new milieu because, in the last analysis, the “city problem” arose not so
much from the lack of public authority as from an unwillingness to pay the
costs of social planning and improvement. Generations of urbanites experienced
a continuing disorganization of their lives and work before the rising
productivity of machines and increasing popular pressures on government could
arrest the worst effects of this profound transformation. Slowly and painfully,
the city's population adapted to its norms and enjoyed its satisfaction. New
economic and cultural opportunities in the city evidently compensated for its
congestion and strain.
In the century after 1850, world
population doubled, and the proportion living in cities of more than 5,000
inhabitants rose from less than 7 percent to almost 30 percent. Between 1900
and 1950 the population living in large cities (100,000 plus) rose by 250
percent, the rate of increase in Asia being three times that of Europe and the
United States. Nevertheless, the pattern of industrial urbanization (an
overwhelmingly nonagricultural economy organized in a hierarchical system of
different-sized cities ranging from one or more metropolitan centres at the top
to a broad base of smaller-sized cities underneath) was still largely confined
to the economically advanced areas: Europe, North America, Japan, and to a
lesser extent Australasia. Meanwhile, industrial urbanism had entered its
metropolitan phase. The widespread use of cheap electric power, the advent of
rapid transit and communications, new building materials, the automobile, and
rising levels of per capita personal income had led to some relaxation of urban
concentration. City dwellers began moving out from older downtown areas to suburbs
and satellite communities where conditions were thought to be less wearing on
nerves and bodies. Rising central-area land values, traffic congestion,
increased taxation, and festering slums reinforced the exodus. At the city's
core the composition of the resident population came to include growing
proportions of the aged, minority groups, and the very poor.
In the reshaping of the 20th-century
city, advantages for residence and consumption probably played a more decisive
role than advantages for production. Thus, while its advantages for
manufacturers have diminished, the city remains the only feasible locus for the
mass of specialized service activity that forms so large a part of the modern
economy: the city offers maximum access to people. The spread of the city,
however, has further weakened the vitality of local government: the difficulty
of defining appropriate administrative boundaries has been added to the older
problems of powers and finance. The task is to find viable forms of government
for vast metropolitan districts, sometimes identified as conurbations, which
sprawl across the countryside without unity or identity.
Urban planning and redevelopment is aimed
at fulfilling social and economic objectives that go beyond the physical form
and arrangement of buildings, streets, parks, utilities, and other parts of the
urban environment. Urban planning takes effect largely through the operations
of government and requires the application of specialized techniques of survey,
analysis, forecasting, and design. It may thus be described as a social
movement, as a governmental function, or as a technical profession. Each aspect
has its own concepts, history, and theories. Together they fuse into the effort
of modern society to shape and improve the environment within which increasing
proportions of humanity spend their lives: the city.
There are examples from the earliest
times of efforts to plan city development. Evidence of planning appears
repeatedly in the ruins of cities in China, India, Egypt, Asia Minor, the
Mediterranean world, and South and Central America. There are many signs:
orderly street systems that are rectangular and sometimes radial; divisions of
a city into specialized functional quarters; development of commanding central
sites for palaces, temples, and what would now be called civic buildings; and
advanced systems of fortifications, water supply, and drainage. Most of the
evidence is in smaller cities, built in comparatively short periods as
colonies. Often the central cities of ancient states grew to substantial size
before they achieved governments capable of imposing controls. In Rome, for
example, the evidence points to no planning prior to late applications of
remedial measures.
For several centuries during the Middle
Ages, there was little building of cities in Europe. There is conflicting
opinion on the quality of the towns that grew up as centres of church or feudal
authority, of marketing or trade. They were generally irregular in layout, with
low standards of sanitation. Initially, they were probably uncongested,
providing ready access to the countryside and having house gardens and open
spaces used for markets and fairs or grazing livestock. But, as the urban
population grew, the constriction caused by walls and fortifications led to
overcrowding and to the building of houses wherever they could be fitted in. It
was customary to allocate certain quarters of the cities to different nationalities,
classes, or trades, as in cities of East Asia in the present day. As these
groups expanded, congestion was intensified.
The physical form of medieval and
Renaissance towns and cities followed the pattern of the village, spreading
along a street, a crossroad, in circular patterns or in irregular shapes—though
rectangular patterns tended to characterize some of the newer towns. Most
streets were little more than footpaths—more a medium for communication than
for transportation—and even in major cities paving was not introduced until
1184 in Paris, 1235 in Florence, and 1300 in Lübeck. As the population of the
city grew, walls were often expanded, but few cities at the time exceeded a
mile in length. Sometimes sites were changed, as in Lübeck, and many new cities
emerged with increasing population—frequently about one day's walk apart. Towns
ranged in population from several hundred to perhaps 40,000 (London in the 14th
century). Paris and Venice were exceptions, reaching 100,000.
Housing varied from elaborate merchant houses
to crude huts and stone enclosures. Dwellings were usually two to three stories
high, aligned in rows, and often with rear gardens or inner courts formed by
solid blocks. Windows were small apertures with shutters, at first, and later covered
with oiled cloth, paper, and glass. Heating improved from the open hearth to
the fireplace and chimney. Rooms varied from the single room for the poor to
differentiated rooms for specialized use by the wealthy. Space generally was at
a premium. Privacy was rare and sanitation primitive.
