I just learned that the Cleveland Memory Project has Burt Griffin's 1981 Cities Within A City posted as an e-book. From the introduction:
The central idea of this book is that, for a large, decaying, century-old core city within a metropolitan population of a million and a half, a centralized governmental authority is inherently unable to render efficient and effective service. For such a central city, smaller units of government are more efficient, more responsive,and more democratic. That idea arose out of personal experiences from 1966 to 1975 when I was a Legal Aid Society lawyer representing community organizations in Cleveland’s inner city neighborhoods. As I have listened to the proponents of regional government, I have been unimpressed that regionalization would deal with the realities of life or public administration in the City of Cleveland as I observed them during those years.This is the definitive book about the relationship between municipal government and neighborhoods in Cleveland. Read it!