Editing Municipalization (section)

==Services==
There have been two main waves of municipalization in developed countries. The first took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when municipalities in many [[developed countries]] acquired local private providers of a range of [[public services]]. The driving reason in most cases was the failure of private providers to sufficiently expand service provision outside wealthy parts of urban areas.

The second wave took place in the early 1990s, when after the end of the [[communist state]]s in eastern Europe state-owned companies in many public service sectors were broken up and transferred to municipal control. This was typical in sectors such as [[water]], [[waste management]], and [[public transport]], although not in [[electricity]] and [[natural gas]].

Such regional companies either remained under municipal control, or were [[privatization|privatized]]. Privatization was done variously: by selling them to investors, by giving a [[concession (contract)|concession]] or a [[management]] contract. Examples include the water sector in the [[Czech Republic]], over half of which has been privatized.