City-Surburban Social Distance and Public Policy

This study describes certain policy differences between city and suburban governments and attempts to link these to city-suburban differences in status and life style which have been described by urban sociologists. Differences in the social character of city and suburbs appear to result in identifiable contrasts in educational and municipal expenditure levels, and in levels and purposes of taxation and indebtedness. In larger urbanized areas, where status and life style differences between city and suburb are more pronounced, differences in the policy choices of city and suburban governments are great. But in smaller urbanized areas, where city-suburban social differences are small, there is less differential in the policy choices of city and suburban governments. A t least since the elaboration of the Burgess zonal hypothesis in 1924, urban I sociology has been concerned with the social correlates of increasing distance from the center of the metropolis.' City-suburban differences in status, life style, education, wealth, leisure, ethnicity, familism, and culture have been extensively documented.2 Recently political scientists, Robert Wood and Scott Greer among others, have pictured contrasting styles of city and suburban policies.3 But if * This research was supported in part by the University of Wisconsin Urban Program under the terms of a grant by the Ford Foundation. 1 See Ernest W. Burgess, "The Growth of the City," in Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and Roderick D. McKenzie, The City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925), pp. 47-62. 2 See William M. Dobriner, Class in Suburbia (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1963); William M. Dobriner (ed.), The Suburban ConnmuHnity (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1958); George A. Lundberg, Mirra Komarovsky, and Mary McInerny, Leisure: A Subnrbac Sttudy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934); William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1956); Sylvia Fava, "Suburbanism as a Way of Life," Americain Sociological Review, 21 (February 1956), pp. 3437; Herbert T. Gans, "Urbanism and Suburbanism as a Way of Life," in Arnold Rose (ed.), Human Behavior and Social Processes (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1961); Esref Shevky and Wendell Bell, Social Area Analysis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1955). 3 Robert C. Wood, Suburbia Its People and Their Politics (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1958) ; Scott Greer, "The Social Structure and Political Process of Suburbia," Aierican Sociological Review, 24 (October 1959), pp. 514-526; Scott Greer, Governing the Metropolis (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1962) ; Scott Greer, The Emerging City (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1962); G. Edward Janosik, "The New Suburbia," Current History, 31 (August 1956), pp. 91-95; Fred Greenstein and Raymond Wolfinger, "The Suburbs and Shifting Party Loyalties," Public Opinion QuarThis content downloaded from 157.55.39.111 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 05:19:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms CITY-SUBURBAN SOCIAL DISTANCE 101 these observations of social distance between city and suburb are to be politically meaningful, they must eventually be related to differences in the public policy choices of city and suburban governments. If cities and suburbs are differentiated along important social indices, we can expect real and persistent contrasts in the policy choices of their local governments. Persons with different occupations, educations, and incomes are likely to demand different types and emphases in government services. Families with children have different ideas about school systems than have those without children. Persons well-equipped to compete for jobs and income in a free market often view government welfare activities differently from those not so well-equipped. Persons who have a large investment in property view taxation in a different light from those who do not. And so on. The social patterns of suburban living help to determine the policies suburbanites choose for their governments to follow, and the same is true for the city. Differences in the social character of city and suburb can be expected to produce differences in public policy. The object of the research reported here is to describe in a systematic fashion contrasts in the policy choices of city and suburban governments which can be attributed to their separate social character. But before we examine contrasts in city and suburban policy choices, let us describe city-suburban social distance more precisely. First of all, a suburb is defined here to mean a densely settled nonagricultural community adjacent to and dependent upon a large central city.4 By "dependent" it is meant that suburban communities represent sources and destinations of the internal circulation of goods and people that make up the daily rhythm and activity of the large metropolis. A suburb may either supply manpower and consumers for the metropolis or it may use the manpower and produce the goods of the metropolis. Typically, perhaps, people who live in the suburbs work in the central city, but there are many examples of the reverse situation. And in larger urbanized areas people may live in one suburb and work in another. But the distinguishing feature of a suburb remains its economic dependency upon, and extensive intercourse with, the larger metropolis. Following U.S. Census Bureau usage, a suburb can be operationally defined as that part of an "urbanized area" lying outside of the central city. The Census Bureau identified 213 urbanized areas in the 1960 census. An urbanized area consists of a city of 50,000 or more plus its surrounding ring of contiguous high density suburban areas. This ring follows census enumeration districts and is not always coterminous with the boundaries of political units. This ring is the best operational approximation of the sociological concept of a suburb.5 The locus of this study was the five urbanized areas of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine, and Kenosha. In addition to the five central cities of these urbanized areas, 38 units of local government were selected to represent suburbia. These were the 38 local governments in Wisconsin which lay wholly within urbanized areas and, of course, outside of central cities. Generalizing about suburbs involves certain risks. While this study attempts to identify characteristics of suburbs and suburban governments, readers are cautioned that individual suburbs may be very different from one another.6 Differences between some suburbs may terly, 22 (Winter 1958), pp. 473-493; Jerome Manis and Leo Stine, "Suburban Residence and Political Behavior," Public OPpinion Quarterly, 23 (Winter 1959), pp. 483-489; Edward C. Banfield, "The Politics of Metropolitan Area Organization," Midzvest Journal of Political Science, 1 (May 1957), pp. 77-91. 4 See William T. Martin, "The Structuring of Social Relationships Engendered by Suburban Residence," American Sociological Review, 21 (August 1956), pp. 446-453. 5 The alternative approach is to define suburbia as that part of the "metropolitan area" lying outside of the central city. However, a "metropolitan area," in contrast to an "urbanized area," is defined by county !boundaries rather than population density, and includes rural territory with few social linkages with the metropolis. See U.S. Bureau of Census, U.S. Census of Population 1960, "Number of Inhabitants," PC(1)-1A (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961); and Richard A. Kurtz and Joanne B. Eicher, "Fringe and Suburb: A Confusion of Concepts," Social Forces, 37 (October 1958), pp. 32-37. 6See for example, Bennett M. Berger, Working Class Subu,rb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.111 on Sat, 17 Sep 2016 05:19:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms