Leora Waldner

Client-based Courses: Variations in Service Learning

Abstract This article explores the use of service learning in nontraditional course formats such as distance learning, compressed timeframe (nine-week) courses, with adult graduate student learners, based on explorations in seven courses. The authors’ experiences suggest that service learning, or client-based courses, can be successfully utilized in these contexts. Other successful variations on the concept included client-sharing and client-based course collaboration among academic departments, stakeholder-based presentations, and newspaper articles as a template for a service learning course. The paper also explores the general benefits of client-based courses in public administration and other courses, as well as their logistics and limitations.

Why New Cities Form An Examination into Municipal Incorporation in the United States 1950–2010

Municipal incorporation can have profound impacts on the urban and political geography of the regions in which they incorporate. These impacts and declines in the rate of municipal formation lead to the question of why municipalities incorporate. The authors synthesize an overview and analysis of the historical literature with a media literature review to construct a comprehensive classification system of theories that explain municipal incorporations. Twelve new micromotives such as eligibility for government grants and economic development are identified. Moreover, the review surprisingly reveals that spatial motives, in contrast to service motives, play the largest role in new municipal incorporations.

Serving up Justice: Fusing Service Learning and Social Equity in the Public Administration Classroom

Abstract Fusing the concepts of social justice and service learning can create a powerful pedagogical framework for public administration courses. This article explores this fusion framework and its use in a graduate public policy analysis course where local government partnered with faculty to address health disparities. The students utilized the tenets of policy analysis to produce best practices research and a policy analysis on health disparities for the local government client. Social equity can be used both as a delivery mechanism for course content and to produce useful products for a community partner via service-learning. In this model, students not only learn about social equity but also actually participate in social equity work in the context of the class setting, in the process enhancing classroom engagement, skill development, and awareness of social justice through the lens of health disparities.

TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL DIMENSIONS OF NEWLY INCORPORATED MUNICIPALITIES IN THE UNITED STATES

Scholarly literature on newly incorporated municipalities (nims) often focuses on why nims form. Instead of asking why nims formed, however, we ask why nims stopped forming. We first establish a temporal context for nims from 1950 to 2010, revealing an 86.2 percent decline in nim formation. The decline, triggered by stricter laws, smaller annexations, declining suburbanization, and boundary ossification, has profound implications for metropolitan fragmentation and public choice. We then establish a state‐level spatial context, revealing distinct high‐nim, low‐nim, and flux states due to boundary ossification, growth, and state/regional policy stimuli such as consolidation efforts, grants, and growth management provisions.

Regional plans, local fates? How spatially restrictive regional policies influence county policy and regulations

Councils of governments create regional comprehensive plans to shape the future development of their regions. However, actual implementation often depends on local governments that control land use. How, if at all, did two Atlanta Regional Development Plans (RDPs) influence local government policies? Interviews and comparisons of regional and local policies reveal that the RDP planning process clearly and causally influenced voluntary local comprehensive plans, but not subsequent local land-use regulations. However, the RDPs served other functions, such as data provision. Thus, it is useful to incorporate a communicative evaluation approach to examine the broader functions of the planning process, rather than strictly examining the conformance outcomes of the plan policies.

Why majority-minority cities form: non-White municipal incorporation in the United States, 1990–2010

ABSTRACT Forty-four majority-minority cities formed in the United States between 1990 and 2010. Why did these cities form in Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native-American majority and other non-White communities? Do these cities form to escape annexation, improve services, and control land use, as most new cities do? Or are other factors at play, such as race and social justice? Using a detailed content analysis, we explore the genesis of newly incorporated municipalities in non-White communities. Our findings reveal that while most majority-minority cities form due to standard stimuli, some majority-minority cities form in direct response to racism (rebound incorporations, environmental racism, and under-provision of services). Moreover, when compared to all new cities, majority-minority cities form more often due to nuisances and less often due to annexation threats and growth control, thus illuminating the role institutional racism plays in municipal incorporation.

New Cities of Color Socioeconomic Differentiation between Majority–Minority New Cities and White New Cities

Scholars often portray newly incorporated municipalities as white, wealthy suburbs. Yet this study reveals that 10 percent of new cities (forty-four cities) formed between 1990 and 2010 are black, Hispanic, Asian, and/or Native American majority cities. A careful examination of the data reveals not just racial differences but significant socioeconomic differences between new cities of color (CoCs) and majority white cities. By employing a probit model of statistical analysis, this research reveals that CoCs differ socioeconomically from majority white incorporating communities on variables such as median family income, average household size, and more.