Boschken, H. L. (2002) - Urban Spatial Form and Policy Outcomes in Public Agencies - UAR PDF

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Urban Spatial form and Policy Outcomes in Public Agencies

Herman L. Boschken
Urban Affairs Review 2000; 36; 61
DOI: 10.1177/10780870022184750
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Boschken / SPATIAL FORM AND

URBAN
POLICY
AFFAIRS
OUTCOMES
REVIEW / September 2000
URBAN SPATIAL FORM

AND POLICY OUTCOMES
IN PUBLIC AGENCIES
HERMAN L. BOSCHKEN
San Jose State University
Bias or disproportional emphasis in an agencys pattern of policy outcomes always raises questions of accountability and has been the subject of countless studies. For urban agencies, past
research has been driven by causal theses having either a socioeconomic or a political perspective. However, a powerful thesis receiving little attention in policy making is the concept of urban
spatial form. The author develops hypotheses about spatial forms impact on skewing agency
outcomes and tests them alongside conventional rival theses using regression analysis on 42 U.S.
transit agencies. Results indicate that urban form is at least as important in explaining policy bias
as socioeconomic and political considerations.
Evaluation of policy outcomes is essential to judging government accountability. However, because outcomes reflect interests of both economic proficiency and social welfare, their evaluation is seldom straightforward or done
without conflict. Moreover, their multiplicity is seldom achieved with equal
emphasis, making bias an unavoidable condition of policy making. Not surprisingly, most of the research on causes of policy bias springs from socioeconomic and political theses. In this article, I challenge the sufficiency of
these perspectives by introducing another thesis having much less scholarly
currency in urban affairs. Lagging in robust intellectual development, the
concept ties bias in an agencys policy outcomes to urban spatial form.
Although dating back as far as Frederick Olmsted in the nineteenth century (Rybczynski, 1999), studies of spatial form were dominated for most of
the twentieth century by University of Chicago sociologists (e.g., Burgess
and Bogue 1967) who were interested in the human ecology of the urban built
environment. Today, its currency is mostly limited to applications in urban
planning (e.g., Bourne 1982; Timms 1971; Wingo 1963), in which discussions continue to be more about the urban habitat than about administrative
behavior. Neither the historic sociologists nor contemporary planning
URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW, Vol. 36, No. 1, September 2000 61-83
2000 Sage Publications, Inc.
61

62
URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW / September 2000
researchers pay much attention to the relevance of spatial form in explaining

administrative functioning or policy outcomes in public agencies.
Yet, spatial logic would seem to hold enormous insight for why agency
outcomes are skewed in favor of certain policy perspectives over others. In
this article, I examine the thesis that urban spatial form creates a preexisting
condition, enabling or restricting agencies in their policy-making quest to
perform efficiently and responsively to both paying customers and welfare
clients. The examination begins by establishing a categorical model of
multiple-policy perspectives as a means for comparing pattern bias in outcomes. Using different literary sources, I then develop hypotheses about
urban form as a source of skewness in policy making. The hypotheses are
tested against rival theses by using multiple-regression analysis on a sample
of U.S. transit agencies operating in large metropolitan areas.
MULTIPLE POLICY OUTCOMES

As a rule, transit agencies operate as urban special districts and are organized as a public authority or public enterprise. Although this makes them
different from the general urban bureaucracy headed by a mayor, they share
the distinction with many other urban agencies, including school districts,
county medical centers, airport authorities and seaports, sewerage and water
districts, urban park and recreation districts, and many fire districts.
Together, these public enterprises account for a large majority of urban public
expenditures.
Historically, much of the enterprise forms legitimacy evolved from Progressive Era tenets, which began conceptually with a partitioning of politics
and administration (Boschken 1988; Doig 1983; Walsh 1978). On the politics
side, expectations were for the use of political bargaining to produce socially
equitable outcomes irrespective of service delivery costs. On the administration side, legitimacy was based on the neutral competence of professional
managers in producing outcomes that meet criteria of economic efficiency
and effectiveness.
Consistent with the view that treats these as competing mandates, this
study approaches the analysis of policy outcomes from multiple perspectives
reminiscent of the classical works on pluralism (e.g., Lindblom 1977; Dahl
1961). Also having antecedents in the competing values approach in
administrative theory (Boschken 1994; Tsui 1990; Bozeman 1987; Rohrbaugh 1981; Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1983), the framework divides outcomes
into dichotomous categories that sort out who gets what (Levy, Meltsner,
and Wildavsky 1974). By comparing differences among agencies in their

Boschken / SPATIAL FORM AND POLICY OUTCOMES
63
respective pattern of variegated outcomes, it thus differs from single-norm

analysis found in most agency studies of efficiency (e.g., Downs and Larkey
1986), effectiveness (e.g., Chubb and Moe 1990), and innovation (e.g., Clark
1994).
Operationally, the frameworks purpose is to portray asymmetric patterns
as highlighted by an agencys comparative emphasis in policy outcomes.
This skewness phenomenon may be identified by higher standardized performance scores for one outcome category relative to others. In this study, an
asymmetric pattern is formed from three types of outcome perspectives, each
beneficial to different kinds of constituencies.
The first two favor administration-centered perspectives and are called
outcomes of strategic organizational effectiveness and outcomes of operational efficiency. Each is preferred by the agencys administrative stakeholders, located at two different levels within the organization (Campbell
1977; Steers 1975). The third favors a political-centered perspective and
refers to outcomes of social-program effectiveness. It is the principal interest
of nonmarket users and other constituencies seeking positive spillovers.
Outcomes of strategic organizational effectiveness are most directly associated with senior executive management acting to emphasize the agencys
strategic market domain (Boschken 1988; Thompson 1967), which is defined
as achieving strength, intensity, and scope in the organizations economic
position (Nutt and Backoff 1997; Niskanen 1971, 1975; Downs 1957). Doig
and Mitchell (1992, 21) claimed that these are the central concerns of senior
management charged with identifying new strategies and new projects that
will add to the organizations overall strength.
The second administration-centered category is operational efficiency,
which is the principal focus of middle and lower managements charged with
controlling the internal flows and transformation of resources on a daily
basis. Criteria for operational outcomes are about providing efficient ways
of bringing services to the public [by] adherence to engineering standards,
accounting rules (Doig and Mitchell 1992, 21, 25). Policy performance is
thus defined here with respect to minimizing the cost per unit in materials or
process flows of service delivery as well as respective per unit costs in administrative overhead.
Much of conventional wisdom in managerial economics assumes that
emphasis on one of these administration-centered outcomes will also lead to
an emphasis on the other. But this assumption does not take into account that
each perspective involves different sets of administrative stakeholders. Even
though some overlap must exist between the two managerial levels, the difference in function between senior executives and operational managers

