City Limits

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: Exceptional analysis of city limits

Rating:
Summary: Quite possibly the worst "academic" book in history
Review: I read this book while an undergraduate when I took a course in urban politics. Without doubt, it is the worst "academic" book I have ever read. Prof. Peterson's writing is brutally hard to follow. Granted, the topic is quite dry, but the author's writing makes it even worse. When I was finished, I had learned absolutely nothing, having wasted many hours of my life I shall never get back. Prof. Peterson would do well to learn from colleagues Lowi and Shefter how to write on dry topics with some panache.

Rating:
Summary: Quite possibly the worst "academic" book in history
Review: I read this book while an undergraduate when I took a course in urban politics. Without doubt, it is the worst "academic" book I have ever read. Prof. Peterson's writing is brutally hard to follow. Granted, the topic is quite dry, but the author's writing makes it even worse. When I was finished, I had learned absolutely nothing, having wasted many hours of my life I shall never get back. Prof. Peterson would do well to learn from colleagues Lowi and Shefter how to write on dry topics with some panache.

Rating:
Summary: Yeah it's dry
Review: Paul Peterson makes an obvious point: there are limits to the service obligations cities can safely take on. However, it is substantially more complex than that commonsensical point.

Cities face a dilemma, they must balance the requirements they have to provide services with the tax loads they can adequately impose on their citizens. Provide too little in the way of services and the quality of life in the city suffers. Provide too many or too varied a service mix and the taxing requirements to fund these services will drive the productive population beyond the physical limits of the city.

Cities must provide services to the poor. If they do not, the social pathologies of the poor then drive down the attractiveness of the city as a place for entrepreneurial activity. So cities must spend and tax productive populations (those consuming services in a negative ratio to the taxes they contribute) in order to fund these services. However, tax too much and provide too many services and the productive populations will exit the city to more tax friendly areas. Due to the spatial limits of cities, cities cannot extend their taxing reach. Thus cities must provide the bare essentials and encourage economic growth.

The solution to the dilemma is to allow the federal government to provide the majority of redistributive (aid to the poor) services and focus, as a city, on the provision of distributive (road repair, police) and regulatory services (health, sanitation).

Not a ringing cry to help your fellow man, but a cogent analysis of the fiscal demands and limitations facing urban America.

Urbanists, planners and public administration scholars will encounter this book somewhere in their professional training.

John C. McKee

Rating:
Summary: Yeah it's dry
Review: Paul Peterson makes an obvious point: there are limits to the service obligations cities can safely take on. However, it is substantially more complex than that commonsensical point.

Cities face a dilemma, they must balance the requirements they have to provide services with the tax loads they can adequately impose on their citizens. Provide too little in the way of services and the quality of life in the city suffers. Provide too many or too varied a service mix and the taxing requirements to fund these services will drive the productive population beyond the physical limits of the city.

Cities must provide services to the poor. If they do not, the social pathologies of the poor then drive down the attractiveness of the city as a place for entrepreneurial activity. So cities must spend and tax productive populations (those consuming services in a negative ratio to the taxes they contribute) in order to fund these services. However, tax too much and provide too many services and the productive populations will exit the city to more tax friendly areas. Due to the spatial limits of cities, cities cannot extend their taxing reach. Thus cities must provide the bare essentials and encourage economic growth.

The solution to the dilemma is to allow the federal government to provide the majority of redistributive (aid to the poor) services and focus, as a city, on the provision of distributive (road repair, police) and regulatory services (health, sanitation).

Not a ringing cry to help your fellow man, but a cogent analysis of the fiscal demands and limitations facing urban America.

Urbanists, planners and public administration scholars will encounter this book somewhere in their professional training.

John C. McKee