The Adapted American City

Almost all U.S. cities are established by state charter as either mayor-council or council-manager cities. For decades, these two legal-statutory categories have been used by researchers as dichotomous variables in descriptions of city government form and in statistical equations. This study indicates that the mayor-council and council-manager categories, although legally based, mask several important empirical characteristics of U.S. city government. Using a large data set, the authors indicate that the structures of U.S. cities are surprisingly dynamic. Cities tend to change their structures incrementally. Over time, cities with mayor-council statutory platforms will incrementally adapt many of the characteristics of council-manager form cities to improve their management and productivity capabilities. Over time, cities with council-manager statutory platforms will adopt features of mayor-council form cities to increase their political responsiveness, leadership, and accounting capabilities. Because each of the two legal forms of cities adopts primary features of the other, these cities now constitute a third form of the U.S. city—the adapted city.