64
lessens their contact with each other regarding perceptual homogeneity and
outcome priorities.
Niskanen (1975) and others in public choice, for example, see senior
administrators forcing a trade-off between increasing the bureaucratic budget (an element of the first administrative perspective) and operational efficiency, in which emphasis on efficiency is often subordinated. Although variance certainly shows up in sample interviews taken of agency managers,
these qualitative data support the dichotomous distinction between senior
executive and operations management perspectives (Boschken forthcoming). Descriptive analysis of the dependent variables (provided in the
Methodology section of this study) also lends support to Niskanens trade-off
thesis.
Although the two administration-centered outcomes differ from one
another in managerial function, they both are contrasted with the third outcome category of social-program effectiveness. For example, Bozeman
(1987) distinguished them according to economic and political sources
of agency legitimacy. Social programs typically do not flow from market
demands and require support from a separate set of strategic constituencies
operating politically to establish policy mandates based on equity (Lineberry
1977).
Because not all political demands are legitimate and worthy of governmental response, criteria for social-program effectiveness usually are determined by legislative mandates, interagency agreements, and judicial proceedings. Examples of legitimated public demands in transit range from
services to the handicapped under the Americans with Disabilities Act to
broader programs promoting mobility for the urban poor or regional
economic development. Such political-centered mandates and agreements
establish effectiveness criteria usually on the basis of benefits provided without regard to costs or who pays. Although a nonmarket determination of
effectiveness is more difficult to empirically validate than organizational
effectiveness, an agency devoting sufficient resources to cover its social-program mandates should provide greater client satisfaction than one that leaves
its underclass underserved.
In sum, the first two policy outcome categories (henceforth referred to as
outcome 1 effectiveness and outcome 2 efficiency) are distinguished from the
third category (henceforth referred to as outcome 3 social effectiveness) in
that they measure administration-centered legitimacy through proof of market worthiness, whereas outcome 3 measures political-centered legitimacy
based on public welfare. The first and third outcomes hold in common a strategic focus in that effectiveness in each is defined as the ability of the organization to minimally satisfy the expectations of its strategic constituencies

65
(Miles 1980, 375), some of whom are market-driven executives and others
who are represented by external political fiduciaries. Operational efficiency,
on the other hand, comes from the perspective of expert values and internal
systems needs (Miles 1980) managed by functional-level administrators.
Threading together these three policy outcome categories provides a multiple-perspectives framework to examine the causes of outcome skewness.
HYPOTHESES: URBAN SPATIAL FORM

Metropolitan areas differ greatly in the success of their agencies to optimize administrative proficiency and social-program effectiveness. In the
case of transit, some (e.g., New York or Washington, D.C.) exhibit heavy use
of public transit by both market-based riders (reflecting outcome 1 effectiveness) and transit-dependent clients (reflecting outcome 3 social effectiveness). Others, such as Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay Area, exhibit
uneven performance and often sparsely used transit facilities regardless of
the type of journey. Still others, such as St. Louis, San Antonio, and Houston,
achieve high operational efficiencies but usually at the expense of strategic
outcomes (i.e., de-emphasizing outcomes 1 and 3). Perhaps coming as no
surprise to urban geographers, one cause of this variance may be urban spatial form.
Focused on the geographical layout of the urban area as a whole, spatial
form refers to (1) the degree to which activity sites are concentrated or centralized and (2) the way in which the location of home, work, and other activities is spatially arranged in relation to one another. Urban form is usually represented by two indicators: relative density gradients (visualized much like a
geological relief map) involving the stacking of both residential, commercial, and government locations and connectivity involving interaction
between intraurban locations as revealed by transportation routes and communications systems (Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas 1996;
Bourne 1982, 28-45; De Sola Pool 1982).
Differences in spatial structure are perhaps best seen and compared when
flying transcontinental routes, in which a birds-eye view of density gradients and connectivity reveals physical distinctions in the topography of U.S.
cities. At the extremes, one can easily distinguish the primary conical urban
core of Chicago tapering outward in concentric rings of residences and
smaller secondary centers of greater Cook County from the leveled
polycentric configuration of the Los Angeles basin with its widely dispersed
and nonintegrated multinucleation of activity. These extremes are seen in
comparisons of some other urban areas as well: Boston versus Houston,

