ABSTRACT
It is strongly felt that urban public services have been the most neglected of all goods supplied in our society. Certainly, a day rarely passes that newspapers do not dwell on a problem that is being "inadequately" or "improperly" handled by local governments. Streets are congested, air is polluted, schools are crowded, police are ill equipped . . . The indictment is long. Is this the usual rhetoric of public debate, or is it indeed true that the urban public services are poorly supplied? And whether one judges the public services as impoverished or munificent, can we state, even approximately, the conditions for "optimal" provision? The answers to these questions are still not available, despite the considerable amount of attention economists have given to urban public services; for the record of sophisticated analysis is not very long. This survey, therefore, is more of a progress report on beginnings and better understood difficulties than a summary of findings.
