On Commuter Rail in Honolulu, a State Without Cities & Max Weber

by Sandy Ikeda
Sat, 16 Aug 2008 at 1:17 AM

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I've been vacationing in Hawaii these past several days, spending most of the time in Honolulu. This "city" of about 377,000 is currently debating whether to address its mounting traffic congestion by building a 20-mile elevated commuter rail line that will take a decade and an estimated $5 billion (inflation-adjusted) to complete.

Here is a recent story in the Honolulu Advertiser that sets out some of the issues involved. A follow-up article reports that a circuit judge has decided just to put the plan before the local voters this November, a major victory for the opponents of rail, especially "Stop Rail Now."

Seems that many of the plan's supporters, including the local Department of Transportation Services, have been resisting the ballot because the majority of voters here seem to be against it. I suppose whether you view this as a victory or defeat for the concept of "local governance" depends on what you mean by that term.

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Question: How many cities are there in Hawaii?

I put scare quotes around "city" earlier in this post because technically Honolulu is not really a city but a "census-designated place" — indeed, there are no incorporated cities in the entire state of Hawaii. According to the Census Bureau,

CDPs are delineated to provide data for settled concentrations of population that are identifiable by name but are not legally incorporated under the laws of the state in which they are located. The boundaries usually are defined in cooperation with local or tribal officials. These boundaries, which usually coincide with visible features or the boundary of an adjacent incorporated place or other legal entity boundary, have no legal status, nor do these places have officials elected to serve traditional municipal functions.

As we've seen, however, Honolulu does have a government with a mayor, city council, et al., just like an incorporated city. Look closely, however, and you'll see that the civic entity is actually "the city and county" of Honolulu. Like Arlington, Virginia, which is also an unincorporated place (to use the older Census Bureau term), Honolulu is actually governed at the county level. Anyway, a good trivia question.

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Now, this gives me a chance to mention that, according to the great sociologist, Max Weber, "In the Middle Ages the symbol of the city was eventually found in the sworn community which legally assumed the form of a corporation." (See the chapter in his book "The City" on "The occidental city.") He continues,

The emergence of the medieval urban community as a legal corporation occurred only by degrees. Still in 1313, according to Hatschek, English cities were not able to obtain the franchise because, speaking in modern terms, they had no "legal personality." It was only under Edward I that cities acquired the status of corporations.

This could suggest that the literature on the nature of the firm, for example Frederic Sautet's work on the "entrepreneurial theory of the firm" might have relevance for understanding the nature of cities, in particular so-called "edge cities" whose origins are typically spontaneous but also the result of private investment (e.g., in shopping malls and office towers) outside traditional city centers. So, legally incorporated or not, such places may be able to solve their problems of collective action — like the provision of public services — more like private firms than political entities.

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