66
Philadelphia versus Orlando, the New York metropolitan area versus the San
Francisco Bay Area.
However, most cities today have spatial patterns that appear to lie somewhere between the extremes. Kansas City, for example, still has a residual of
its bombed-out central core and first residential ring (developed more than
a century ago), but the area also shows significant multinucleation from
recent suburban residential and commercial developments. The Denver metropolitan area seems to be a combination of its older but still viable central
business district formed around rail yards and a more recent multinucleation
along a north-south axis, springing up from the relocation of Silicon Valley
industry and in-migration of upper-middle-class professionals. As a city
mostly rebuilt after the 1960s, Atlanta has emerged as a polycentric metropolitan area, but its form is concentrated along transportation corridors.
Even the greater Chicago area looks increasingly polycentric if one looks
beyond Cook County to newer outlying areas in adjacent Du Page County.
Conceptually, comparisons of urban form are made with reference to several distinguishing visual characteristics (Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade &
Douglas 1996; Giuliano and Small 1991; Bourne 1982), but the most common for empirical use is spatial centralization of human activities. Exhibiting
the highest levels of centralization, the oldest spatial model depicts a
monocentric or spoke-and-hub pattern. It usually appears as a center-peripheral configuration consisting of a single central business district
(CBD) surrounded by concentric rings descending outward in terms of activity density and property values. Its centralized conical structure is the artifact
of historical effects of transportation and communications technologies in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which reinforced a need for
physical proximity and the dominance of a common downtown core as the
principal area of economic activity (Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade &
Douglas 1996, pt. 1; Cervero and Landis 1995; Bourne 1982; Timms 1971;
Burgess 1961).
A second and contrasting model is a polycentric cityscape (Giuliano
and Small 1991; Gordon, Richardson, and Wong 1986; Leven 1982). It is
characterized by reduced interconnectedness of a metropolitan area and spatial noncentralization ranging from multiple clusters of subregional business
centers to nearly undifferentiated dispersion (Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade &
Douglas 1996). At the extreme, it depicts an urban sprawl (e.g., Policy.com
1999), represented by a leveled plane mostly devoid of specialized subareas
and where purpose and distinction between urban core and suburban periphery are greatly reduced (Rybczynski 1999).
Orleanss (1967) ethnographic experiments with citizens of the Los
Angeles basin, for example, show individual cognitive maps locating per-

67
sonal territory and movement within the basin, which reveal widely dispersed (often disconnected) landmarks and other spatial identities. In the
aggregate, they appear to share little common ground except for some freeway segments and a dispersion pattern having little areawide connectedness.
Only a loose interdependency over the entire area remains.
The relevance of urban spatial structure to policy outcomes lies with an
agencys ability to deliver services to a high proportion of the urban population. Some case study research may suggest that urban areas configured
around a dominant CBD or highly corridored activity (both of which
reflect the monocentric model) may be more supportive of a transit agency
emphasizing organizational prominence (outcome 1 effectiveness) and
social-program effectiveness (outcome 3) than areas characterized by the
polycentric model (Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas 1996, pt. 1;
Cervero and Landis 1992; Bell 1991; Ley 1985). It stands to reason that
mass transit needs mass or density if substantial numbers of people are to
ride trains and buses (Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas 1996, 1:11).
Urban form is also thought to affect a transit agencys operational efficiency (outcome 2). The monocentric urban area is more centralized, with
subarea specialization and concentrated linear connectivity in comparison
with various forms of polycentricity. As a consequence, one study argues that
it is easy to see how a monocentric pattern reduces the cost of providing service since shorter trips and trip times allow transit operators to provide the
same quality and quantity [as in a polycentric pattern] with fewer vehicles
and fewer driver hours (Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas 1996,
1:11).
Therefore, the multiple effects of urban spatial structure on the pattern of
policy outcomes may be hypothesized as follows:
Hypothesis 1: The closer the spatial form of a transit agencys urban area fits the
monocentric model, the more likely the agencys policy emphases will be robust across all three policy outcome perspectives.
Conversely,
Hypothesis 2: The closer the spatial form of a transit agencys urban area fits a
polycentric model, the more likely the agency will be found to de-emphasize
all three policy perspectives.
Taken together, the two hypotheses advance the thesis that urban spatial
structure will inflate all outcome emphases, such that an agency in a
monocentric area will more likely provide superior, widely used, and effi-

68
cient services to both commuters and social-program users than an agency

operating in a less centralized area.
However, as derived from the urban planning literature, the spatial-form
thesis does not speak to the evenness of effect on the three components and
leaves open the question of how disproportional impacts might create an
asymmetrical pattern of policy outcomes. Nevertheless, some threads of theory from other literatures offer insight. For example, managerial economists
argue that concentrations of market demand provide economies of scale that
may be used to keep prices affordable for a greater number. This might suggest that the more monocentric the urban form, the greater the emphasis on
outcome 1 (organizational effectiveness), which depends on market penetration and the preference of users who have a choice. Economic scale would
also explain a disproportional emphasis on outcome 2 (operational efficiency). That is, a monocentric urban form provides superior cost saving per
user over urban sprawl because more passengers can be served with shorter
routes and denser route system. With regard to political-centered outcomes,
however, no compelling theory provides a hint about how social programs
would fare as a result of urban spatial form. Hence, the asymmetry issue may
be hypothesized as follows:
Hypothesis 3: The closer the spatial form of a transit agencys urban area fits the
monocentric model, the more likely an unevenness of effect would favor more
emphasis on administration-centered outcomes than on political-centered social programs.
RIVAL THESES
Most urban research views agency policy making as affected either by
aggregate socioeconomic status found within the urban milieu or by political
influence. The extent to which spatial form matters to public policy making is
often seen as only a tangential manifestation of these other better-known
determinants. To examine the spatial-form thesis in the context of more conventional urban research, three rival theses are introduced as alternative arguments for why an agencys pattern of policy outcomes is skewed.
The first of these is a thesis about the impact of an urban areas wealth
(Schneider 1989; Clark and Ferguson 1983; Peterson 1981; Dye 1966).
Although sources of wealth could extend to intergovernmental subsidies for
agencies (discussed below as a part of the political thesis), the wealth thesis
concentrates on local sources of taxation. It posits that agencies spend money
according to the aggregate level of economic resources (taxes) locally

