ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we address whether governmental fragmentation in a metropolitan area is related to the governance that occurs there. (See also Chapter 8 for a look at this issue in four quite different metro areas.) Hence, our title: does less (fragmentation) mean more (metropolitan governance)? The test case for examining this question is the Baltimore, Maryland, metropolitan area (population of 2.3 million)—one of the least fragmented metropolitan areas in the United States. As we will explain later, it takes the agreement of only six local governments to make anything significant happen in the Baltimore metropolitan area-six governments, compared with a national average of over a hundred governments per metropolitan area. Therefore, the Baltimore metropolitan area ought to be an excellent location to learn whether less (fragmentation) does mean more (governance).
