Greater_city_movements
A greater city movement refers to various reform efforts—both contemporary and historical—to expand the municipal boundaries of a primate central city to incorporate all, or part, of the surrounding metropolitan population. Historically, greater city movements were proposed as a solution to the problem of metropolitan planning and administration.[1][2] Today, the concept has been largely discredited for political reasons[3] Historically, examples of cities that have successfully expanded their boundaries to include the entire metropolitan population are extremely rare, and as a general principle few, if any cities worldwide have been able to maintain a continuous process of boundary adjustment to include surrounding areas of population growth.[citation needed]
The greater city movements of the early twentieth century grew out of concern for improving urban health, efficiency and aesthetics. They also reflected the longstanding historical understanding of cities as a politically unified entity. Larger municipal governments with greater resources were seen as a means for implementing the ideas of municipal socialism, City beautiful and the garden city.[4]
Greater city movements are distinct from "regionalism" movements, which seek to create an additional tier of regional metropolitan government (Such as Grand Paris in 2016).[citation needed]