Not every city controls the public schools, in fact, alot of them don’t, leaving public schools to the county or parish, so it’s not really fair to lay the blame for any school problems entirely at the municipal level. Actually, many of our cities are better off precisely because the county funds schooling because that is one large expense that doesn’t fall on municipal government.
But, to a degree, when you choose to live in a city, it’s not like living in the U.S. at large or even a state. When you explicitly decide to live in a geographic location, you agree in principle to accept all that this geographic location provides good or bad, because unlike the state or federal government, if you don’t like a policy, you actually can move and keep your life as it is, nothing keeps you there. That’s why we had suburbinization in the first place.
We personally weighed the options and chose the city because that’s where the property we wanted was located and in terms of price and commute time, it was the best deal by far. In exchange for this, our neighborhood public schools are not an option. Then again, by living in the city, the nuisance of contracting for garbage pickup is not an issue, because it is a free service provided by the city. And if a person allows their property to become dilapidated, then you can call urban development and basically have them either fix up the property or risk losing it. People in unincorporated areas of the county don’t have that option. If someone wants to open an incinerator, strip club or anything else near them, well, their just out of luck and they’re better off taking what they can get for their homes before their neighborhood slides.
I’m all for small government, but local government to me, is a fundamentally different propsect, because of what it’s scope is, and why someone lives where they live. It’s rare that a person is trapped in a community that they don’t want to live in. Choices are made where to live, in the suburbs, the city or the unincorporated county areas. If the state does something I don’t like, I really have no control over it, I’m stuck. If the city does something I don’t like, I can just move about 5 miles south, and I’ll be free of any legal jurisdiction that they have.
But I take real issue with your first point. One of the reasons I chose to live here is because there is no cookie cutter housing, and in general, cookie cutter housing plans don’t get approved by the city council. If they want that out in the county it’s fine, but I personally think it’s tacky, it makes neighborhoods nothing more than free standing equivalents of apartment complexes. And also, there was a time when we had that rationale in that city, there were no land use restrictions other than basic zoning. Because of that, about 40 years ago, the city went and destroyed the oldest continuously occupied residential area in the state, homes had been there since the 1780’s, all torn down for a new modern building. Many of our older homes and unique buildings went away so that they could build modern buildings. In order to build our modern bank building in the 60’s, they went and destroyed a customs house that had been in the city since the 1830s
Cities do have a right to set appropriate architectural boundaries for what will be in their limits. If people don’t want to deal with it, they can always live somewhere else, and actually, most Americans no longer live within the main cities of the metro areas, so alot of them have. But personally, I am glad that we now have an architectural review boardn that governs all changes in historic districts, with hope, they will make sure that our antebellum neighborhoods won’t fall victim to the cry for modernization.
You know, we chose to stay for the lifestyle, because we could have just as easily moved to the suburbs, and we could have probably purchased a palace out in the county, but we didn’t want to life that kind of lifestyle.
Then again, our city has a reputation for being very unkind to public employees, so, we haven’t had any of the public employee crunches that alot of cities have faced.
I don't recognize cities as having any rights. Only individuals have rights.
Cities should have narrow, limited, and clearly enumerated powers to protect the proper rights of individuals from trespass by other individuals, and to act as a referee on uses of land that belongs to no individual.
Restricting architectural style individuals' own land exceeds the proper limits of government, and trespasses on their rights to the fruits of their labor.