During the Renaissance, however,
there were conscious attempts to plan features, such as logistically practical
circulation patterns and encircling fortifications, which forced overbuilding
as population grew. As late as the 1860s, the radial boulevards in Paris had
military as well as aesthetic purposes. The grand plan, however, probably had
as its prime objective the glorification of a ruler or a state. From the 16th
to the end of the 18th century, many small cities and parts of large cities
were laid out and built with monumental splendour. The result may have pleased
and inspired the citizens, but it rarely contributed to the health or comfort
of their homes or to the efficiency of manufacturing, distribution, or marketing.
The planning concepts of the European
Renaissance were transplanted to the New World. In particular, Pierre l'Enfant's plan for Washington,
D.C. (1791), illustrated the strength and weakness of these concepts; it was a
plan ably designed to achieve monumentality and grandeur in the siting of
public buildings but was in no way concerned with the efficiency of
residential, commercial, or industrial development. More prophetic of the layout
of U.S. cities was the rigid, gridiron plan of Philadelphia, designed by
William Penn (1682), with a layout of streets and lots (plots) adaptable
to rapid changes in land use but wasteful of land and inefficient for traffic.
The gridiron plan traveled westward with the pioneers, since it was the
simplest method of dividing surveyed territory. Its special advantage was that
a new city could be planned in the eastern offices of land companies and lots
sold without buyer or seller ever seeing the site.
The New England town also
influenced later settlement patterns in the United States. The central commons,
initially a cattle pasture, provided a focus of community life and a site for
meetinghouse, tavern, smithy, and shops. It became the central square in county
seats from the Alleghenies to the Pacific and remained the focus of urban
activity. Also from the New England town came the tradition of the
freestanding, single-family house. Set well back from the street and shaded by
trees, it had an ornamental front yard and a working backyard and became the
norm of American residential development. This was in contrast to the European
town house, with its party wall and tiny fenced backyard.
In both Europe and the United States, the
surge of industry
during the 19th century was accompanied by rapid population growth, unfettered
individual enterprise, great speculative profits, and remarkable lapses of
community responsibility. During this era, sprawling, giant metropolitan cities
developed, offering wealth and adventure, variety and change. Their slums,
congestion, disorder, and ugliness, however, provoked a reaction in which
housing reform was the first demand. Industrial slums in European and American
cities were unbelievably congested, overbuilt, unsanitary, and unpleasant. The
early regulatory laws set standards that improved upon the slums of the time
but seemed a century later to be impossibly low. Progress was very slow, for
the rent-paying ability of slum dwellers did not make it profitable to invest
in better housing for them. Housing improvement as an objective, however,
recurred continually. Early significant improvements in public health
resulted from engineering improvements in water supply and sewerage, which were
essential to the later growth of urban populations.
Toward the end of the 19th century,
another effort to improve the urban environment emerged from the recognition of
the need for recreation. Parks were developed to provide visual
relief and places for healthful play or relaxation. Later, playgrounds were
carved out in congested areas, and facilities for games and sports were
established not only for children but also for adults, whose workdays gradually
shortened.
Concern for the appearance of the city
had long been manifest in Europe, in the imperial tradition of court and palace
and in the central plazas and great buildings of church and state. In Paris,
Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussman,
became the greatest of the planners on a grand scale, advocating straight
arterial boulevards, advantageous vistas, and a symmetry of squares and
radiating roads. The resurgence of this European tradition had a counterpart in
the “city
beautiful” movement in the United States following Chicago's World Columbian
Exposition of 1893. This movement expressed itself widely in civic centres and
boulevards, contrasting with and in protest against the surrounding disorder
and ugliness.
Early in the 20th century, during the
sprawling growth of industrial cities, factories invaded residential areas,
tenements crowded in among small houses, and skyscrapers overshadowed other
buildings. To preserve property values and achieve economy and efficiency in
the structure and arrangement of the city, the need was felt to sort out
incompatible activities, to set some limits upon height and density, and to
protect established areas from despoilment. Zoning (see below) was the result.
As transportation evolved from
foot and horse to street railway, underground railway or subway, elevated
railroad, and automobile, the new vehicles made possible tremendous urban
territorial expansion. Workers were able to live far from their jobs, and
complex systems of communications developed. The new vehicles also rapidly
congested the streets in the older parts of cities. By threatening
strangulation, they dramatized the need to establish orderly circulation
systems of new kinds.
Metropolitan growth so intensified these
and other difficulties that the people living in cities—who for the first time
outnumbered the rural population in many countries—began to demand an attack
upon all of these problems. In response, city planning by mid-century aimed not
at any single problem but at the improvement of all aspects of the urban
physical environment through unified planning of the whole metropolitan area.
This introduced issues of national planning and in many countries brought city
planning into the field of planning the nation's economic and social resources
as a whole.
The ultimate goals had always been
social, even during the period when city plans themselves related only to
physical change. They had been and continued to be deeply involved with
intermediate economic objectives. The expression of the goals was, of course,
coloured by the culture of the society seeking them. Of increasing weight was
the goal of equality of opportunity and the redress of the grievances of
disadvantaged minorities. Within this value system the physically oriented
urban planning of the first half of the 20th century had evolved a set of
environmental objectives that continued to be valid: (1) the orderly
arrangement of parts of the city—residential, business, industrial—so that each
part could perform its functions with minimum cost and conflict; (2) an
efficient system of circulation within the city and to the outside world, using
to the maximum advantage all modes of transportation; (3) the development of
each part of the city to optimum standards, in terms of lot size, sunlight, and
green space in residential areas, and parking and building spacing in business
areas; (4) the provision of safe, sanitary, and comfortable housing in a
variety of dwelling types to meet the needs of all families; (5) the provision
of recreation, schools, and other community services of adequate size,
location, and quality; (6) the provision of adequate and economical water
supply, sewerage, utilities, and public services.
