It rolls trippingly off of the tongues of academics, policy wonks, and politicians, the anointed spokespeople for grass-roots social change. You don't need words to explain it. It comes in maps. It uses cutting-edge technology. And it's clean.
Foundations love it.
Metropolitanism or metro governance initiatives are experiments in the integration of urban and suburban resources and planned growth on a regional scale. These efforts include tax-base sharing among regional municipalities. Advocates of this approach argue that metro governance can benefit a region in general, and cities in particular, by reallocating fiscal resources to public transit instead of highways and equalizing the provision of local public services between cities and suburbs. An intriguing notion. It is generally accepted that urban centers are in decline.