The Delivery of Urban Services Outcomes of Change
What can social scientists tell urban governments about more effective service delivery? The field of public administration, long dominated by research on organizational contributions and organizational behavior, has sadly neglected organizational services, particularly at the urban level. It is this gap-a chasm, really-which the present volume tries to fill. Better than half of these chapters have something to do with urban service delivery. Most valuable are four articles representing preliminary reports from the NSF-RANN projects on the "Organization of Service Delivery in Metropolitan Areas." Here serious attention is paid to questions about institutional arrangements, diversity, and effectiveness, as far as the latter idea can be tackled empirically. There are two sources of restructuring deemed possible. One is the maneuverable part of the existing structure or system, and the other is the nature and scope of citizen participation.