Word: suburbanized
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...Center outside Atlanta, and the spanking new localities of the Route 128 corridor in Massachusetts. According to Joel Garreau, author of Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, by many standards of urban life these mostly low- rise population centers are already minicities. Most of the more than 200 suburban hybrids that he studied have more office space, shopping, entertainment, prestigious hotels, corporate headquarters -- even hospitals with high-tech CAT-scan machines -- than such conventional cities as Tampa, Tucson or Portland, Oregon...
...Florio learned the hard way, if you bump up too hard against suburban interests, you can quickly go from popular Governor to political chump. Two years ago, the New Jersey Supreme Court directed the state to reduce disparities in school funding between affluent suburban communities and inner cities. In an attempt to comply with the court order, Florio pushed the Democratic-controlled legislature to agree to $2.8 billion in new taxes, including an increase in sales tax from 6% to 7%, along with deep cuts in state jobs and spending programs. He also redirected a portion of state education...
...response from suburban taxpayers was ferocious, ranging from death threats to calls for Florio's impeachment. Last November voters elected veto- proof Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature. They are now trying to reverse most of Florio's program -- while also fumbling for a way to satisfy the same court order that led the Governor to formulate his plan...
...lesson of New Jersey is that even suburbanites who recognize the dimension of the inner-city problems often draw the line at paying to solve them. "It does not make sense to take the money away from good suburban schools so that you risk mediocrity everywhere," says Susan Bass Levin, mayor of the wealthy suburb of Cherry Hill, which is outside Camden. As a result of Florio's plan, she claims, her town lost $5 million in education funds in 1989. The following year Cherry Hill adopted the first in a series of annual school-tax hikes to offset...
Another way to recapture fleeing taxpayers might be to extend the city limits. In the 1960s and '70s cities like New Mexico's Albuquerque, Florida's Jacksonville and Kentucky's Lexington have preserved their tax base by annexing or merging with neighboring suburban communities. "They have not ghettoized their black and Hispanic populations to the degree other communities have," says David Rusk, a former mayor of Albuquerque, who is now an urban-affairs consultant...