Don’t confuse zoning classifications with development standards. One can allow urban core density without requiring the elements of urban development that yield a livable downtown. I’ve only been to Indianapolis a couple of times but I found areas close to downtown unwalkable, including one notorious area that was featured here in a critique of Indy’s development standards. I’ll leave it to the Indy locals to hash out this battle but from my limited experience, Indianapolis has a ways to go in that regard.

I do think the general category, “dilution of urban interests” is a doozy reason to be worried about consolidation.

The bottom line is that small cities should have a strong incentive to maximize land use and land value in the most rational way. Putting basically suburban interests in charge of the city takes away that incentive at least for a while.

This is why, my strong guess is that NYC had it never consolidated would have made a faster transition to a fully urban transit oriented city.

Look at the weird things going on with NYC’s recent zoning changes. Large areas near transit were upzoned and there are all kinds of car limiting strategies–great, great awesome! But, then at the same time low density areas like Bayside, College Point and Belrose near the border of Nassau County pushed for down zoning and car oriented policies.

Indianapolis has several downtown zoning classifications that are most assuredly not suburban: CBD-1, -2, and -3. They are largely applied in the core downtown (the old “mile square”, which is the original 1820’s plat). It also has a “Regional Center” overlay zoning that includes the expanded urban core, as well as “hospital” and “campus” zoning classifications that apply to large tracts in the Regional Center area.

I happen to have run post-merger integration projects in the corporate world. Firstly, most large mergers in the corporate world destroy value. The accommodations you have to make to get mergers passed in the public sector world are the equivalent of overpaying for an acquisition.

There are real and tangible cost cutting benefits from private sector mergers. There is usually a focus on capturing these quickly, usually within a year. The results have often been promised to shareholders and have to be delivered. Upwards harmonization is generally not an issue. A lot of the savings come from things like IT redundancy, which would not appear to be the case in something like fire departments. Layoffs are much easier to accomplish. Etc.

It will be interesting to see what happens. I’ll monitor the situation.