"Public Benefits from Public Choice": Producing Decentralization in Metropolitan Los Angeles, 1954-1973

Emergent public choice theory and innovations in suburban local government worked together to create and justify greater inequality among metropolitan places in postwar Los Angeles County. This article examines public choice theory and suburban home rule as mutually dependent components of suburbanization. Theorists praised postwar metropolitan fragmentation, challenging a prior consensus for metropolitan political and economic integration. Local governments under the "Lakewood Plan" obtained public services by contract from Los Angeles County at covertly subsidized prices, making government in new suburbs cost effective at the expense of older municipalities. The governments deployed symbols of suburban "home rule" and public choice principles of efficiency to defend their privileges. Movements to incorporate minority-dominated cities in Watts and East Los Angeles and for the secession of the San Fernando Valley from Los Angeles reflected the dominance of the practice and ideology of localism in California metropolitics.