City Limits

This award-winning book “skillfully blends economic and political analysis” to assess the challenges of urban governments (Emmett H. Buell, Jr., American Political Science Review).

Winner of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairs

Many simply presume that a city’s politics are like a nation’s politics, just on a smaller scale. But the nature of the city is different in many respects—it can’t issue currency, or choose who crosses its borders, make war or make peace. Because of these and other limits, one must view cities in their larger socioeconomic and political contexts. Its place in the nation fundamentally affects the policies a city makes.

Rather than focusing exclusively on power structures or competition among diverse groups or urban elites, this book assesses the strengths and shortcomings of how we have previously thought about city politics—and shines new light on how agendas are set, decisions are made, resources are allocated, and power is exercised within cities, as they exist within a federal framework.

“Professor Peterson's analysis is imaginatively conceived and skillfully carried through. [City Limits] will lastingly alter our understanding of urban affairs in America.”—from the citation by the selection committee for the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award