“Local politicians and not national politicians have an incentive to deliver on X, and so X should be devolved to local politics”
Sounds good to me in theory, much more complicated in practice, innit? How do you explain the Birmingham bins? Local politicians and certainly not national politicians are the ones with incentives to clean Birmingham’s streets.
Fragmentation is the worst politically. You can get the local perspective when you work collaboratively to get to a resolution.
As an inclusive urban strategist and centrist, I value the efficiency and coordination that centralized transportation projects can offer.
While the arguments in favour of fragmentation highlight some benefits, and seeing local politics have time and again cancelled projects with regional benefits, I believe centralized approaches have distinct advantages that align better with the needs of large-scale urban infrastructure projects. Seamless integration, consistency and standardization, economies of scale, long term planning and coordination are these reasons why centralization is the better option .
TBF to the author, his earlier article where he advocated for a form of decentralisation was about Madrid, a broader metropolitan region of over 3 million people.
The argument that the author is making isn't to decentralise planning powers down from central governments to the level of the local neighbourhoods or suburbs, like they do in places like California.
In situations where power is fragmented down to the level of each individual neighbourhood, like in many regions in the US, you do end up with highly dysfunctional outcomes as the political fragmentation creates collective action problems. But that isn't what the author seems to be advocating for
The argument that the author is making is to decentralise planning powers down from central governments to the level of broader metropolitan areas, like Madrid or Manchester.
As administrative units, these broader metropolitan areas include anywhere from several hundred thousand to several million people.
This means that they're less vulnerable to the political risk of localised Nimbyism, as elected authorities have to answer to the broader metropolitan region rather than solely to localised interest groups concentrated in individual neighbourhoods.
It also means that they're at a size and scale where they're able to achieve a more adequate middle ground between the need for "Seamless integration, consistency and standardization, economies of scale, long term planning and coordination" on one hand, and the need to be aware of, and responsive to, the specific and varying needs of different regions across a country.
You may not see that as a priority, but in places like the UK, political centralisation in Whitehall hasn't led to the British government "working collaboratively to get to a resolution" like you idealistically suggest.
Instead, because the Tories have dominated British politics for much of the last several decades, and their political support base is in the south, it's meant that for decades, the British government has consistently disregarded the needs for funding and resources in the the parts of Northern England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that don't vote for the Tories.
Political centralisation hasn't led to the British government "working collaboratively to get to a resolution" with northern cities like Manchester. It instead led to the British government continuously turning their nose and laughing, while the infrastructure of these non-Tory regions fell into a state of disrepair and decay from lack of funding.
A certain degree of political decentralisation down to metropolitan regions like Manchester, both in terms of planning and funding, would help mitigate the risk of this type of neglectful government.
“Local politicians and not national politicians have an incentive to deliver on X, and so X should be devolved to local politics”
Sounds good to me in theory, much more complicated in practice, innit? How do you explain the Birmingham bins? Local politicians and certainly not national politicians are the ones with incentives to clean Birmingham’s streets.
Fragmentation is the worst politically. You can get the local perspective when you work collaboratively to get to a resolution.
As an inclusive urban strategist and centrist, I value the efficiency and coordination that centralized transportation projects can offer.
While the arguments in favour of fragmentation highlight some benefits, and seeing local politics have time and again cancelled projects with regional benefits, I believe centralized approaches have distinct advantages that align better with the needs of large-scale urban infrastructure projects. Seamless integration, consistency and standardization, economies of scale, long term planning and coordination are these reasons why centralization is the better option .
TBF to the author, his earlier article where he advocated for a form of decentralisation was about Madrid, a broader metropolitan region of over 3 million people.
The argument that the author is making isn't to decentralise planning powers down from central governments to the level of the local neighbourhoods or suburbs, like they do in places like California.
In situations where power is fragmented down to the level of each individual neighbourhood, like in many regions in the US, you do end up with highly dysfunctional outcomes as the political fragmentation creates collective action problems. But that isn't what the author seems to be advocating for
The argument that the author is making is to decentralise planning powers down from central governments to the level of broader metropolitan areas, like Madrid or Manchester.
As administrative units, these broader metropolitan areas include anywhere from several hundred thousand to several million people.
This means that they're less vulnerable to the political risk of localised Nimbyism, as elected authorities have to answer to the broader metropolitan region rather than solely to localised interest groups concentrated in individual neighbourhoods.
It also means that they're at a size and scale where they're able to achieve a more adequate middle ground between the need for "Seamless integration, consistency and standardization, economies of scale, long term planning and coordination" on one hand, and the need to be aware of, and responsive to, the specific and varying needs of different regions across a country.
You may not see that as a priority, but in places like the UK, political centralisation in Whitehall hasn't led to the British government "working collaboratively to get to a resolution" like you idealistically suggest.
Instead, because the Tories have dominated British politics for much of the last several decades, and their political support base is in the south, it's meant that for decades, the British government has consistently disregarded the needs for funding and resources in the the parts of Northern England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that don't vote for the Tories.
Political centralisation hasn't led to the British government "working collaboratively to get to a resolution" with northern cities like Manchester. It instead led to the British government continuously turning their nose and laughing, while the infrastructure of these non-Tory regions fell into a state of disrepair and decay from lack of funding.
A certain degree of political decentralisation down to metropolitan regions like Manchester, both in terms of planning and funding, would help mitigate the risk of this type of neglectful government.