Download or read book Municipal Identity as Property written by Christopher J. Tyson and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Detroit is bankrupt. Very little of the theorizing and editorializing about this watershed event has considered municipal boundary law as a contributing factor. To the extent that it has, the analysis fails to grasp how essential municipal boundaries are to the creation of locational value in the metropolis. It has been twenty years since Richard Briffault, Gerald Frug and Richard Ford released their path-breaking scholarship on the municipal boundary problem, yet metropolitan regions continue to fragment in much the same way Detroit did over the past two generations. This raises familiar questions about the meaning and function of municipal boundaries and how local government law should respond. Of the many currents operating within the anti-annexation and “cityhood” movements at the center of the contemporary metropolitan boundary problem is the reality that the politics around location (specifically suburban location) in metropolitan areas are understood, expressed and defended by laymen and courts alike in the rhetoric and logic of property rights. The relationship between private property rights and the perceived right to autonomous local government has taken on popular meanings that, while not always grounded in actual law, do have a real impact on politics. That perceived entitlement forms the ideological basis for what is essentially a socially constructed property right in municipal identity. Municipal identity as property is largely a reflection of the high stakes nature of contemporary suburban identity. Suburban residents feel particularly threatened by the prospect of being swallowed up by their metropolitan area central city, or, even worse, ending up in an unincorporated, undervalued location. The extent to which residing in a particular municipality is understood as highly consequential for wealth building, quality of life, family security and status is a key feature of the contemporary suburban identity and experience. Battles over municipal boundaries reveal the ways in which suburban residents express what amounts to a deeply-felt entitlement to separate government. While notions of municipal identity as property are primarily a result of the cumulative social and economic developments of the twentieth century, the courts have played a role as well. Legal rhetoric and legal reasoning are essential components of the property rights expectations that municipal identity fosters. This article explores how municipal boundary law, social developments and jurisprudence have bolstered a perceived property right in municipal identity and its role in shaping the modern metropolis.