Even these superficially clear
objectives, however, were not fully operational. They involve such terms as
“adequate” and “high standard,” which are relative rather than absolute, and
change with new insights from experience or research (medical, psychological,
social) and with new technological achievements. Inherent in the concept of
city planning was the recognition that an ideal is not a fixed objective but
will itself change, that the ideal city can be striven toward but never
achieved. This turned the focus of planning away from the “master plan” and
toward a stress upon the process and the directions of change.
As a normal and identifiable function of
government, city planning for the physical environment has been recognized in
Europe and the United States since the early years of the 20th century. The
year 1909 was a milestone. It saw the passage of Britain's first town planning
act and, in the United States, the first national conference on city
planning, the publication of Daniel Burnham's plan for Chicago,
and the appointment of Chicago's Plan Commission (the first official planning
agency in the U.S. was in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1907). Germany, Sweden, and
other European countries also developed planning administration and law at this
time.
City planning as a government function
involves the coordination of all governmental activities that bear upon
community growth and change, especially those that influence private
development, so that they all work toward comprehensive objectives. The place
of the city-planning function in the structure of urban government has
developed in different ways in different countries. On the continent of Europe,
where municipal administration was strongly centralized, city planning became
the sphere of an executive department with substantial authority. In Great
Britain, the local planning authority was a local legislative body (the county
or county borough in England and Wales, the county or burgh in Scotland),
advised by a planning committee of local councillors and with a planning
department to act in an executive and advisory capacity. In the United States, with
its tradition of tripartite government, it was recognized that decisions of
importance to community development were made both by the executive branch
(mayor) and the legislative (council). Rather than impinge on the authority of
either, planning was allotted to a separate commission, advisory to both, with
no authority beyond the right to be consulted before any action affecting the
plan was taken.
Zoning, the regulation of the use of land
and buildings, the density of population, and the height, bulk, and spacing of
structures, was the principal means of putting into effect a comprehensive
scheme for land use. It is generally dated from the adoption of New York City's
first comprehensive ordinance in 1916. Though zoning was used in Great Britain
and other European countries, it was developed furthest in the United States.
The first ordinances were simple regulations, intended to protect existing
property values and preserve light and air. As planning itself broadened its
objectives and evolved its techniques during the 1930s, zoning developed into a
more precise and sensitive tool.
Parallel to the evolution of zoning in
the United States was the development of subdivision controls—subjecting the
initial laying out of vacant land to public regulation. It was realized, after
bitter experience with suburban land speculations in the 1920s, that the
interest of the owner and developer of raw land is sometimes temporary and
purely financial, while the urban community must live with the results for
generations afterward. Subdivision regulations in many United States cities
specified that new streets conform to the overall city plan and that new lots
be properly laid out for building sites. Some required the developer to give the
land needed for streets, playgrounds, and school sites and to pay all or most
of the cost of development of these facilities.
Zoning and subdivision control offered
adequate controls over the growth of new parts of cities, where they were used
by enlightened legislative bodies. It was realized, however, that they were
insufficient to correct past mistakes and especially to bring about the
rebuilding of the obsolete parts of cities.
All over the Western world, in the first
half of the 20th century, new towns were built, constituting a very
small part of the total or urban growth but serving as experiments and as
examples of what could be done. This was largely the product of England's garden-city
movement, which proposed preplanned new cities, on land held by the community
and limited to 30,000 population, complete with business services and
employment centres and surrounded by permanent greenbelts of rural land.
The initial experimental cities were undertaken in England by private initiative,
motivated by a spirit of reform; Letchworth was started in the early
1900s and Welwyn Garden City in the 1920s.
The concept had substantial influence in
the United States. Kingsport, Tennessee, was a new city built by industrial
interests. Some of the design ideas were used in suburban real-estate
developments, outstanding being that of Radburn, New Jersey, which pioneered
the super-block scheme as the “town for the motor age.” U.S. examples, however,
omitted the community-ownership feature, and almost all omitted employment
centres, balanced income groups, and effective greenbelts. The federal
government undertook a few large-scale housing developments for immigrant
industrial workers during World Wars I and II, as make-work projects during the
depression of the 1930s, and as examples of sound urban design. During the
1960s a number of private-enterprise developments at the scale of new cities
were undertaken, primarily integral to expanding metropolitan areas rather than
as truly independent cities. Notable were Reston, Virginia, and Columbia,
Maryland, both near Washington, D.C., and the Irvine Ranch area near Los
Angeles.
Also during the 1930s a number of
European countries, especially France, The Netherlands, Germany, and the Soviet
Union, undertook the building of new towns as governmental enterprises. Most of
them (except in the Soviet Union) were residential suburbs rather than complete
urban units. During the period following World War II, many European countries
made strides in the regulation of new growth and in planned rebuilding of
bomb-torn city centres.
