Resumen de Scope and Patterns of Metropolitan Governance in Urban America: Probing the Complexities in the Kansas City Region

Curtis Wood

• The author explores the scope and patterns of metropolitan governance in the Kansas City region by examining how 46 cities deliver 28 different public services. The hypotheses that intergovernmental service-delivery arrangements will be more common than in-house delivery and contracting with the nongovernmental sector, that intergovernmental service-delivery arrangements will be more common for system maintenance services than for lifestyle services, and that central cities and at-risk suburbs will be more likely to enter into intergovernmental service-delivery arrangements than are bedroom developing and affluent job centers are examined and tested. The findings support the first hypothesis but not the last two hypotheses.