Building Urban Governance: An Agenda for the 1990S

:Effective and democratic local self-governance is the basic building block of the federal system. It allows citizens to make and carry out important decisions affecting their day-to-day lives. To further this capacity, an agenda is needed that calls for: a sphere of relative fiscal and policy autonomy for localities in relation to the state and national government; equality of status and broad expansion of citizen participation in formal governing processes; legitimizing opportunities for nonhierarchical, open, and spontaneous forms of collective action; incorporating voluntary and nonprofit organizations and private firms as valuable resources and participants in the local polity; and building democratic and functional governing structures at the neighborhood and metropolitan levels.