The Constitution has a flaw: It doesn’t pay attention to cities | Opinion
In November 2025, I was elected to the City Council of Lakewood. It remains one of the greatest honors of my life.
Serving on a city council has me close to the heartbeat of my community. My daily conversations with neighbors are practical, personal and grounded in lived experience. I love it. There is just one problem.
Cities have little power.
Cities operate within a constitutional structure that largely ignores them. The U.S. Constitution reserves powers to the states through the 10th Amendment, and it protects the rights of individuals through the Bill of Rights and Reconstruction Amendments, but the Constitution never mentions cities. Not once. The Supreme Court has reinforced this omission, describing cities as mere “creatures of the state” with no inherent sovereignty. State governments may create or dissolve cities, redraw their boundaries or override their local laws. This structure made sense in early America but feels deeply antiquated today.
When the Constitution was being drafted in the late 1780s, the United States was overwhelmingly rural. Philadelphia was the largest city in the United States with fewer than fifty thousand residents. Political life revolved around the states, and the founders had little reason to treat cities as independent constitutional actors.
But America has changed.
Today, more than 85% of Americans live in metropolitan areas centered on cities. These areas generate most of the nation’s economic activity and are where most Americans interact with their government through roads, parks, zoning decisions, housing policy and public safety. And yet, cities across the country remain largely powerless against the decisions of their states, reflecting the constitutional structure of a rural republic from more than two centuries ago. The result is that the government closest to the people, and most attuned to their lives and priorities, has the least power and protection.
That is not how most people think democracy should work.
When the distance between the people making the decisions and the people living with the consequences of those decisions grows too wide, something essential to self-government slips away. The result is disengagement and disenfranchisement, and you can see it in voter turnout. In 2023, when municipal elections dominated the ballot, only 30% of people voted in Pierce County. The following year, when statewide and presidential races appeared on the ballot, turnout skyrocketed to 76%. This should not surprise us. Voters show up when they think it matters most.
Americans have spent the last 250 years debating the proper balance of power between the federal government and the states. It’s time we rethink the relationship between states and the cities where most Americans now live, because the health of our democracy depends on the vitality of those communities. Community does not begin in the state capitol building. Community begins in the neighborhoods, parks, schools and council chambers where citizens gather to shape the places they call home.
It’s time more of the power came home.
Philip Lindholm is a mediator and Lakewood city council member. The views expressed are his own. Learn more at philiplindholm.com .