After World War II, Great Britain
embarked on a bold program. It reorganized the planning districts of
the country; established sweeping new powers over private land use, almost
nationalizing the right to develop undeveloped land; and undertook to build new
towns to receive population and industry from congested great cities, which
were planned for building at lower densities. By 1960, 15 new towns were under
way, but the national program had suffered reverses. At first, economic
exigencies interfered with the relocation of industry suggested by long-range
environmental planning, and some of the controls over private land development,
which appeared to impede investment and construction, had to be relaxed. Most
of the new towns, nevertheless, had become centres of rapid industrial and
population expansion and constituted important new work in city plan
effectuation.
By the early 1970s urban redevelopment
and renewal in the United States had achieved some major successes in
revitalizing the economy of central-city areas. Such programs were bitterly
criticized, however, for displacing low-income families and for disregarding the
network of social relationships that had meant more to these families than the
squalor and danger of their physical shelter. Among the new programs evolved
after the establishment of a new cabinet-level Department of Housing and Urban
Development was the Model Cities program. This was an experiment, in several
dozen U.S. cities, in attacking the problems of major blighted areas with
massive federal financial aid. It included programs of physical improvement
coordinated with social and economic upgrading through job training, school
improvement, encouragement of economic enterprise, and a complete panoply of
self-help and outside-help measures aimed at reducing poverty and all of its
adverse concomitants.
Where a single municipal government
included all of an urban area, tools for physical planning and effectuation
seemed, in the second half of the 20th century, to be approaching adequacy.
This condition, however, was exceptional. In Europe and the Americas, the metropolitan
area was the typical urban form, composed of many independent
municipalities, with overlapping jurisdictions of counties, school districts,
and special authorities. During this period, European countries were groping
toward solutions of the metropolitan planning and development problem, with
some progress in Great Britain, Scandinavia, the Federal Republic of Germany,
and The Netherlands. In the 1950s a limited metropolitan government was
established for Toronto, Ontario, with planning as an integral function. As late
as the early 1970s metropolitan planning efforts in the United States were
still largely ineffective. Planning agencies had little voice in the decisions
of not only the separate cities and suburbs but also larger public agencies,
such as state highway departments, sewer and water supply authorities, and port
and airport authorities. The U.S. planning movement had not yet evolved the
governmental machinery for reconciling in a democratic way the conflicting
interests of all of the constituents of a metropolitan area.
In Asia, the emerging industrial
economies of the post-World War II period produced cities following many of the
patterns of the West. These rapidly developing countries, however, are still
preoccupied with political and economic problems and have made little progress
in establishing an environmental planning function in city or metropolitan
government effective enough to prevent the mistakes made earlier in Western
cities. There are a few outstanding examples of planned new cities in such widely
scattered places as India, Israel, and South America. There are also signs of
increasing concern in Puerto Rico, India, Indonesia, and elsewhere for regional
development programs.
A city cannot operate without a government
of some kind. There are, indeed, no known examples of a city without
government, however far back one goes in history. In some European countries
cities were for centuries virtually independent political entities. Although
the city-states of ancient Greece are the most famous illustration of this
phenomenon, local government in such countries as England, France, Italy,
Spain, and Germany is much older than national government. In the modern world,
however, cities are contained within the boundaries of national states, and
city government forms part of a much larger and more complex constitutional
regime.
City government invariably reflects the
general characteristics of this national regime. When political democracy
exists at the national level, as in most of the Western world and Japan today,
cities enjoy a substantial degree of local autonomy and have democratic systems
of government. When the regime is authoritarian, central control is likely to
diminish or extinguish local self-government and to suppress democratic forms.
Similarly, a country that prefers to concentrate power and responsibility in a
single individual—or, conversely, in a committee—is likely to display this
preference in its cities no less than in its central government.
Hitherto, the jurisdiction of city
governments has been limited to the built-up urban area although there are
exceptions to this, as, for example, in Brazil and South Africa. A clear
distinction between the city and the surrounding countryside no longer exists.
The built-up central area extends without any sharp dividing line to the suburbs,
then to the farther fringe composed of housing estates and villages for
commuters, interspersed with small produce farms, recreational areas,
industrial estates, and so forth, all of which may form a single area of
interrelated activities. An army of commuters daily invades the main city, and
at the close of the day they retreat to their homes in the suburbs or beyond.
They and their families use the city for such purposes as recreation, trade,
shopping, professional services, and higher or technical education. The city
depends for its economic health on their services and their purchasing power.
But commuters also have to be provided with costly daytime services such as
police and fire protection, water supply, sewage, public health, highways, and
public transport, although those who live outside the city limits usually
contribute little or nothing to the municipal revenue.
Urban technology and the patterns of
behavior of contemporary life have made it difficult or impossible for
municipalities to cope with the mounting problems of the city region, and
particularly those of the metropolitan areas, unless drastic changes of structure
and scope are carried out.
Certain functions must be performed in
every city. Law and order must be maintained; there must be some regulation of
building to ensure a minimum of safety and to ensure that houses or workshops
are not constructed on public land or in improper places; there must be regular
methods of preventing, controlling, and extinguishing fires; and there must be
regulations and executive action to protect the health of the citizens. The
services now provided by city governments are different in nature and wider in
scope than in the past. Generalization is impossible, but the most widespread
functions today are the environmental and personal health services, including
clinics and hospitals; primary, secondary, and further education; water supply,
sewage, refuse collection and disposal; construction, maintenance, and lighting
of streets; public housing; welfare services for the old, destitute, physically
and mentally handicapped, orphans and abandoned children, unemployed and
disabled workers, and other categories needing help; cemeteries and
crematoriums; markets and abattoirs. The traditional services have been
transformed beyond recognition.
