Would you support these major American cities consolidating with their parent counties? (neighborhoods, schools)

[manitopiaaa]

In 1965, the United Kingdom passed the London Government Act 1963. The bifurcation of the London metropolitan area was seen as weakening the city’s competitiveness globally. Before that, “London” was essentially an amalgamation of 28 metropolitan boroughs which operated nominally under the “County of London,” a rather weak institution that essentially meant the biggest city in the U.K. was split into 28 disparate parts.

The 1963 Act created Greater London and set in stone a model of metropolitan consolidation that has served the city well. In the U.S., examples include New York’s successful 1898 consolidation, as well as smaller successes in Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Louisville, and Nashville.

Though these consolidations have proven successful, state governments have not been drawn to act to force these types of consolidations. As local governments exist only at the whims of the state (it’s a unitary relationship, unlike the relationship between states and the federal government), a state legislature could essentially force, via simple state law, a merger between a city and its parent county.

This could: (a) reduce bureaucratic duplication (no more need for 50 county clerks in a county of 1,000,000, for example), (b) reduce poverty, by ensuring suburban funds aren’t walled off from the central city, (c) increase funds for school (see (b), (d) improve effectiveness and eliminate the center city-suburban squabbling that has killed off progress in so many metros (cities wouldn't be competing with their suburbs, but would be part of the same entity).

Most importantly, in these scenarios, because county governments exist in nearly all cases, all you’d have to do is essentially convert all existing city staff to county staff on Day 1. Then the county would be able to reduce or augment as needed.

So if it were up to you, how many of these county-consolidation mergers would you support? For some of these, like Philadelphia and San Francisco, they are technically already independent counties, though unusually small in size. So the option would see them merge with another adjacent county.

The poll options above exclude the population counts (2019 estimates) and land area of the new entity, so these are provided here as reference:

• Atlanta-Fulton County: 1,063,937 people – 527 square mi. land
• Austin-Travis County: 1,273,954 people – 990 square mi. land
• Boston-Suffolk County: 803,907 people – 58 square mi. land
• Charlotte-Mecklenburg County: 1,110,356 people – 524 square mi. land
• Chicago-Cook County: 5,150,233 people – 945 square mi. land
• Cincinnati-Hamilton County: 817,473 people – 406 square mi. land
• Cleveland-Cuyahoga County: 1,235,072 people – 457 square mi. land
• Dallas-Dallas County: 2,635,516 people – 873 square mi. land
• Denver-Jefferson County: 1,310,092 people – 917 square mi. land
• Detroit-Wayne County: 1,749,343 people – 612 square mi. land
• Houston-Harris County: 4,698,619 people – 1,703 square mi. land
• Kansas City-Jackson County: 703,011 people – 604 square mi. land
• Las Vegas-Clark County: 2,266,715 people – 7,891 square mi. land
• Los Angeles-Los Angeles County: 10,039,107 people – 4,058 square mi. land
• Memphis-Shelby County: 937,166 people – 763 square mi. land
• Miami-Miami-Dade County: 2,716,940 people – 1,899 square mi. land
• Minneapolis-Hennepin County: 1,278,869 people – 554 square mi. land
• Nashville-Davidson County*: 694,144 people – 504 square mi. land
• New Orleans-Jefferson County: 822,637 people – 465 square mi. land
• New York-Merge 5 Counties To 1: 8,336,817 people – 300 square mi. land
• Orlando-Orange County: 1,393,452 people – 903 square mi. land
• Philadelphia-Montgomery County: 2,414,979 people – 617 square mi. land
• Phoenix-Maricopa County: 4,485,414 people – 9,200 square mi. land
• Pittsburgh-Allegheny County: 1,216,045 people – 730 square mi. land
• Portland-Multnomah County: 812,855 people – 431 square mi. land
• Saint Louis-Saint Louis County: 1,294,781 people – 560 square mi. land
• Salt Lake City-Salt Lake County: 1,160,437 people – 742 square mi. land
• San Diego-San Diego County: 3,338,330 people – 4,207 square mi. land
• San Francisco-San Mateo County: 1,648,122 people – 495 square mi. land
• Seattle-King County: 2,252,782 people – 2,116 square mi. land
• Tampa-Hillsborough County: 1,471,968 people – 1,020 square mi. land
• Washington-Alexandria-Arlington**: 1,102,019 people – 102 square mi. land

*Though Nashville and Davidson County are consolidated, there are 4 cities within Davidson County that are still independent, so it’s not a full merger. This option would abolish these cities and fold them into Nashville as well.