69
available to them. Because the availability of tax revenues is directly tied to

an urban areas household and commercial wealth, the thesis argues that
agencies in wealthier areas are more likely to allocate spending to emphasize
budgetary growth (outcome 1 effectiveness) and social-program development (outcome 3 social effectiveness). Because wealth may alleviate an
agencys fiscal stress, this factor is also thought to cause a de-emphasis in
outcome 2 efficiency (Niskanen 1971).
The second rival is an underclass thesis (Clark 1994; Nivola 1979;
Lineberry 1977), which argues that policy outcomes are distributed according to class distinctions typically measured by race or ethnicity and poverty.
Describing a double standard, Lineberry indicated that the thesis assumes a
zero-sum allocation in which them that has, gets (p. 61). In metropolitan
areas with higher white populations and lower poverty, the thesis postulates
that citizen preferences will be for lower tax incidence, resulting in an
agencys need to emphasize operational efficiency (outcome 2), along with
subsequent de-emphasis of its organizational growth (outcome 1 effectiveness) and reduced spending levels for programs that mainly benefit the
underclass (de-emphasis on outcome 3).
The last rival is political and here called the intergovernmental-politics
thesis. Known also as an institutional thesis, it argues that asymmetric policy
outcomes in public agencies are the result of external politics: legislative
mandates, judicial determinations, and interagency negotiations (Boschken
1998; Agranoff and McGuire 1993). The common denominator for all is the
direct use of political power through intergovernmental exchanges. Interest
groups are seen as part of the political process, but their power is channeled
and expressed through fiduciary representation by individual governmental
actors in the intergovernmental process. As noted by Verba, Schlozman, and
Brady (1995, 7), Federalism and separation of powers imply a plurality of
targets for political activity, in which politicians, bureaucrats, and interest
groups interact to couple their individual demands to focal-agency policy
making.
Expectations are for the use of political bargaining to produce externally
determined policy requirements that are equitable regardless of whether
resulting agency costs are subsidized or captured by user fees. Leverage to
induce agencies to accept external requirements is enhanced by offers to subsidize, but unfunded mandates are also common. Hence, the more statutory
and fiscal autonomy the agency has in intergovernmental exchange, the more
insular the agency is from external politics in pursuing administration-centered outcomes. Conversely, the more completely the locus of political power
lies outside the agency (e.g., in mayors, a dominant community group, or
interagency network), the lower the agencys policy-making discretion and

70
ability to avoid politicized outcomes. Specifically, the effect of low agency

autonomy in the intergovernmental arena will be to sacrifice the administration-centered outcomes of organizational effectiveness and operational efficiency and to emphasize social-program effectiveness.
METHODOLOGY
The research involved a cross-sectional sample of urban transit agencies
designed to examine the hypotheses with data from standard nationwide
reporting systems. Although some potential exists for generalization to other
public services, transit was selected for three reasons. First, most transit
agencies are statutory public authorities that pursue multiple policy outcomes derived from some mix of administration-centered and external political criteria. They therefore are organizations that must make policy choices
that may result in a patterned bias in outcomes. Second, for the comparative
approach of this study, transit agencies vary greatly in their socioeconomic,
political, and spatial settings. Third, the transit sector offers a rich source of
high-quality comparative data specific to agencies that are compiled by the
U.S. Department of Transportations (DOT) Federal Transit Administration
(FTA), the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and several transportation research
centers (Urban Mass Transit Administration [UMTA] 1988-1992; U.S.
Bureau of the Census 1992; Hanks and Lomax 1992).
The sample consists of 42 agencies operating transit systems in large metropolitan areas (more than 500,000 population) that were identified from
FTAs directory of transit agencies (UMTA 1988). Data for all variables are
specific to each agency or the population within each jurisdiction. Most figures are from the annual section 15 reporting system (compiled by the FTA)
and the U.S. census. Section 15 reporting is mandated for federal funding of
transit agencies and contains uniform self-reported data on agency finances,
costs, and service levels.
As components of a pattern of policy outcomes, the individual perspectives are represented by three continuum-scaled dependent variables named
outcome 1 (effectiveness), outcome 2 (efficiency), and outcome 3 (social
effectiveness). Each is an aggregated index constructed by adding together
indicative sets of standardized performance measures commonly used in
transit and calculated from FTA data (see note to Table 1 for composition of
each index). Because any one year of performance is subject to unrepresentative distortions, measures are derived from averaging five years of data
(1987-1991). This procedure, however, does not eliminate the possibility that
five-year averages are atypical of even longer time frames.

71
Inclusion of measures in an outcome index was based on a measures

compatibility with the categorical theoretic developed earlier to structure the
multiple-perspectives framework. For example, outcome 1 (effectiveness)
has several connotations, but all are about the organizational eminence, wellbeing, and fiscal stature of the agency as a market-worthy enterprise (i.e., the
outcome is inclusive of the budgetary growth thesis of Niskanen [1971] but
does not accept its premise that bureaucratic eminence can only result from
monopoly behavior). Indicative of this broader perspective, the index is composed of measures covering market strength (market penetration), consumer
popularity of service (load factor), and budgetary stature (revenue growth).
In the case of outcome 3, many more micromeasures exist than are needed to
be indicative of social-program performance. Consistent with mandated
aims, the index includes transit route density to maximize access convenience for the poor (surrogate for transit-dependent mobility); allocation of
resources to noncommuter routes for activities during the business day,
evenings, and weekends (off-peak services); and annual capital investment
(surrogate for economic development spillover resulting from system
investments).
For the purpose of eliminating urban scale from consideration, values for
each measure in an index are residuals created by a first-stage bivariate
regression using scale as the independent variable. Eliminating urban scale
from the comparative analysis provides greater parsimony, and its significance is so widely accepted that it holds little theoretical interest in most
urban studies. In the measures of this study, first-stage regression coefficients
for scale averaged .70, with the significance of t equal to .01 or less. The
resulting residuals were standardized for the purpose of adding measures
together to achieve an outcome index, all three of which approximate random
normal distributions. Construction of indices in this manner does not unduly
inflate the significance of second-stage regression models because the independent variables are minimally correlated (essentially orthogonal) with
scale.
Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations of the three policy outcome
indices are provided in Table 1. The indices are significantly intercorrelated,
as predicted by the multiple-perspectives framework, indicating that outcome skewness for the transit agency sample is composed of an interrelated
pattern spanning the three performance categories. The two inversely (negative) related associations represent trade-offs. The most significant of these
trade-offs is between the two administration-centered outcomes: strategic
organizational effectiveness and operational efficiency (r = .56). Although
an agency could try to emphasize bureaucratic growth by striving to be efficient, the data show this not to be an industry-wide convention. The other

