A Preliminary Study On The Structural Reform Of St. Louis Metropolitan Government

In the early twentieth century,as the industrialization and urbanization in America keeping on a development,the ecological structure of American cities changed greatly,and the metropolitan area with single center structure came into being.The metropolitan area combines the central city and the suburbs for the common needs of economic expansion and social relations,and it is a collection of economy and society.With the increase of the number and scale of the metropolitan area and the continuous expansion of the spatial scale,the spatial sprawl trend of the metropolitan area has formed.Many overlapping local governments in the metropolitan area have led to political fragmentation,and numerous drawbacks of the fragmentation also brought many difficulties to the normal development of the metropolitan area.In order to address the challenges facing metropolitan areas,reformers began to innovate the metropolitan government structure.As a typical representative of the metropolitan area of the United States,St.Louis metropolitan area has carried out a series of structural reforms of the government,under the influence of the spatial sprawl of metropolitan area,the political fragmentation and the theory of traditional regionalism reform.This paper consists of three parts.The first part focuses on the macro background of the structural reform of St.Louis Metropolitan Government.The continuous development of metropolitan area has resulted in the continuous adjustment of the definition of metropolitan area and the continuous expansion of the number,scale and spatial scope of metropolitan areas and suburbs,thus forming the spatial sprawl trend of metropolitan area.The large numbers of local governments in the metropolitan area are politically fragmented,affecting the economic efficiency of the suburbs and the effects and quality of urban management,leading to imbalances in local government revenues,finance,tax rates and services.In order to solve the severe development facing the metropolitan area,the American academic circles carried out the regionalism movement.Under the guidance of the traditional regionalism theory,the US metropolitan area began to carry out the government structural reform attempt with the way of city-county consolidation and the establishment of federal two-tier government.The second part focuses on a series of structural reforms of St.Louis metropolitan government.The political fragmentation of St.Louis metropolitan area is mainly manifested in two aspects:one is the large number and variety of local governments in the metropolitan area;the other is that St.Louis City and St.Louis County have different government models,which result in the overlapping of the government functions and services.Before 1950,two attempts were made to reorganize the St.Louis area,consolidating all local units of government and establishing a federation of local governments,but failed.Between 1950 and 1955,St.Louis metropolitan area had successfully created the Metropolitan St.Louis Sewer District in order to adjust the city-county relations,but the plan to establish Metropolitan St.Louis Transit District was rejected.In the late 1950s,in order to set up the Greater St.Louis City-County District,St.Louis area conducted an areawide metropolitan survey,organized the Board of Freeholders and the campaign for metropolitan government,but the reform program eventually failed.The subsequent Borough Plan for city-county consolidation had the same fate.But the reform attempts had not stopped,the Board of Freeholders and the Board of Electors carried out two reorganization attempts respectively in 1987 and 1990,and both failed in the end.At this point,the structural reforms in St.Louis metropolitan government eventually failed.The third part mainly analyzes the reason of the failure of St.Louis metropolitan government structural reforms.The lack of readiness for reform,local self-determination in St.Louis County,and the socioeconomic status of voters and the extent of political party activity aggravate the difficulty of governance in St.Louis metropolitan areas,and finally cause the failure of the reforms.