The article in the Wall Street Journal shows us that some respectable ‘conservatives’ are becoming more open to ‘metropolitan government.’ I would actually not have a problem with this as long as the ‘metro’ government were a kind of super-county, hopefully with a more ‘republican’ form of government than most counties with a stronger executive, rather than the European Union-like unaccountable bureaucracy that some of these metro governments have tended to be in the past. And the current small city governments have their place, I think. Following Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck, I believe that county or metro governments will have to allocate Locally Undesirable Land Uses such as waste dumps, high schools, social service organizations, and housing of higher density to the more local governments, who can then decide where to put the LULUs as long as they include them in their plans. The value of county or metro governments is they are large enough to include all class and income interests–the people who might desire to live in a neighborhood, as well as those who already live there! And, wouldn’t making decisions in a democratic government at a metro level offer more ‘local control’ than making them at the state capital? “The Metro Moment” by at The Wall Street Journal.