ABSTRACT
This chapter explores an approach to network theory and practice that may be used to develop resiliency in metropolitan governance. Metropolitan regions are undergoing significant changes that create greater interdependencies among governmental entities, nonprofit organizations, and private businesses in their shared service areas. The dynamics driving social, economic, and political change have had different degrees of impact on different population groups within metropolitan regions, creating gaps in equity and access to public services that generate social needs. The task of managing change in metropolitan regions under uncertain conditions presents a particular challenge for public administration. For public administrators concerned with the management of large-scale sociotechnical systems providing public services, the concepts proposed by the network analysts offered fresh ways of thinking about intergovernmental and intersectoral problems. Herbert Simon and Richard Feiock summarize the basic network measures, including density, which calculates a ratio of the number of observed connections to the number of possible connections in the network.