Many cities have had museums and art
galleries for a century or more. Today such institutions are often part of
extensive programs for recreation and culture sponsored by the
municipality. Public parks and playgrounds are not a new feature of city
life, but they too have become part of the comprehensive programs of outdoor
recreation organized by the municipality.
A group of public-utility services
comprising the supply of gas, electricity, water, and public transport are
frequently provided by the city government itself, by a public corporation
closely connected with it, or by a commercial company operating under a
concession granted by the municipality. In some countries, municipal enterprise
in the public utility field has been supplanted by larger regional or national
schemes.
A city council inevitably takes an
interest in the economic well-being of the city that it governs. Every city
government wishes to assist industry and promote trade, but there are great
differences in the role assigned to local authorities in this respect in
different countries. In the former Communist regimes of eastern Europe, nearly
the whole of local trade and much local industry was directly or indirectly
under the control of the city government. On the other hand, in the United
States a city government can control local industry only by means of zoning
regulations, restrictions imposed under public health legislation, and so
forth. In any case, municipal governments can do much to assist industry and
commerce by good planning and physical development, by providing for trade
fairs and exhibition centres, and by designing and developing roads, public
housing, schools, and other municipal services to meet the needs of employers
and employees.
The attraction of tourists also
has become an almost universal goal of every city that has the slightest
pretension to be of interest to visitors, and here too the municipality can do
much to attract tourists by providing not only publicity and information but
also convenient and agreeable facilities.
There are today three principal types of
municipal systems of government: (1) the decentralized system found in federal
constitutions; (2) the decentralized system found in unitary constitutions; and
(3) the supervisory system found under the “Napoleonic,” or French-type,
administration. A fourth type, the integrated system, was found in eastern
Europe until the collapse of Communism.
In federal constitutions, local
government tends to fall within the jurisdiction of the state or provincial
government rather than of the national government. This is the position in the
United States, and it accounts for the great diversity of municipal
organization existing in that country.
The mayor-and-council form is the
traditional type of city government in the United States. It prevails in a
majority of American cities whether large or small. The relations between the
mayor and the council are by no means uniform, but in general the borough or
city council, which was the dominant partner in colonial days, has lost power
as the role of the mayor has expanded. Bicameral councils have disappeared.
In the weak-mayor form, the
council retains a good deal of administrative power that it exercises through
committees. The mayor has few administrative powers but possesses a number of
legislative and judicial functions. Many of the municipal officers in such
cities are directly elected. In the past the result was often a lack of
organized leadership because power and responsibility were too widely diffused.
The only person able to coordinate the fragmented authority of these several
parts of the city government was the party boss. It has been truly remarked
that the price paid for his services was high (in graft) even though his
product was of low quality.
It is against this background that the
rise of the strong-mayor system is to be seen—a system that now exists in most
of the larger American cities and many of the smaller ones. In this type, the
mayor presides over the council and usually has the right to veto its
ordinary legislative acts. The veto may be absolute, or it may be a suspensory
veto that can be overcome if the measure in question is again passed by the
council by a specified majority. The mayor usually prepares the budget for
submission to the council; convenes special sessions of the council to consider
particular questions; appoints and dismisses heads of departments and can give
them instructions or directions; appoints the chairmen and members of boards or
commissions; and decides or participates in the appointment of other city
employees, such as policemen, firemen, and clerks, though patronage of this
kind may be restricted by a civil service commission.
In the commission form the council is
replaced by a small body of elected commissioners who decide general policies
of municipal administration in addition to performing the usual functions of a
council. Each of the commissioners also serves as head of one or more
departments. The commission may also appoint various boards and committees to
work with it in such spheres as health, libraries, and recreation. A member of
the commission is chosen to be mayor either by the citizens or by his fellow
commissioners. He is not the chief executive but only primus inter pares (“first
among equals”). He seldom has a veto power and is distinguished from the other
commissioners only on ceremonial occasions.
The commission pattern of city government
has never made great inroads on the mayor-and-council form. It exists in fewer
than 10 percent of American municipalities at the present time and is now on
the decline. Its lack of success is due to the divided authority among the
elected commissioners and its inability to concentrate responsibility in a
single officer.
A more serious challenge to the traditional
form of city government came from the city-manager system. The most recently
developed and the most rapidly spreading, it is derived from the method of
organizing business corporations that was in favour in the first quarter of the
20th century; a general manager was entrusted with operating activities by a
board of directors to whom he was responsible. When the concept was applied to
city government, there emerged a small council numbering from three to nine
members, all elected at large. The council passes ordinances, adopts the
budget, decides rates of taxation, and engages the manager. The mayor (if there
is one) has a role that is chiefly ceremonial. The city manager is the real
chief executive; his position is generally set out in the city charter,
which states that the council shall not interfere with his administrative
functions. He has a duty to provide the council with whatever information they
need to determine matters of policy.
In addition to the municipal government,
there are in most American cities a considerable number of ad hoc boards and
commissions possessing varying degrees of independence. The school board is
invariably separate from the rest of the city administration, and there are
usually many other independent boards. Some of them can appoint and dismiss
their own staff. The mayor may have the power to appoint the chairmen and
members, but thereafter his power to direct or influence them may become slight
or even negligible. A widespread characteristic of all forms of American city
government is the fragmentation of authority caused by such devices.
