Recent years have witnessed growing interest in the critical role of local/regional governance structures in shaping physical land development and associated natural resource management processes. This article investigates how political fragmentation in local governance can affect land use patterns through a watershed-level analysis of population and employment density changes in the Interior Plains, the largest physiographic division of the U.S. Population density change rates are found to be negatively associated with a higher degree of political fragmentation, while employment density does not show such a clear relationship with political fragmentation. This finding shows that political fragmentation may present significant challenges to land and water resource management, a result consistent with previous empirical research.

While much scholarly attention has long been paid to ways in which metropolitan areas are politically structured and operated to achieve a dual goal, economic growth and equality, relatively less is known about the complex relationship between metropolitan governance structures and growth-inequality dynamics. This study investigates how and to what extent metropolitan governance structures shape regional economic growth and inequality trajectories using the data for 267 US metropolitan areas from 1990 to 2010. The findings from a two-stage least squares regression analysis suggest that economic growth is associated with governance structures in a nonlinear fashion with relatively more rapid growth rates in both highly centralized and decentralized metropolitan areas. However, these regions are also found to experience a larger increase in income inequality, indicating an important tradeoff to be considered carefully in exploring ways to reform existing governance settings. These findings further suggest that the so-called growth-inequality tradeoff may exist not only in their direct interactions but through their connections via governance or other variables.