72
TABLE 1: The Dependent Variables of Patterned Outcome Skewness:

Descriptive Statistics and Intercorrelations (N = 42)
Variable
1. Outcome 1
2. Outcome 2
3. Outcome 3
SD
10.99
13.01
12.29
2.27
2.74
2.53
.56**
.48*
.38*
NOTE: Outcome 1 = strategic organizational effectiveness; outcome 2 = operational efficiency;

outcome 3 = social program effectiveness. Each outcome is an index of individual measures that
meet criteria for that outcome cell. Values for each measure are residuals of a bivariate regression controlling for size. The technique was used because (1) little disagreement is found over
size as the most significant factor determining urban agency outcomes, and (2) regression residuals are more appropriate than ratio data because regression produces the best overall linear estimator of variance. Residuals for each measure within an outcome cell were then studentized to
make them additive to an income index. The indexes consist of the following measures along
with their legitimating stakeholders:
Outcome 1 (administration centered, strategic effectiveness): Market penetration (passenger
trips/district population) shows market strength of organization preferred by senior management, load factor (passenger miles/vehicle miles) shows user-validated service superiority
preferred by senior management, and bureaucratic growth (1990 revenue/1980 revenue, all
sources) shows negative entropy (the organizations ability to grow by acquiring external
resources) preferred by senior management.
Outcome 2 (administration centered, operational efficiency): Operations efficiency (operating expense/vehicle miles) shows cost control proficiency of service delivery management,
maintenance efficiency (maintenance expense/vehicle hours) shows cost control proficiency of maintenance management, and system efficiency (operations assets/vehicle revenue miles) shows use of capital proficiency of financial and engineering managements.
Outcome 3 (political centered; social program effectiveness): Mobility for transit dependence (passenger miles/service area in square miles) measures access convenience to urban
socioeconomic activities desired by dependent riders (handicapped, working poor); noncommuter service (off-peak vehicle miles/total vehicle miles) measures access convenience
to social activities, health, and welfare services needed by the underclass (handicapped, poor
and elderly); and economic development contribution (annual capital investment/district
population) measures economic development impact potential for the regional population.
*p = .01. **p = .001.
trade-off is between social-program effectiveness and operational efficiency

(r = .38) and is not unexpected given the redistributive and regulatory nature
of social programs.
Independent variables for the three regression models include urban spatial form and four control variables representing the rival theses of socioeconomic status and intergovernmental politics. Urban form describes an impact
on policy outcomes resulting from variation in the spatial arrangement of
human activity. With reference to the two polar models described in the literature, urban form is ideally operationalized by a number of discriminating

Dispersed
1.0
Polycentric
1.5
2.0
Corridors
2.5
3.0
73
Moncentric
3.5
4.0
Density Gradient: Degree of Centralization

Figure 1:
Urban Form: Scaling Centralization of Activities (42 Urban Transit Agencies)
spatial characteristics, including distance between activities, specialized

subregional segmentation of the urban area, the number and relative size of
concentrated activity masses, and the degree to which there is a hierarchy of
dominance among centers. However, because the estimation of all these for a
large statistical sample is costly, most research estimates spatial form using
density gradients alone. Moreover, according to Parsons, Brinckerhoff,
Quade & Douglas (1996), density gradients were the most important factor
differentiating urban configurations.
Nevertheless, we wanted to incorporate as many of the characteristics of
spatial form as feasible and therefore adopted a variation of the density gradient method by constructing a single intersubjective surrogate based on density-mapping techniques and direct aerial observation of the 42 transit districts. As shown in Figure 1, the variable is dimensioned as a 7-point
continuous scale, along which four increments of spatial centralization (density) are identified. Derived from Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas
(1996); Gordon, Richardson, and Wong (1986); and Bourne (1982) and others, these increments are (1) dispersed/sprawl (least centralized), (2) polycentric (dispersed but having numerous subregional concentrations
randomly distributed), (3) corridors (more centralized, having a CBD from
which substantial corridors of specialized secondary centers emanate peripherally along routes tied to the CBD), and (4) monocentric (most centralized,
having a single large-scale CBD with concentric rings of interdependent residential and small-scale commercial activity and minimal dispersion of large
secondary centers).
The variable provides comparison between the spatial conical shape of
urban areas found within each transit agencys operational jurisdiction.
About 30% of the agencies exist in urban areas that fit the monocentric
model, and about 15% operate in highly dispersed areas of urban sprawl. The
remaining 55% of the sample fall between the extremes. Table 2 identifies in
the sample the 12 agencies operating in 1990 in a monocentric urban form
and the 10 agencies operating under either dispersed or polycentric conditions. Those existing in highly centralized spatial structures are located

