ABSTRACT
The broad scope of municipal involvement in the provision of public utilities and the wide variations found in the degree of involvement bring to the fore the problems of discussing this issue in meaningful terms. To reduce this problem to manageable proportions, only three services—water, transportation and electricity-are discussed here and only in terms of ownership, economic and financial inputs and geographic extension. To ensure that this will not lead to too confined a conception of municipal involvement in the field of public enterprise it is appropriate to commence with a more general review of the scope of municipal enterprises.
