Planning, Politics, and City-County Consolidation: Connecting the Dots in Albuquerque

Abstract

In November, voters in the City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County, New Mexico will be asked whether the two governments should get hitched. More accurately, the question on the ballot will be whether or not to accept a unification charter that will consolidate the two existing governments into a single urban county government. The voters rejected the idea in 2003, with 61.5 percent of them voting against it. Whether or not there's a different result this year depends, among other things, on whether city and county residents understand the planning, growth, and land use implications of maintaining the status quo versus consolidation.