Scale, The Silo Effect and Intergovernmental Cooperation: Institutional Analysis Of Global-City Development and Ecological Sustainability

American global cities include only 25 percent of the U.S. urban population, but are at the nexus of U.S. and world economies and culture. While recognized as compelling world stages and mighty seats of power, they also contain the ingredients of a “full-spectrum problem” for public policymaking. They exist in huge scale, overwhelming complexity, and in paradox regarding globalization’s forces behind urban development and the limits of ecological carrying capacity. Furthermore, their urban governmental jurisdictions are often mismatched with the problem’s central elements, and policy outcomes frequently reflect difficulty achieving cooperative intergovernmental behavior. This paper examines the ability of multinucleated urban government in dealing effectively with issues of scale, complexity and paradox, and to identify criteria necessary to improve policymaking for global cities.

As previous research suggests (Boschken, 2013, 2008), global cities are a special case in the American urban experience. Due to the skewed configuration and momentum imparted by contemporary globalization, they have evolved along a different path than America’s other metropolitan areas. This path is characterized by their centrality in a corporate global economy and by the enrichment of other conditions regarding political culture, lifestyle and consumption. But, most important, American global cities have enormous footprints extending beyond their regional confines, enabling globalization’s developmental requisites to influence a nation’s entire socioeconomic and ecological condition.   

Although atypical in these respects, global cities are similar to other cities in their polycentric governmental structure, consisting of general-function city and county governments, special districts, and regional planning, development and regulatory agencies. Although superior to a unitary bureaucracy in dealing with complexity and systemic interdependencies, multinucleated government nevertheless raises concerns about collaborative, integrated, evidence-based policymaking. This paper examines intergovernmental impediments to collective policymaking and poses structural-design reforms that could improve policy response to the problems of scale, complexity and the sustainability paradox.