Urban service provision: strengths and weaknesses of five theoretical approaches

Michael E Smith & Timothy Dennehy & April Kamp-Whittaker & Benjamin W Stanley & Barbara L  Stark & Abigail York, "Conceptual approaches to service provision in cities throughout history," Urban Studies 53 (2016): 8

The take-away: This article applies five theoretical approaches of urban service provision— public choice theory, co-production, critical theory, urban political ecology, collective action theory, and social integration—to the service provision context of pre-modern Zanzibar and Tikal. It surmises that, because these theories were developed in particular historical situations, most cases need at least some of the explanatory power offered by each. Overall, the article concludes, “services are a response to the purposive actions of elites and commoners alike.”

Abstract: All cities, from the distant past to the present, provide services for their residents, but the  nature and level of urban services vary widely, as do the providers. How are we to understand this variation? We examine the major theoretical and conceptual approaches to urban services, and find that none is sufficiently comprehensive to explain patterns of  service provision in all types of cities: public choice theory, co-production, critical theory, urban political ecology, collective action theory, and social integration. We use two premodern cities – Zanzibar and Tikal – to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of these  theories. A major challenge is to account for both central administrative control of services and more generative, bottom-up service provision.

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