State governments in the United
States exercise many different kinds of supervision and control over the cities
within their jurisdiction. The structure of local government is determined by
state law, and every municipality owes its corporate status and machinery of
self-government to the state.
The primary unit of local government in
the Federal Republic of Germany is the commune or municipality (Gemeinde).
It may be either rural (Landgemeinde) or urban (Stadt). Above the
municipality is the Kreis, which corresponds to a district
or county containing villages, hamlets, and small towns; it is an upper tier of
local self-government that exercises supervisory powers and also provides
services. There are nearly 400 Kreise. Some 120 towns with more than
50,000 inhabitants, however, are independent of this Kreis (kreisfreie
Städte, or Kreis-free towns). Above the Kreis is the province
or administrative district (Regierungsbezirk) of the state (Land),
though the Regierungsbezirk does not exist in the smaller states such as
the Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, and
Thyringia. The three great cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Berlin rank as states
as well as municipalities; they are subdivided into circuits (Bezirke)
with their own elected assemblies.
The legal status of communes is based on
municipal constitution laws of their respective states (Länder) and on
the state constitutions. The federal constitution guarantees the communes the
right to regulate on their own all the affairs of the local community within
the legal limits and requires that the representative organs of the
municipalities shall be elected by universal, direct, free, equal, and secret
ballot. A constitutional amendment of 1993 allows residents from EC countries
to vote or to be elected. The elected council is the supreme organ in the
municipality, and chief executives must be chosen by either the citizens or the
council.
The structure of local government varies
among the different states, related to historical traditions and post-World War
II allied influence. In Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, the burgomaster (Bürgermeister)
and deputy burgomasters, who form the executive organ, are directly elected by
the citizens. In North Rhine–Westphalia and Lower Saxony, the burgomaster
retains only political functions, his former administrative functions having
been transferred to a city director (Stadtdirektor) or chief executive
officer. The Bürgermeisterverfassung prevails in Rhineland-Palatinate,
in the Saarland, and in a number of villages in Schleswig-Holstein. It entails
a functional distinction between the respective powers of the council and the
mayor. The Magistratsverfassung obtains in Hesse, in the larger towns of
Rhineland-Palatinate, in Schleswig-Holstein, and in Bremerhaven. The council
elects the burgomaster to serve as its chairman and as the head of the
administration. Whatever the form of the executive organ, it must prepare and carry
out the resolutions, policies, and administrative decisions of the council.
Only in urgent matters or emergencies can the executive decide in place of the
council, although the burgomaster can veto the council's decisions when it is
in violation of the law.
The Local Government Act of 1972 created
a two-tier system of counties and districts. Both counties and districts have
independent, locally elected councils that perform separate functions: county
authorities are generally responsible for large-scale services, while district
authorities are generally responsible for more local ones. In certain heavily
populated areas, counties and districts are designated metropolitan counties
and districts, and provision of certain large-scale services falls upon these
more powerful metropolitan district authorities.
In Britain, as elsewhere, central control
has grown during the 20th century. Each department of the national government
uses its own methods, but typical among them are the approval (or rejection) of
schemes submitted by local authorities for town planning, education, and
highways; approval of the appointment or qualifications of chief officers; and
approval of slum clearance schemes and purchases of land. They also hear
appeals by citizens dissatisfied with certain decisions of local authorities,
and they inspect the police forces and the schools administered by local
authorities. The overriding feature of central–local relations is the fact that
local authorities have become increasingly dependent on central grants for
their revenue. Their only source of tax revenue consists of a council tax paid
by each household. The result is that central grants are larger than income
from local taxes. Unless local authorities are given additional sources of
fiscal revenue, they are unlikely to achieve a position of greater
independence—despite strong movements for the reform of local controls and for
a reduction in central control.
After World War II, a radical reform of
local government took place directed toward the creation of political democracy
in Japan. The new constitution provided that local authorities should be
organized and operated in accordance with the principle of local autonomy, that
both the chief executives and the local assemblies should be directly elected
by popular vote, and that local authorities should have the right to manage
their property and affairs and to make their own regulations within the law. A
Local Autonomy Law passed in 1947 prescribed in detail the organization and
functions of local government. Legislation followed on finance and the public
service.
The municipalities consist of cities (shi),
towns (machi), and villages (mura). All have the same structure and
legal status but differ in powers. A city must have a population of not less
than 50,000 (formerly 30,000), of which at least 60 percent must engage in
commerce and industry; and it must possess civic halls, a sewage system,
libraries, and other public amenities. In 1953 a compulsory amalgamation of
local government units reduced the number of towns and villages from 9,610 to
2,915, while the number of cities was increased to 556. These figures have not
changed significantly since.
The separation of powers is applied in
municipalities of all types. The mayor is directly elected by the voters and so
too is the assembly, of which he is not a member; the only exceptions are the
special wards in which the mayors are appointed by the ward council with the concurrence
of the metropolitan governor. The assembly passes the budget, enacts bylaws,
approves the accounts, decides the local taxes, disposes of property, and can
demand reports or carry out investigations. The mayor controls the entire
administration, except certain functions that have been entrusted to separate
administrative boards. These include education boards, election administrative
commissions to manage both national and local elections, audit and inspection
commissions, civil service commissions, and police boards.
The mayor has the right to convene the
council and to place bylaws before it. He is the ceremonial head of the city as
well as its chief executive. He is also entrusted with certain duties on behalf
of the central government, such as the maintenance of national roads and the
census.
