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American urban politics refers to politics within cities of the United States of America. City governments, run by mayors or city councils, hold a restricted amount of governing power. State and federal governments have been granted a large portion of city governance as laid out in the U.S. Constitution.[ citation needed ]
The small remaining power held by individual cities becomes a target of numerous outside influences such as large corporations and real-estate developers.[ citation needed ] American Urban Politics determine the socio-economic make-up of urban neighborhoods and contribute to the ever present disparity between Urban America and Suburban America.[ citation needed ]
Three main systems of city government describe local power distribution in the United States: mayor-council systems, the commission plan and the council-manager plan. [1]
The mayor–council government has two variants, the weak-mayor system and the strong-mayor system. Under the weak-mayor system the mayor has extremely limited power and is forced to share power with other locally elected officials. The strong-mayor system allows the mayor to appoint certain officials and gives the mayor some veto powers. [2] Some communities have given the mayor additional veto, appointment, or reporting authorities, with some granting their mayors the power to initiate hiring or involuntary termination of the professional manager. [3]
A city commission government consists of five to nine elected members of a city council who also serve as the heads of major city departments. [4] This form of government blends legislative and executive branch functions in the same body. Proponents of the council-manager form typically consider the city commission form to be the predecessor of, not the alternative to, the council-manager form of government. City governments search for an equilibrium in their relations with the external environment. Urban politics is politics in and about cities. This term refers to the diverse political structure that occurs in urban areas where there is diversity in both race and socioeconomic status. City governments search for an equilibrium in their relations with the external environment. A city government's orientation reflects both its leaders' aspirations and its tax-services balance. politics plays an important role in explaining the path and direction a city chooses. A city's economic development functions and for the political decision to mobilize public capital. City investment in, and regulation of, development projects is the most effective means by which a city controls and molds its growth in pursuit of its future cityscape. [5]
A council–manager government consists of a city council that appoints a professionally trained manager who is given responsibility for running the daily affairs of the city. The city council possesses the authority to remove any unsatisfactory manager at any time needed. [6]
Urban regime theories seek to explain relationships among elected officials and those individuals who influence their decisions.
Corporate regimes or development regimes promote growth and normally reflect the interests of a city's major corporations while neglecting the interests of poor, distressed areas of a city. [7]
Caretaker regimes normally oppose large-scale development projects in fear of increased taxes and disrupting normal ways of life. [7]
Progressive regimes respond to the needs of lower- and middle-class citizens and environmental groups to keep things as they are, rather than to economic growth. [7]
Intergovernmental regimes exist in cities of extreme need that are mismanaged and financially troubled. The governor and state legislators are important regime actors. [8]
During the westward expansion period of the 18th and 19th centuries, numerous areas were settled as trading posts along major transportation routes. Sometimes called “walking cities” because of their small size and limited mode of transportation, these areas were economic centers that had not yet experienced the influx of population that came with industrialization and immigration. [9]
As industry and transportation technologies improved, American cities became centers of production and the process of urbanization began to take place. The country became increasingly urban, and cities grew not only in terms of population but also in size, with skyscrapers pushing cities upward and new transportation systems extending them outward. Part of the urban population growth was fueled by an unprecedented mass immigration to the United States that continued unabated into the first two decades of the twentieth century. [10] Cities became locations of opportunity that drove rural to urban migration, but the waves of people also led to congestion, overcrowded housing, undesirable living conditions, poor sanitation and major health epidemics. [9]
As these problems persisted the rich and affluent citizens left the problems in the central city and moved to the outer edges, thus beginning the first stages of suburbanization that carried on well into the 20th century. Suburbanization boomed following the invention of railroads, automobiles, assembly-line production and telecommunications. [11] Urban America slowly lost its importance and moved toward a metropolitan America that, in most cases, consisted of poor, underdeveloped, old-city centers, surrounded by wealthy, developed suburbs and edge-cities.
A city is a human settlement of a notable size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agreed definition of the lower boundary for their size. In a more narrow sense, a city can be defined as a permanent and densely populated place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks. Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, production of goods, and communication. Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organizations, and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process, such as improving the efficiency of goods and service distribution.
Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state.
In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well as the means by which a mayor is elected or otherwise mandated. Depending on the system chosen, a mayor may be the chief executive officer of the municipal government, may simply chair a multi-member governing body with little or no independent power, or may play a solely ceremonial role. A mayor's duties and responsibilities may be to appoint and oversee municipal managers and employees, provide basic governmental services to constituents, and execute the laws and ordinances passed by a municipal governing body. Options for selection of a mayor include direct election by the public, or selection by an elected governing council or board.
Arvada is a home rule municipality on the border between Jefferson and Adams counties, Colorado, United States. The city population was 124,402 at the 2020 United States Census, with 121,510 residing in Jefferson County and 2,892 in Adams County. Arvada is the seventh most populous city in Colorado. The city is a part of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Front Range Urban Corridor. The Olde Town Arvada historic district is 7 miles (11 km) northwest of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver.
