Conceptual approaches to service provision in cities throughout history

Michael E Smith, Timothy Dennehy, April Kamp-Whittaker, Benjamin W Stanley, Barbara L Stark and Abigail York
Additional contact information
Michael E Smith: Arizona State University, USA
Timothy Dennehy: Arizona State University, USA
April Kamp-Whittaker: Arizona State University, USA
Benjamin W Stanley: Arizona State University, USA
Barbara L Stark: Arizona State University, USA
Abigail York: Arizona State University, USA

Urban Studies, 2016, vol. 53, issue 8, 1574-1590

Abstract: All cities, from the distant past to the present, provide services for their residents, but the nature and level of urban services vary widely, as do the providers. How are we to understand this variation? We examine the major theoretical and conceptual approaches to urban services, and find that none is sufficiently comprehensive to explain patterns of service provision in all types of cities: public choice theory, co-production, critical theory, urban political ecology, collective action theory, and social integration. We use two premodern cities – Zanzibar and Tikal – to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of these theories. A major challenge is to account for both central administrative control of services and more generative, bottom-up service provision.

Keywords: collective action; comparative urbanism; inequality; public choice; urban services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098015577915 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:53:y:2016:i:8:p:1574-1590

DOI: 10.1177/0042098015577915

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().