ABSTRACT
Leadership in the Quad Cities, having always enjoyed the area's excellent position in the national economy, was surprised by the collapse in the 1970s but was able to regroup and launch its civil community on a new course by the end of the 1980s. Hence, almost all of the successful activity in the civil community was directed toward economic improvements and such civic improvements as were perceived to be necessary to achieve economic success. Once the formal boundaries of local government are rejected as inadequate, it is not easy to find other ones to substitute for them. For many years there was a tendency to use standard metropolitan areas, later called standard metropolitan statistical areas, as the new boundaries, but they followed county lines everywhere except in New England. Especially in the West they embraced huge areas that clearly were not part of the civil community even if they were included as "metropolitan" on the maps.
