number of suburbs on the other, each can protect what it regards as its vital stake in the metropolitan development. As suggested in chapters II-B and IV-B of the report, examples of devices that may facilitate compromise and accommodation include weighted representation, veto power, an extraordinary vote on certain issues, and various combinations of these. A scheme providing for a set of blocs representing different interests, perhaps with representatives of the Governor or the State legislature as the more general interest groups, would be worth considering-certainly where the home rule provisions permit such an arrangement. One system which merits scrutiny is to have the State legislative delegation from the metropolitan area constitute the metropolitan planning commission, using the same system of voting apportionment as in the State legislature. State representatives might be in a better position to arrange trades and reach compromises, and can avoid the overemphasis on local property tax issues which often impedes cooperation. D. THE PRODUCTS CONTENTS OF THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN State legislatures should attempt to define with some precision the subject matter and purpose of metropolitan planning. Its role as a guide to the private land developer and investor should be clarified. The legislature should provide clear direction for the metropolitan planning agency to concern itself with subjects of metropolitan significance rather than local concerns that have no area wide repercussions. In practice, metropolitan elements and local elements in a particular function of planning must be separated, though it would be difficult to specify the details in State legislation. As an illustration, Appendix B of this report analyzes in detail the constituent elements of planning of transportation facilities in the areas in which metropolitan planning competence exists, as opposed to local planning competence. If metropolitan planning is to be useful, it must concentrate upon aspects of issues that are clearly of metropolitan significance and operate only within the agency's special competence. The chief areas of metropolitan planning concern are likely to be transportation, housing, renewal, industrial development, open space and recreation, water and air pollution, utility systems, and efforts to eliminate poverty. In each of these, as amplified in this report, there is a special metropolitan concern which should be isolated and that calls for a different type of consideration than can be given on the local level. Legislative policy can help to point out those aspects of development which should, but do not, receive consideration on a metropolitan level and can help to indicate what is a proper allocation of functions between the local and metropolitan units. Legislative guidance to State public officers and agencies responsible for the planning and control of land use is becoming increasingly necessary with the pressures of competing users upon the naturally limited supply of land within each locality. Integrating responsibility for the overall review of aspects of the planning system in a State planning agency is the next natural development. E. CONCLUSION: THE COERCION OF FACTS Within the present government structure, metropolitan planning agencies can make available a different package of benefits to the different levels of government. Private developers and State courts can be furnished with policies by which to resolve conflicts in land-use controls. Metropolitan planning can help develop a wider range of opportunity and choice as to housing types, community facilities, and forms of urban community if it becomes linked to the local-Federal axis and to the Federal programs which affect the course of metropolitan development. In default of such action there will be waste, greater expense to the taxpayer, difficulties for developers and investors, and lost opportunities for a wider variety and higher quality of metropolitan land development. At times, opponents of metropolitan planning speak as if some sinister conspiracy of bureaucrats were foisting another level of government upon their area. But the coercion of facts remains. Population and economic activities are spreading over traditional political lines; existing agencies cannot cope with the land development problems spawned by erratic growth. A mass of small decisions-by market forces and local government units-distort the solution of problems of metropolitan scope. The varied dissatisfactions finally have triggered a social search process which is leading to new views on how best to meet the demands of citizens in metropolitan areas. As President Kennedy stated in his housing message to Congress in 1961, "increasingly, community development must be a cooperative venture toward the common goals of a metropolitan region as a whole." Again, this was the conclusion announced by President Johnson in 1964 as necessary to assure that "the taxpayer's dollar is to be wisely used and our communities are to be desirable places in which to live." |