74
TABLE 2:
Agencies with the Highest and Lowest Centralization of Urban

Form: Urban Public Transit, 1990
12 Agencies with
Monocentric Urban Form
1. MUNI (San Francisco County)
2. Jacksonville (FL) Transportation
Authority
3. CTA (Chicago)
4. RTA (New Orleans)
5. MTA (Baltimore)
6. Greater Cleveland RTA
7. Tri-Met (Portland, OR)
8. SEPTA (Philadelphia)
9. PA Allegheny Co (Pittsburgh)
10. VIA (San Antonio)
11. Pierce Transit (Tacoma, WA)
12. Milwaukee Co Transit System
Score
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.0
10 Agencies with
Polycentric/Sprawl Form
42. Phoenix Transit
41. Long Beach (CA) Transit
40. Orange County (CA) Transit
39. Golden Gate Transit (SF Bay)
38. Santa Clara (CA) Co Transit
37. So California RTD (LA Co)
36. Kansas City Area TA
35. AC Transit (Oakland, CA)
34. Bi-State Development Agency
(St. Louis)
33. MTA (Houston)
Score
1.0
1.0
1.0
1.0
1.0
1.0
2.0
2.0
2.0
2.0
mostly in the East, but several are also found in the South and West Coast.
Nearly all of the agencies operating in a polycentric or dispersed urban form
are found in the West.
Control variables for the rival theses were included in regressions to provide comparisons of significance for urban spatial form relative to the socioeconomic and political theses. The first, called household wealth, is a
two-component factor composed of 1989 average household income within a
transit district and the 1989 average housing price index for the area. The factor produced an eigenvalue of 1.74 and accounted for 87% of the two-variable
variance. It is a control for the local wealth thesis. The second, called
underclass status, is a two-component factor representing the underclass thesis. The components are race (percentage nonwhite persons in the population) and poverty (percentage of households receiving public assistance),
which factored into a single value having an eigenvalue of 1.42 and accounting for 71% of the two components variances. Data for both controls were
gathered from the 1990 census.
The last rival controls operationalize the intergovernmental-politics thesis
and measure the focal agencys statutory and fiscal autonomy in the intergovernmental area. The first, called intergovernmental (IG) interaction, is a
proxy for Niskanens (1971) bureaucratic autonomy. It is the product of
two measures: scope (the number of IG actors involved in focal-agency policy making) and intensity (the percentage of those actors having veto

75
TABLE 3: Urban Spatial Form and Control Variables: Descriptive Statistics

and Intercorrelations (N = 42 agencies)
Variable
Independent variable
1. Urban spatial form
Rival theses (controls)
2. Wealth
3. Underclass
4. Intergovernmental (IG)
a. IG interaction
b. Revenue autonomy
SD
2.9
1.0
0.0
0.0
1.0
1.0
.42**
.13
.01
5.4
76.7
3.6
22.4
.08
.30
.37*
.22
.16
.01
.02
*p = .01. **p = .001.
authority over focal-agency policy making). Although not fully accounting

for all the qualitative variations in interactions, the factor does provide a
macrolevel approximation of what agency managers feel is their autonomy
in policy making. The second, called revenue autonomy, is the percentage of
agency revenues generated from user fees and dedicated sources (such as a
permanent local transit tax). It represents an agencys budgetary freedom
from single-source reliance and exposure to intergovernmental politics. Data
for the first variable are from a survey by the author of transit agency officials
reporting the number and kinds of policy-making intergovernmental
exchanges; the second is from FTA section 15 reports.
Table 3 reports descriptive statistics and correlations for the independent
and rival variables. Only one significant intercorrelation involves urban form
and that is with the control variable for local wealth. The relationship indicates a moderate inverse association (r = .42), suggesting that wealth tends
to be found more in noncentralized areas dominated by polycentricity or
sprawl rather than in monocentric areas. Another but less significant correlation exists between two rival controls, wealth and intergovernmental interaction (r = .37), indicating that wealthy populations may have a greater affinity
toward a multilayered governmental system. Although these intercorrelations raise the possibility for a collinearity problem, diagnostics for this show
collinearity not to be of sufficient magnitude to affect regression results. VIF
(the test for variable inflation) does not exceed 1.4 for any variable in the
models, in which values less than 10 indicate no significant collinearity
effect. The condition index used to test collinearity effects on the models as a
whole is 13.5 (in which values less than 30 indicate no significant effect).

76
TABLE 4: Ordinary Least Squares RegressionsUrban Spatial Form and

Skewness in Policy Outcomes: Urban Public Transit (42 agencies,
1987-1991)
Dependent Variables
Outcome 1
Independent Variables
Significance
t
of t
Urban spatial form

.53
Rival theses (controls)
Wealth
.39
Underclass
.11
Intergovernmental (IG)
interaction
.27
IG revenue autonomy .24
2
R
2
Adjusted R
F
Significance of F
Outcome 2
3.86
.000 .14
2.70
.91
.01
.37
2.00
1.88
.05
.07
Outcome 3
Significance
t
of t
Significance
t
of t
.87
.39
.44
2.94
.01
.42
.03
2.57
.25
.01
.81
.52
.24
3.31
1.79
.002
.08
.06
.50
.39
3.41
.70
.07
.002 .02
.48
.13
.63
.90
.47
.40
6.5
.000
.32
.23
3.5
.01
.39
.30
4.5
.003
NOTE: Outcome 1 = strategic organizational (market) effectiveness; outcome 2 = operational efficiency; outcome 3 = social program effectiveness.
RESULTS
Table 4 shows results of ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions regarding effects on each of the three components making up the multiple-perspectives pattern of policy outcomes. Each model includes the same set of predictors, consisting of urban spatial form and the four rival-thesis controls.
Results indicate that each model as a whole (outcomes 1, 2, and 3) is quite
significant (significance of F is .000, .01, and .003, respectively), and jointly
they account for about 40% of asymmetry in the pattern of outcomes. This
suggests that the likelihood of important variables being left out of the models is substantially reduced.
Regarding the specific role of urban spatial form, statistics mostly support
the hypotheses. Greater centralization in urban form (i.e., monocentric tendency) is strongly and positively associated with an emphasis in strategic
organizational effectiveness ( = .53, t = 3.86, significance of t = .000) and is
somewhat less significantly and positively associated with an emphasis in
social-program effectiveness ( = .44, t = 2.94, significance of t = .01). The