The control over the cities exercised by
the central government is considerable. The Ministry of Autonomy is the
department mainly concerned with local government, but the ministries of
Finance, Education, Construction, and Transport exercise varying degrees of
control over local authorities. One of the unresolved problems in Japan is the
reluctance of central departments to coordinate their activities, and this
often leads to serious inconsistencies and conflicts of policy.
Until the administrative reforms of 1982,
the system of local government in France was derived mainly from the French
Revolution and the Napoleonic era, when the basic organization was a highly centralized
administrative state in which the communes were local units of the central
government. Historically this French pattern has had far-reaching influence in
Europe, Africa, and Asia.
The French system had two tiers of
authorities. In each of the communes (which comprise municipal units of
all sizes, from tiny villages to large cities), there was an elected council
and a mayor (maire), appointed by the councillors from among their own
members. In each of the regional départements into which
France is divided, there was a prefect (préfet) who was appointed
by and responsible to the central government and who was assisted by an elected
departmental council. The separation of powers was applied at both levels, and
the mayor and the prefect were executive officers, whereas the councils were
deliberative and legislative bodies.
The mayor was the responsible head of the
municipality. He represented the local community. He presided at council
meetings and carried out its decisions. He prepared the budget and submitted it
to the council for its consideration. He initiated proposals for new measures
or policies and approved all expenditures. In the large towns, the mayor had
the help of several assistant mayors; he could delegate particular tasks to one
or more of them, and he also could delegate functions to a councillor. In the
larger municipalities, the mayor appointed a secretary-general who was
answerable to him for the day-to-day administration, thus leaving the mayor
free to devote himself to political leadership and policy making. Mayors were
not infrequently among the leading national figures in French politics.
A city government was legally authorized
to deal with all matters of local interest, but the extent to which it did so
depended on the attitude of the council and its mayor, the resources at its
disposal, and the degree of control exercised by higher authority. The prefect
was the supervisory agent who possessed the authority of all the national
ministries, including even those that had their own specialists working in the
field. When the mayor was carrying out his duties as an agent of the state, the
prefect was his hierarchical superior and could amend or set aside his
decisions.
Administration at the departmental level
was altered dramatically under a law passed on March 2, 1982. Decentralization
policies were implemented that transferred administrative and financial powers
from the appointed departmental prefects to the presidents of the locally
elected departmental councils. While the departmental councils are still
deliberative and legislative bodies, the presidents of the councils are now the
chief executives of the départements, responsible for, among other
things, budgetary matters and provision of services. The prefects were renamed
Commissioners of the Republic and now act as representatives of the central
government, overseeing the local administrative bodies and maintaining public
law and order. Mayors, who are representatives of the communes and also agents
of the central government, and elected councils are still the governing bodies
of the communes.
More than 80 percent of the communes have
populations of less than 1,000. Because units of this size cannot hope to
provide the services demanded by advanced nations today, they are permitted
under French law to form joint associations for common tasks, or to merge and
constitute a new municipality, or to establish a syndicat, or corporate
body, with its own budget to carry out particular functions. Although these
devices have been used in cities of medium size, they have not solved the
problems of the metropolitan areas. Under a law enacted in 1966, metropolitan
authorities must be established in the great urban concentrations of Lyon,
Lille-Roubaix Tourcoing, Bordeaux, and Strasbourg; similar action is permitted
in any other concentrated area of 50,000 or more inhabitants. Under this law,
each constituent municipality continues to be responsible for administering and
developing a wide range of services concerning its own area; but the metropolitan
authority undertakes a number of functions of interest to the metropolis as a
whole. These relate to such matters as town planning and the public services
involving roads, water, sanitation, housing, industrial estates, transport,
secondary schools, and the like. Also included are public investments for
assisting the arts, sports, hospitals, and other social and educational
facilities. The governing body of the metropolitan authority is a council of
between 50 and 90 members, who are representatives of the local authorities.
The tendency in Latin-American countries
is to adopt the basic principles of the supervisory system. This involves
appointing central government officers of the prefectoral type who exercise
control over local authorities.
Despite this general trend, there are
large differences in the degree of local autonomy existing in the various
countries of Latin America. In Argentina, for example, under a
succession of military governments, the former elected city councils were
supplanted by advisory committees appointed from above. Democratic rule was
returned to the country in 1983, however, when general elections were held, and
a civilian government assumed power.
In Ecuador the municipalities have
elected councils and indirectly elected mayors who undertake local government
functions. They are supervised by the centrally appointed “political chief” of
the municipality (jefe político); his immediate superior is the
provincial governor, who is appointed by the president of the republic. The jefe
político supervises the city council and reports any illegal or irregular
acts to the provincial governor; he also performs a number of state functions
in the municipality. The provincial governor is charged with maintaining public
order and upholding the law and constitution and is also responsible for
developing the education, health, welfare, and cultural services and the public
works projects.
Chile generally had
elected municipal councils that appointed their own mayors, but in the large
cities of Santiago, Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, and Concepción the mayors were
appointed and removable by the president. At each level of
administration—provincial, departmental, municipal, and district—there was a
representative of the president assisted by a small elected council. This
followed the essential principle of the French system. During the military
government that was in power from 1973 to 1989, officials appointed by the
president were in charge of administration at the various levels.