**Because D.C. cannot expand, this proposal would be a bit bolder and far more politically bombastic, but would essentially ask Congress to return Alexandria and Arlington County to D.C.

[Champ le monstre du lac]

There are very wide variances of parent counties between Maricopa Couty, AZ and Suffolk County, MA. For cities like Phoenix the population would triple and Boston would have very negligible gains.

Boston would have to cut into Middlesex County to make any real impact. Middlesex County includes adjacent dense urban cities like Cambridge, Somervillle, and Malden, but also stretches out to rural towns like Ashby on the NH state line, For New England cities, the county idea wouldn't work well. It would require a different formula with portions of multiple counties. Everything inside I-95/128 as a roughly drafted boundary would make sense. But the consolidation idea would be dead on arrival by the multitude of old incorporated cities and towns inside metro Boston.

[btownboss4]

London’s Boroughs function a lot like towns. They have their own schools, parks department, DPW’s etc.

Greater London runs police, fire, transit. Living in Kensington vs Croydon isn’t that different than living in Cleveland vs Lakewood

[BostonBornMassMade]

I’m fine with Boston simply expanding into Suffolk County. Not a big deal.

Las Vegas should also just be Clark County

[sub]

Kansas City exists in 3 different counties to quite a large extent, and a tiny piece of a 4th.
Not going to happen.

Suburbs continue to exist and to grow because people don’t trust the larger city’s ability to properly provide basic city services. It’s not just white flight anymore, people from all backgrounds now move to the suburbs for better schools and basic city services that are properly carried out: police and fire protection, streets maintained above third-world level, schools that focus on academics over... other things.
Maybe this sort of thing works in other countries, but consolidating would only grow a bigger target for people to avoid.
Of course there is a smaller crowd driving the resurgence of many cities, but a lot of people still have families to think about.
I say this as someone who likes cities and Kansas City just happens to be one of my favorites.

[RocketSci]

Houston is primarily in Harris County, but sections of the city are also in Fort Bend and Montgomery counties. So, as with KC above, not going to happen.

[annie_himself]

New Orleans is already consolidated with its Parish (county). Jefferson Parish is not synonymous with Orleans Parish.

[lammius]

Philadelphia already merged/absorbed all of Philadelphia County. Montgomery County is one of several neighboring counties, but Phila is not part of it. I’d think Delaware County might be a more likely merger candidate.

[Texamichiforniasota]

Definitely a big NO for LA, the County is way too big. The County operated services tend to be a little more dysfunctional than the city services since the departments are so huge.

Houston is already such a big chunk of Harris County that it could be a maybe, but as RocketSci points out, Texas cities aren't constrained by county borders, so consolidating them would mean cutting neighborhoods out that lie outside the primary county. Dallas and Austin are also big portions of their primary county. Not on your list, but San Antonio-Bexar would be 2,003,554 in 1256 sqmi.

Minneapolis might be a good option. Already the St/Ave numbering and lettering system carries out into the distant suburbs, and it is one of the most Fragmented metros (Data from a 1997 paper, so there may be some new cities, and the populations have changed, but overall a reasonable estimate):

Metro-------------- Local Govts/100K pop
OC, California -----------1.3
Atlanta --------------------- 4.3
New England CSA -----7.0
Chicago---------------------6.3
Dallas------------------------5.8
Detroit-----------------------5.1
Houston-------‐------------2.6
Los Angeles--------------1.0
Minneapolis-St. Paul-13.5
New York------------------1.0
Philadelphia--------------7.4
Riverside-San Bernadino-1.9
San Diego------------------0.8
St. Louis-------------------12.5
Washington, D.C.-------2.7
Average---------------------4.4

Of course, there are many counties in the Twin Cities MSA, and less than 1/3 of the MSA pop lives in Hennepin County. The Twin Cities already have the Met Council which is involved in regional planning/coordination and makes up for the fragmentation, so I don't know that there would be much to gain by a merger. Maybe moving the city up on those biggest city lists or moderating city politics? Hennepin County is still liberal, just more moderate than the city itself.

From the above list, St. Louis + St. Louis County might be a good one.

[jcp123]

I mean, SF is already consolidated with its own county. San Mateo county as a whole is a different character from SF itself.

The others I don’t know enough about the counties to comment. Counties always sort of pass my by for whatever reason.