ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the local government is presently being defined and disputed, focusing on the state of the public and private dimensions of cities and suggesting some administrative consequences of the changes that are occurring. Politicians, bureaucrats, businesspeople, journalists, and academics have lavished attention and praise on Reinventing Government. The depth of uncertainty today over the concept of cities is remarkable, but the existence of uncertainty is nothing new, as it is a permanent feature of the American polity. The decline of "the public" in localities is occurring in tandem with a radical relaxation of the traditional boundaries of private local governance, but these trends are not merely flip sides of a coin. The diminishment of the public sphere of cities and the expansion and transformation of the private sphere are the most crucial components of the uncertain context of American local government.
