"Metropolitan Fragmentation," or, When Cities Divide and Hoard

Until 2012, two separate public school systems operated in the greater Memphis area. Memphis City Schools consisted of schools within the city limits. Shelby County Schools consisted of schools outside Memphis, in such small towns as Arlington, Germantown, and Bartlett. Then in 2012, Memphis City Schools gave up its charter. All schools formerly in its jurisdiction were assigned to Shelby County Schools, which by default became a single, county-wide system.

There was one problem, though. The students who were enrolled in what used to be Memphis City Schools were mostly black and Hispanic. All of a sudden, the Arlingtons and Germantowns and Bartletts of the county, whose populations are mostly white, were sharing a system with lots of black and brown students, who attended schools that many county parents regarded as "bad."

So what happened? The small towns in the county began forming their own school systems, systems that were independent from the new, county-wide system, arguing for the virtues of "local control." Where there was formerly a single, county-wide system, there are today seven or eight separate systems.

What happened in Memphis and Shelby County is a perfect example of what three researchers at MIT call "metropolitan fragmentation." Metropolitan fragmentation happens when multiple jurisdictions are created out of one and when those new jurisdictions organize to "hoard" resources.

The researchers—Yonah Freemark, Justin Steil, and Kathleen Thelen—discuss metropolitan fragmentation in an article that appears in the June 2020 issue of Politics & Society. In their article they produce evidence showing that fragmentation occurs far more frequently in the United States than in other advanced Western countries. To be sure, "no rich democracy," they write, "escapes the problems of spatial inequality that characterize metropolitan life." Nevertheless, as they explain,

the degree to which municipal boundaries are associated with highly unequal policy packages and public services is particularly pronounced in the United States. Indeed, the strategies commonly deployed by affluent US communities to separate themselves—administratively and fiscally—from their less affluent neighbors are virtually unthinkable in many other industrialized democracies.

As Freemark, Steil, and Thelen point out, there are pros and cons to local control. They build on those arguments by comparing different cities over time: Boston, San Francisco, Toronto, London, and Paris. What they find is that Toronto, London, and Paris have worked to make fragmentation harder and less rewarding, whereas Boston and San Francisco have done just the opposite. The authors hope that the example of London, Toronto and Paris can be a model for US lawmakers who want to combat fragmentation—who want to prevent communities from leaving larger jurisdictions and hoarding resources.