The Government of a Metropolitan Region

Metropolitan areas in all parts of the United States suffer from an excess of governmental units and from a lack of machinery that is sufficiently flexible to keep up with the ever extending urban sprawl.Students of metropolitan problems generally agree that there is a critical need to deal with the metropolis as a whole.To do this in most instances will call for imaginative inventiveness.Although in a sense a metropolitan area is a "local" area, in contrast to the state or the nation, in another sense it is a different -thing than the county, the city or the township, the traditional units of local government.Are we to destroy these traditional units in the metropolitan areas?Should we further complicate the structure of government by creating yet another level-the metropolitan municipality?Probably each metropolitan area will evolve something that is peculiar to its area, born out of the peculiar needs, political history and economy of the area.Let us examine the efforts made in one area to do that. DEFINITION OF THE METROPOLITAN AREABefore one can speak effectively of the problems of governing the Los Angeles metropolitan region, one must establish a working definition of the region being discussed.Such a definition is a basic necessity not only because the requirements of logical discussion compel it but also because the metropolitan region does not exist in law as a unit of government.The task of marking out a definition is made more difficult, however, by the fact that there is no widespread agreement as to what criteria shall be applied in identifying metropolitan regions generally as phenomena of urban development, nor is there agreement as to how the Los Angeles region in particular should be demarcated.If we are to take the definition of a standard metropolitan area proposed by the United States Bureau of the Census and accept its application to the Los Angeles area, we have a definition that follows a generally useful norm and one which is widely understood.The Los