Managing Urban America is a book that provides an academic overview and introduction to local urban planning and management in the United States, written by David R. Morgan, Robert E. England and John Peter Pelissero.
A council–manager government is a form of local government commonly used for cities and counties in the United States and Ireland. In the council-manager government, an elected city council hires a manager serve as chief executive; this manager can be replaced by a simple majority at any time. In this sense it is similar to a parliamentary system of government at the national level. However, it differs slightly in that managers are generally hired professional administrators, rather than members of the legislature itself. The council–manager form is also used in New Zealand for regional councils, and in Canada and many other countries for city and county councils. It is used in roughly 40% of American cities.
A city manager is an official appointed as the administrative manager of a city in the council–manager form of city government. Local officials serving in this position are sometimes referred to as the chief executive officer (CEO) or chief administrative officer (CAO) in some municipalities.
Local government is the third level of government in Australia, administered with limited autonomy under the states and territories, and in turn beneath the federal government. Local government is not mentioned in the Constitution of Australia, and two referendums in 1974 and 1988 to alter the Constitution relating to local government were unsuccessful. Every state/territory government recognises local government in its own respective constitution. Unlike the two-tier local government system in Canada or the United States, there is only one tier of local government in each Australian state/territory, with no distinction between counties and cities.
The Greater Manchester County Council (GMCC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater Manchester from 1974 to 1986. A strategic authority, with responsibilities for roads, public transport, planning, emergency services and waste disposal, it was composed of 106 directly elected members drawn from the ten metropolitan boroughs of Greater Manchester. The Greater Manchester County Council shared power with ten lower-tier district councils, each of which directed local matters. It was also known as the Greater Manchester Council (GMC) and the Greater Manchester Metropolitan County Council (GMMCC).
Most U.S. states and territories have at least two tiers of local government: counties and municipalities. Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the term borough for what the U.S. Census Bureau terms county equivalents in those states. Civil townships or towns are used as subdivisions of a county in 20 states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.
The City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality is a metropolitan municipality that manages the local governance of Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa. It is divided into several branches and departments in order to expedite services for the city. Zulu is the most spoken home language at 23.4% followed by English at 20.1%.
John Frederick Collins was an American lawyer who served as the mayor of Boston from 1960 to 1968. Collins was a lawyer who served in the Massachusetts Legislature from 1947 to 1955. He and his children caught polio during a 1955 outbreak. He was reliant on a wheelchair and crutches the rest of his life. After partially recovering, he ran for mayor in 1959 as an underdog. He successfully portrayed himself as outside corrupt "machine politics" and was elected.
Kevin Hagan White was an American politician best known for serving as the mayor of Boston for four terms from 1968 to 1984. He was first elected to the office at the age of 38. He presided as mayor during racially turbulent years in the late 1960s and 1970s, and the start of desegregation of schools via court-ordered busing of school children in Boston. White won the mayoral office in the 1967 general election in a hard-fought campaign opposing the anti-busing and anti-desegregation Boston School Committee member Louise Day Hicks. Earlier he had been elected Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth in 1960 at the age of 31, and he resigned from that office after his election as Mayor.
A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, rural council, village council, or board of aldermen.
Memphis, Tennessee is governed by a mayor and thirteen city council members. Since 1995, as a result of a legal challenge, all council members are elected from nine geographic districts. Seven are single-member districts and two have three representatives each.
A mayor–council government is a system of local government in which a mayor who is directly elected by the voters acts as chief executive, while a separately elected city council constitutes the legislative body. It is one of the two most common forms of local government in the United States, and is the form most frequently adopted in large cities, although the other common form, council–manager government, is the local government form of more municipalities.
In the United States, there are several distinct types of mayors, depending on the system of local government.
Myron Willard Orfield, Jr. is an American law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, director of its Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, and a former non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has been called "the most influential social demographer in America's burgeoning regional movement." Orfield teaches and writes in the fields of civil rights, state and local government, state and local finance, land use, questions of regional governance, and the legislative process. He is known for developing a classification scheme for U.S. suburbs, documenting suburban racial change and resegregation, and for developing innovative regional land use, public finance, and governmental reforms. He is a former member of the Minnesota Legislature, having served in both the state house (1991-2001) and senate (2001-2003) and is the younger brother of Gary Orfield, a political scientist at UCLA.
The 1951 Philadelphia municipal election, held on Tuesday, November 6, was the first election under the city's new charter, which had been approved by the voters in April, and the first Democratic victory in the city in more than a half-century. The positions contested were those of mayor and district attorney, and all seventeen city council seats. There was also a referendum on whether to consolidate the city and county governments. Citywide, the Democrats took majorities of over 100,000 votes, breaking a 67-year Republican hold on city government. Joseph S. Clark Jr. and Richardson Dilworth, two of the main movers for the charter reform, were elected mayor and district attorney, respectively. Led by local party chairman James A. Finnegan, the Democrats also took fourteen of seventeen city council seats, and all of the citywide offices on the ballot. A referendum on city-county consolidation passed by a wide margin. The election marked the beginning of Democratic dominance of Philadelphia city politics, which continues today.
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