ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO URBAN PROBLEMS
with the county providing such services
as water and sewage removal in areas
not already served by municipalities.
In other instances, the county has been
given a substantially exclusive role in
such functions as planning and zoning.
In two counties, Baltimore and Howard,
the absence of incorporated municipali-
ties has required the county government
to assume full responsibility for urban
planning and services.
In other states, the most significant
example of a comprehensive urban
county plan is that of metropolitan
Miami, which was instituted in Dade
County, Florida, in July, 1957, by a
heavy majority of the electorate. The
approval of this plan was preceded by
overcoming two barriers which have
thus far proved insurmountable in most
states: state constitutional authorization
to draft a county charter and local voter
approval of the subsequent draft docu-
ment.
The metropolitan Miami charter pro-
vides for county-wide administration of
sewage collection and disposal; water
supply and conservation; planning of
arterial roads, bridges, and tunnels;
mass transportation; traffic control;
urban renewal; and other functions.
Each municipality in the county may
exercise all powers relating to local
affairs not inconsistent with the county
charter. Each may provide for higher
standards of zoning, service, and regu-
lation than those provided for the entire
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area in order to preserve its individual
character and standards.
Other communities have explored or
initiated the idea of strengthening the
county as a major urban unit. In Cleve-
land, a plan to consolidate a number of
area-wide functions under the county
government was proposed, but was
turned down by the voters in 1959 by a
narrow margin. New steps are now
underway to provide an acceptable for-
mula for urban county development in
Cleveland.
An additional technique for providing
services in urban areas is that of the
special authority, a corporate entity au-
thorized to conduct one or more specific
services in prescribed area. In Mary-
land, the most notable example of this
technique is the Washington Suburban
Sanitary Commission, an authority
which provides water, sewage removal,
trash collection, and certain related
services primarily in the bi-county area
adjacent to Washington, D. C. The
authority technique is most often criti-
cized for its lack of responsiveness to
residents and elected officials in the
areas it serves. It is most often recom-
mended for the ease with which it can
be created to resolve a major urban
problem in a given area. With the in-
creasing role of the county in urban
services in Maryland, the authority is
today more often proposed as a solution
to metropolitan rather than county or
county-municipal urban service prob-
lems.
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THE "METROPOLITAN" URBAN SETTING:
INTERCOUNTY AND REGIONAL SERVICES
While there is still much attention
focused on problems of urban services
at the municipal and county levels, the
most challenging questions of urban
governmental and service development
are those which involve bi-county and
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larger geographic areas.
I. Techniques of Geographic Change.
Unlike municipalities, which were orig-
inally designed and enabled to expand
geographically, counties, as they are
defined in Maryland today, are geo-
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