| This study describes the growth process in the Twin Cities metropolitan region, and the roles that geographic scale, urban public finance, and the fragmented pattern of political boundaries play in controlling and regulating the outcomes of that process. It places particular emphasis on the role of the property tax in a region like Minneapolis-St. Paul, in directing and constraining land development, the location decisions of households and economic activity, and the cumulative effects of those decisions in shaping the metropolitan landscape.; This work examines these dynamics, in a selection of small cities outside of the central cities. More attention is needed to suburb-suburb and suburb-exurb dynamics which differ in important ways from the interactions of central cities and suburbs.; These cases provide examples of how the overlays of these two different jurisdictional systems—cities and school districts—and uneven development come together in specific places and create different conditions that local leaders must cope with and local taxpayers must fund. The important conclusions of the study are that (1) the social and political dynamics of the public fisc deserve more attention from urban and metropolitan researchers and policy makers; and (2) particularly in a politically fragmented metropolitan region like Minneapolis-St. Paul, the shift back to localism, minimal government, and public policy support for private-sector development put the region at risk for increasing inequalities in the provision of public goods and services, and in the accumulation of wealth through property appreciation. |
