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Regional planning in the United States.

Reasons people have supported regional governance
Regionalist proponents sought regional governance for multiple reasons: muncipal fragmentation, suburban sprawl, and

Municipal fragmentation
Municipal fragmentation is the idea that metropolitan areas in America are overrun with a slew of competing and inefficient municipal governments which operate both vertically and horizontally. Vertical fragmentation exists where governing jurisdictions overlap—like when a special district for fire protection services sits within a county’s borders. To regionalists, this sort of fragmentation is inefficient as it forces each government within a larger jurisdiction to draw from the same fiscal pool. In states with weak annexation laws like South Carolina, special districts can also prevent the expansion of urban areas.

Horizontal fragmentation occurs when multiple general-purpose governments are present in the same metropolitan area. Opponents of this particular spatial arrangement believe that it is inefficient because an array of small governments are incapable of taking advantage of economies of scale. Further, the presence of multiple small governments results in interlocal competition between governments. As a result, the region as a whole is harmed because each government pursues its own interests. This is commonly seen when a jurisdiction lowers its taxes or uses tax increment financing to entice the movement of businesses from its neighbors. There are, however, proponents of horizontal fragmentation—scholars who believe that it leads to greater competition between local governments to better provide services and prevents governments from imposing higher tax rates on residents. These proponents believe that it allows potential residents to shop amongst different jurisdictions for the governmental services they need or desire.

Both forms of municipal fragmentation started to appear in the years following World War II. Suburban areas, traditionally favorable to the idea of annexation as a way to receive crucial governmental services such as water rights, began avoiding that process and forming special single‑purpose districts instead. They started to do that just as land use regulation became more of a municipal prerogative, incorporation became easier, and annexation became harder. Thus, from 1950 to 1990, the country transitioned from having 70% of its citizens living in central cities to having 60% of them living in the suburbs. As a result, the number of governmental units in America nearly doubled from 24,500 in 1942 to 50,834 in 1992. Twenty years later, this number had increased to 89,004.

Municipal fragmentation allows incorporated suburbs to zone only for low-density housing sprawl.

Suburban sprawl
Concerned by the issues that suburban sprawl causes, particularly traffic congestion, early progressive reformers advocated for regional government. These proponents first sought a particular type of reform— the multi‑tiered metropolitan government. Think of it as a local government but for an entire metropolitan region. Proponents believed that such an organizational scheme would provide for economies of scale in the provision of services, reduce economic inefficiencies caused by interlocal government competition, and allow those affected by local land use policies to have a say on what those policies should be.