ABSTRACT
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Interpreting metropolitan areas has taken on some exciting new advances. These advances come
from a variety of scholars who offer potentially robust approaches for interpreting the dynamics of
urban regions, such as regime theory (Stone, 1989), governance (Peters, 1996), citistates (Peirce,
1993), post-city (Savich and Vogel, 1996), and postmetropolis (Soja, 2000), among others. One
characteristic of these insights is that social forces and public institutions within metropolitan
environments are altering the patterns of local decision making from institutional to non-insti-
tutional and cross-institutional forms of governance. The result is that metropolitan environments
are different places than they were decades before: they have transformed into more complex
environments of diversified power centers with cross-jurisdictional issues and demands. In response
to these demands, it seems clear that our metropolitan areas are full of very innovative organizing
activities that capture the imaginations of citizens and governmental officials alike. Political
decision making in this “regional mosaic” (Wikstrom, 2002) is no longer understood only as a
series of local governments managed by civic and administrative leaders influenced by a set of
skills and tools that are framed in an organizational setting designed to meet the needs of specific
publics. Political decision making is now also understood as a set of skills and tools that are framed
around collaborative efforts designed to meet the cross-jurisdictional and cross-boundary needs of
both publics (Agranoff, 2003) and public and non-profit agencies (Linden, 2002).
