Environmental quality within an interorganizational matrix: A case study of the SOHIO project

Abstract

Urban coastal management is now part of a large, complex set of regional, state, and federal interorganizational arrangements. This emerging matrix consists of a loosely linked set of nearly independent decision points. Cities have little capacity within this matrix for independent action. Recent experience in the SOHIO project by the City and Port of Long Beach, California, illustrates the point to which external agencies have taken over decision‐making for use of coastal resources. Public bodies removed from city affairs and politics and with interests in other than coastal affairs have become dominant and have overridden local policy‐making. The public costs to citizens and local governments of the emerging interorganizational matrix are very high and may be excessive. As it is emerging, the matrix is a semi‐autonomous set of bureaucratic decision points which is unhinged from community values and regular political infrastructures.