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Decentralizing the City: a Study of Boston's Little City Halls

出版	M.I.T. Press, 1972
主題	Architecture / Urban & Land Use PlanningPolitical Science / Public Affairs & AdministrationPolitical Science / American Government / GeneralPolitical Science / American Government / Local
ISBN	02621401609780262140164
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=sHhPAAAAMAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Boston's fourteen Little City Halls and the Office of Public Service, which administers them, is an experiment that Joseph S. Slavet, Director of the Boston Urban Observatory, calls "one of the more innovative and controversial models of urban decentralization operating throughout the nation."Mayor Kevin White's Little City Hall program has aimed to increase governmental responsiveness, reduce citizen alienation, and improve city services. This study places the program in a historical-conceptual context beginning with Jefferson's and Madison's opposing views on decentralization and then examines in detail its problems and achievements, relationships with municipal agencies, department commissioners, the Mayor's Office, community groups, and neighborhood residents. It also offers a theoretical analysis of the behavior and performance characteristics of the Boston bureaucracy, which is applicable to other cities.The Little City Hall model emerges as an especially attractive prospect when compared to three other decentralization models (Bureaucratic, Governmental, and Representational). In fulfilling its major functions, this study rates the Boston program "high" on complaint-referral services, "moderate" on the management and improvement of city services, and "low" on facilitation of community participation. Obviously, there are problems that remain to be worked out. The program's "bread-and-butter" function (complaint-referral services) has encouraged and made it easier for 80,000 citizens to register and receive action on their complaints each year, whether their city hall is one of five large stationary trailers or an old municipal building or rented office, indicating that large municipal governments "can" respond to the needs of city residents. And because Boston's Little City Hall program is city-wide, covering black as well as white working-class ethnic groups, and because it has been in effect for several years in a major city with more than its share of urban ills and bureaucratic snags, the study's observations, data, and conclusions deserve the serious attention of other cities as they start or expand their own Little City Halls.