Observers of metropolitan dysfunction have long advocated for a regional tier of government that could (among other things) equalize spending across local jurisdictions, pursue cooperative economic development policies, provide for fair share housing, rationalize land use, and coordinate transportation planning. For many good government reformers, right-scaling our fragmented metropolitan areas appears to be an obvious solution to inter-jurisdictional spillovers and competitive races-to-the-bottom. This article counsels caution. “Region hope” — the idea that the substantive problems of metropolitan governance can be solved regionally by redrawing territorial boundaries to encompass ever-larger areas — is perennial. But territorial manipulation in aid of state centralization has significant drawbacks. The regional impulse exhibits some key features of failed social engineering efforts; seen through the lens of the state, these efforts privilege technocratic over democratic governance, bureaucratic over local knowledge, and mobile over immobile capital. That does not mean that regionalism should be resisted in all cases, but only that the costs of territorial manipulation should be weighed against its asserted benefits.
Research correlating stringency in land-use regulation to low housing supply, high housing costs, and segregation relies on surveys of planners about...
Cities have been largely absent from the theory and legal doctrine of federalism, especially in the United States, where federalism is understood to...
Income inequality is a national preoccupation, and the public’s imagination is captured by the astronomical incomes of Valley tech billionaires and...
On Aug. 14, a Montana district court released a groundbreaking decision for climate change activists. In Held v. Montana, the court announced that...
The 1968 Fair Housing Act required local government recipients of federal money to take meaningful actions to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH...
Those Who Need the Most, Get the Least: The Challenge of, and Opportunity for Helping Rural Virginia
Rural America, as has been well documented, faces many challenges. Businesses and people are migrating to more urban and suburban regions. The...
The issue of state separation of powers generally is not one that the federal courts have had much occasion to address. Recent issues have arisen...
A key question in the academic and policy debates over the optimal architecture for sovereign debt has long been whether sovereigns should be given...
Observers of metropolitan dysfunction have long advocated for a regional tier of government that could (among other things) equalize spending across...
Gun-related violence and suicide in the United States are serious public health problems that are concentrated among young adults, especially those...
This Article is an explanation and defense of the National League of Cities’ (NLC) Principles of Home Rule for the Twenty-First Century, which the...
The Perils of Land Use Deregulation, my intervention in the land use/housing debate, has now been published by the University of Pennsylvania Law...
Virginia remains one of a minority of states that does not constitutionally enshrine some form of home rule for its cities or other local governments...