Some problems in government and administration in the Washington (D.C.) metropolitan area

The aim of this treatise is two-fold: first, to describe interjurisdictional relations on a metropolitan level in the Washington Area; second, to describe, to analyze, and to shed light on the feasibility of the administrative structures and procedures established to handle these relations. The approach is functional. Intermunicipal cooperation in planning, zoning, water supply and sanitation, streets and highways, housing, public utility regulation, public safety, and public health is treated. These functions in their metropolitan implications, amongst many municipal activities like education, have been selected as furnishing a reasonably comprehensive picture of the cooperative devices which have been developed, if not always employed, in a metropolitan community. Although the writer has not avoided advancing proposals for the reorganization of the administrative structures and procedures established in the Washington Metropolitan Area for the purpose of meeting problems associated with the functions selected for treatment, he wishes to appear as an observer rather than as an advocate. To enforce this emphasis the factual account is set in double space, the conclusions, the appraisals, and recommendations (with the exception of the proposals for the reorganization of the planning function) in single space.