77
statistics, however, do not confirm a significant effect of urban form on operational efficiency, and the sign is inverse of what the thesis predicts ( =
.14, t = .87, significance of t = .39). Hence, instead of supporting a uniform
effect on policy outcomes as formally postulated from the literature, these
combined results point to an unevenness of effect, involving a skewing
toward outcomes emphasizing organizational effectiveness and, secondarily,
social- program effectiveness. All other things being equal, the effect of
urban spatial form on outcome 1 is about 30% greater than its effect on outcome 3. Because outcome 2 is unaffected by spatial form, operational efficiency is neither enlarged nor reduced.
For comparisons of relative importance, statistics for rival-thesis controls
indicate some to be significant and others not. Results support the explanatory power of the wealth thesis. Specifically, wealth skews the pattern toward
an emphasis on outcome 1 organizational effectiveness ( = .39, t = 2.70) and
outcome 3 social effectiveness ( = .52, t = 3.31) but a de-emphasis on outcome 2 efficiency ( = .42, t = 2.57). Wealth, therefore, is clearly significant for all three policy outcomes (significance of t = .01, .01, and .002) and
has a strong overall impact on skewing the pattern.
Statistics for the underclass thesis, however, are not significant for any of
the outcomes, thus raising doubt about a contributing role for ethnicity and
poverty relative to spatial form. The intergovernmental politics thesis fares a
little better, but for both statutory interaction and fiscal autonomy, results provide mostly weak support for an overall contribution to pattern asymmetry.
The one exception is for operational efficiency, whose emphasis is very significantly and positively driven by an agencys autonomy regarding revenue
acquisition ( = .50, t = 3.41, significance of t = .002).
DISCUSSION
Although failing to show that urban spatial form affects a transit agencys
operational efficiency, the results do suggest that metropolitan areas having a
monocentric pattern provide a more conducive setting than a polycentric pattern for emphasizing both organizational and social-program effectiveness.
With its concentrated corridors and urban core of activities, the more centralized configuration seems to create a critical mass of opportunity for making
transit attractive for more strategic constituencies. Moreover, by concentrating activities in a CBD and along corridors, the centralized spatial form provides transit with more opportunities to compete with the private auto on the
basis of rider convenience and access to more locations (thus especially

78
promoting organizational effectiveness). Social effectiveness also is emphasized (but to a lesser extent than outcome 1) by the monocentric spatial form.
The lack of a market option aside, the transit-dependent underclass will
express more demand for transit in a monocentric configuration because of
the forms linear connectivity to concentrated one-stop activity centers.
By contrast, urban sprawl disaggregates the places where people live,
work, and seek goods and services, creating a nonparametric transportation problem of randomized origin and destination points. In such a configuration, the more flexible auto-and-roadways alternative may be the only feasible solution for most middle-class trips, including commuting. Under the
polycentric form, transit is less able to provide widespread coverage and
accessibility, causing heavier reliance on autos and a consequent de-emphasis on transits organizational effectiveness.
That nonparametric maze also may serve to isolate transit-dependent
users within neighborhoods by dispersing urban resources randomly over a
wider metropolitan area. The transit-dependent rider is more restricted
because transit is unable to offer a timely and convenient route system for
random wide-area access when one-stop centers and critical-mass corridors
do not exist. The effect on social programs, therefore, is to de-emphasize program effectiveness either by reducing the viability of the agencys colateral
economic development (or redevelopment) activities or in directly providing
services to the underclass, who are more isolated by the polycentric form.
Because spatial form seems to be important in determining policy outcomes, what can be said about its centrality relative to the more widely referenced socioeconomic and political theses? By comparison, how does form
stand up as a determinant of asymmetric policy outcomes? The answer to this
depends on which rival thesis is compared. The only one statistically supported as having comprehensive effects on skewing the pattern of outcomes
is the wealth thesis. In this case, urban form and wealth seem to have similar
magnitudes of effect on the overall outcome pattern but affect the individual
outcomes differently.
Both exert statistically significant positive impacts on emphases in organizational and social effectiveness, but spatial form is more important in skewing the pattern toward outcome 1, while wealth is more important for an outcome 3 emphasis. Because spatial form is not significant to operational
efficiencies, wealth is statistically more important in explaining this outcomes de-emphasis. Hence, although wealth may contribute somewhat
more information to the overall analysis, spatial form clearly matters more
than is indicated by its neglect in the urban affairs and administrative science
literatures.

79
CONCLUSION
Urban spatial form seems to matter a great deal in predicting policy outcomes. However, the impact is not distributed evenly across the three outcome perspectives. Specifically, the resulting policy bias (pattern skewness)
principally involves emphases in achieving market-worthy organizational
stature and in the delivery of social programs. Contrary to the urban planning
literature, spatial forms impact does not seem to extend to operational efficiency. The results leave us with three final thoughts.
First, the fact that urban spatial form is worthy of consideration may seem
of only nominal importance to urban geographers and transit specialists.
After all, they have thought for a long time that form affects costs per operating mile and load factors. Not only are some of these beliefs unsupported by
this studys findings, but they are also a long way conceptually from what is
proposed here about spatial forms effect on policy bias. Years ago, Levy,
Meltsner, and Wildavsky (1974) argued that policy outcomes are a different
construct than the notion of functional outputs used by planners. The multiple-policy outcomes model used here to structure the dependent variables
specifically moves the question from simple outputs to a politics-and-administration focus.
What has been shown by this refocus is that spatial form changes the
blend of policy outcomes, thus affecting administrative bias in determining
who gets what (Levy, Meltsner, and Wildavsky 1974). Directed at the more
global issue of government accountability for competing constituencies, the
findings pose a provocative challenge for agency policy makers to incorporate spatial form in evaluating urban policy performance.
Second, although providing evidence of positive implications for policy
makers in traditional monocentric cities, the association of form with outcomes is not good news for those living in areas of metropolitan sprawl who
favor viable public agencies. In a nutshell, economically effective and
socially sensitive transit agencies are more likely to appear in cities having
centralized spatial forms. This conclusion suggests yet another reason to be
concerned about the destructive effect of urban sprawl on the quality of life in
metropolitan areasnamely, the decline of public service delivery.
Given this, the heuristic question may seem obvious. Is it possible or desirable to recentralize the spatial configuration of cities through proactive planning, as some economic-development scholars suggest (Goetz 1990)? Or is
spatial form a policy-making precondition, as this research appears to indicate? If one believes that central-city renewal, restricted suburban growth,
and integrated development planning will halt the erosive effects of sprawl,