Even more subordinate to the central
government are the cities in countries where the mayor is appointed by either
the president or the prefect on his behalf. This occurs in such countries as
Bolivia and Colombia. The municipalities have elected councils, but their
functions are mainly advisory. A high degree of local autonomy exists in
Mexico, where both mayors and councils are elected.
The now-defunct Soviet Union,
which provided the model for the integrated system of city government, was from
its beginning based on local “soviets” (elected councils). These were
set up by the Communist Party in every province, district, city, town, or
village throughout the land. The soviets were responsible not only for managing
the affairs of their own areas but also for electing the soviet of the next
higher level of government. Thus, the entire hierarchy of councils except those
at the lowest level was based on indirect election. For this reason, the Soviet
Union was originally described as a state of soviets. When direct election was
introduced at all levels in 1936 this ceased to be a correct description, but
the local soviets remained organs of local government. The regime, however,
retained a feature of great importance known as “democratic centralism.” This
means that each local authority was responsible to and had to carry out the
directions of the corresponding organ at the next higher level of government.
Although some policies could originate locally, they had to be submitted to the
next higher soviet for approval or, if of sufficient importance, to even higher
soviets. This hierarchical and integrated structure explains why every soviet
was considered a local organ of the state.
A city soviet elected an executive
committee (ispolkom), which in turn appointed a presidium, the
principal executive organ. The presidium formulated operational and financial
policies and directed the conduct of the city's services, whereas the full
executive committee confined itself mainly to confirming the actions of the
presidium. The executive committee was also responsible for preparing the
agenda for the soviet, seeing that its decisions were carried out, ensuring
that directions from above were obeyed, and giving advice or help to deputies
and their committees. The president was the most important public figure in the
municipality; he supervised personnel policy, convened meetings of the
executive committee, saw that complaints and petitions from citizens came to
the executive committee, allocated functions to the administrative departments,
and generally supervised the work of the city government. He was likely to be
held personally responsible if things went wrong or if plans were not
fulfilled.
The city soviet wielded comparatively
little power. Its short sessions, large membership, and crowded agenda
precluded detailed discussion of problems. The deputies nevertheless formed a
vital link between the citizens and the city government; and, moreover, the
city soviets did have standing commissions composed of deputies and interested
citizens called activists who were prepared to take an interest in a particular
service such as housing or public health. In a large city, there might be as
many as 15 of these commissions inspecting and reporting grievances or defects
to the soviet, including alleged improper or criminal actions on the part of
officials. About 2,500,000 activists were engaged in this work of the
commissions. This attempt to achieve mass participation in the conduct of local
government was a special feature of the soviet system. It existed side by side
with a high degree of central control.
A city government in the Soviet Union had
in theory an almost unlimited jurisdiction. It administered the services for
which municipal authorities were responsible in most developed countries, but
in addition it was engaged in retail distribution, local industry of many
kinds, public utilities, and many other kinds of municipal enterprises. It
controlled the entire construction industry and employed all of the architects.
A city soviet even controlled many aspects of industrial enterprises that were
not directly subordinate to it. This extensive range of functions was liable to
restriction, expansion, or direction by the soviet organs at the next higher
level of government or by the Communist Party apparatus. With increasing
knowledge, professional skill, and experience, however, the governments of the
larger cities had been accorded a correspondingly greater degree of discretion
in dealing with municipal affairs.
Cities with a population exceeding
100,000 might have a lower tier of wards or rayon soviets.
They were, in most respects, replicas of the main city government except that
their executive committees did not appoint presidia; they also had fewer administrative
departments. A rayon soviet shared many functions with the main city
government. It could run the local shops, schools, clinics, and even hospitals.
It had its own planning organ and its own budget, but its plans had to be
approved by the city government, and the expenditure and revenues of the rayon
were embodied in the budget of the main city.
The problem of reorganizing local
government in metropolitan areas to adjust it to changes in the distribution of
population, the location of employment, and patterns of commuting had been
solved more easily in the Soviet Union than in Western countries. One reason
was that the large city government exercised a much greater degree of control
over the surrounding area. Another advantage was the ease with which changes in
the arrangement or boundaries of areas and authorities were carried out; such
matters, under the direction of republican ministries, were effected with
little difficulty or opposition.
The types of city government described in
this article form the basis of nearly every system of local self-government in
the civilized world. The British system was transplanted to the United States,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa, although in each of
those countries significant divergences appeared. The most important was the
emergence in the United States of a strong, directly elected mayor as the chief
executive responsible for the administration of the city, subject to certain
overriding controls by the city council. The British system also was
established in the former British colonies in Africa and Asia under the tutelage
of British-appointed officers resembling prefects. (In the largest Indian
cities, such as Calcutta and Bombay, however, the state government appoints a
municipal commissioner who controls the administration.) The system of directly
elected mayor and council has been transplanted from the United
States to parts of Germany, Japan, the Philippines, and one or two
Latin-American states. The French system was established in all of the former
French colonies, but it has also been widely imitated in Latin America and
elsewhere.
The principal problems confronting city
governments are broadly similar irrespective of the constitutional type. They
concern the planning and development of large cities, particularly those
classed as metropolitan areas; the continual erosion of local autonomy by the
increase of central governmental control; the municipal dependence on
grants and subsidies from the central government; and the immense difficulty of
providing adequate traffic and transport facilities, housing, education, and
welfare services at an acceptable standard. Finally, the deterioration of the
environment has become a matter of serious concern that is likely to persist
for many years.