Divided Regions

Since the 1980s, the American federal government has devolved a wide array of crucial policy decisions--from transportation to welfare initiatives--to the state and local levels. With a decrease in federal aid and an increase in the number of tools available to lower tiers of government, scholars of American urban politics have suggested that cooperation among metropolitan jurisdictions could help address critical political and policy challenges, including inequities in municipal resources and unfettered suburban sprawl. This dissertation argues that metropolitan political segregation--that is, geographically-based political divisions--represents a serious obstacle to these partnerships and remains poorly understood. This project thus has two goals: to explain variations in metropolitan political segregation and explore their consequences for regional coalition-building.