80
then transit may remain a viable public service to market users and welfare
clients alike. However, this scenario requires transit agencies to acquire a
greater leadership authority and activist role in metropolitan development
planning. Leaving land-use decisions and service-funding authority mainly
to home rule cities of a metropolitan area will only serve to further erode
the dwindling potency of transit in determining the blend of an agencys policy outcomes, especially in emphasizing effective market responses to the
auto.
On the other hand, if one believes spatial form to be an unalterable precondition, then transit agencies are unlikely ever to be more than backseat
observers of urban dynamics. For them to act proactively, they will need to
look instead to strategic opportunities of new technologies and building
information system and managerial resources that are necessary for reinventing the urban transportation business (Boschken 2000). This scenario would
also require us to reassess the methods used to compare and judge agency
accountability. It might start with segmenting empirical comparisons of the
nations transit agencies according to their spatial environments in the same
way their comparisons are adjusted for urban scale.
Third, the selection of transit policy as the focus of this research identifies
a sector in which spatial form might well be expected to have a greater impact
than other sectors. Moreover, without further research, one cannot directly
extrapolate these findings for use in other sectors. Most other sectors may be
less sensitive to how a city is spatially configured, and even if they are
affected by form, the relationships may be different from those in urban transit. Nevertheless, other sectors whose evaluations of policy outcomes could
benefit from further study include public health (e.g., hospital services,
homeless care, ambulance), safety and security (i.e., police, fire), public
works (i.e., water, power, sewerage), and even K-12 school districts.
In all of these areas, the nature of public services needed to provide desirable policy outcomes depends in part on the socioeconomic characteristics of
clients and on the spatial conditions in which they live. Cumulatively, if urban
spatial form matters to these sectors, albeit in different ways, the policy
implications could be truly enormous, especially considering that these sectors are responsible for most of urban public expenditures. For one, this
would make the above question about spatial form as a parameter more central to the issue of government accountability.
It would also require a reassessment of how we think about administrative
reforms. Most contemporary reforms spring from a particular economic ideology (i.e., Reaganomics, privatization, and reinventing government), and
much of it has taken on the overtone of one shoe fits all without reference to
contextual setting. Across the policy landscape (from schools to transit), the

81
formula for reform is often applied uniformly to metropolitan areas, regardless of whether spatial form appears as monocentric or noncentralized
sprawl. If this studys results are indicative, much of the attempt to make government more accountable would seem misguided and wasteful because so
much of asymmetric outcomes may be the result of spatial form, which is not
factored into most reform equations.
To achieve truly comparative results, can we expect a polycentric area to
organize its service responses in the same way monocentric areas do? Can we
expect them to produce similar outcomes if they do? Regardless of which
policy outcomes one believes should be emphasized, the likelihood of missing the mark is heightened when important dimensions are ignored. We
might better understand congruency of an agencys outcomes with constituencies wants if urban spatial form was not consistently overlooked in policy
making.
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Herman L. Boschken is a professor of management and policy at San Jose State University. He holds a B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. from the
University of Washington, Seattle in urban affairs and administrative theory. His publications in these fields include four books and two dozen articles, the most recent of which
have appeared in the Social Science Quarterly, Urban Studies, Administration and Society, and Public Administration Review. He has received numerous recognitions for
research, including the distinguished Herbert Kaufman Award presented by the American Political Science Association. He was the founding editor of Intermodal Fare
(1994-1998), a scholarly news journal published by the transportation section of the
American Society for Public Administration. For 2000-2001, he received a Fulbright
Distinguished European Chair appointment.


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Urban Affairs Review

Urban Spatial form and Policy Outcomes in Public Agencies

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Boschken / SPATIAL FORM AND

URBAN SPATIAL FORM

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researchers pay much attention to the relevance of spatial form in explaining

MULTIPLE POLICY OUTCOMES

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respective pattern of variegated outcomes, it thus differs from single-norm

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HYPOTHESES: URBAN SPATIAL FORM

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cient services to both commuters and social-program users than an agency

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available to them. Because the availability of tax revenues is directly tied to

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ability to avoid politicized outcomes. Specifically, the effect of low agency

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Inclusion of measures in an outcome index was based on a measures

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TABLE 1: The Dependent Variables of Patterned Outcome Skewness:

NOTE: Outcome 1 = strategic organizational effectiveness; outcome 2 = operational efficiency;

trade-off is between social-program effectiveness and operational efficiency

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Density Gradient: Degree of Centralization

Urban Form: Scaling Centralization of Activities (42 Urban Transit Agencies)

spatial characteristics, including distance between activities, specialized

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Agencies with the Highest and Lowest Centralization of Urban

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TABLE 3: Urban Spatial Form and Control Variables: Descriptive Statistics

*p = .01. **p = .001.

authority over focal-agency policy making). Although not fully accounting

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TABLE 4: Ordinary Least Squares RegressionsUrban Spatial Form and

Urban spatial form

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