Localism, Self-Interest, and the Tyranny of the Favored Quarter: Addressing the Barriers to New Regionalism

Abstract

This article argues that our nation\u27s ideological commitment to decentralized local governance has helped to create the phenomenon of the favored quarter. Localism, or the ideological commitment to local governance, has helped to produce fragmented metropolitan regions stratified by race and income. This fragmentation produces a collective action problem or regional prisoner\u27s dilemma that is well-known in the local governance literature