The City as a Growth Machine Toward a Political Economy .docx

The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of
Place
Author(s): Harvey Molotch
Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Sep.,
1976), pp. 309-332
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2777096
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The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a
Political Economy of Place'
Harvey Molotch
University of California, Santa Barbara
A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the
areal
expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an
elite
is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the
land
use of the area in which its members hold a common interest.
An
elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have
growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as
opposed
to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and
nonlocal
levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the
expense of
competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely
a con-
sequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied
in this
growth machine. The relevance of growth to the interests of
various
social groups is examined in this context, particularly with
reference
to the issue of unemployment. Recent social trends in

opposition to
growth are described and their potential consequences
evaluated.
Conventional definitions of "city," "urban place," or
"metropolis" have
led to conventional analyses of urban systems and urban-based
social
problems. Usually traceable to Wirth's classic and highly
plausible formu-
lation of "numbers, density and heterogeneity" (1938), there
has been
a continuing tendency, even in more recent formulations (e.g.,
Davis
1965), to conceive of place quite apart from a crucial
dimension of social
structure: power and social class hierarchy. Consequently,
sociological
research based on the traditional definitions of what an urban
place is has
had very little relevance to the actual, day-to-day activities of
those at the
top of local power structure whose priorities set the limits
within which
decisions affecting land use, the public budget, and urban
social life come

to be made. It has not been very apparent from the scholarship
of urban
social science that land, the basic stuff of place, is a market
commodity
providing wealth and power, and that some very important
people conse-
quently take a keen interest in it. Thus, although there are
extensive litera-
tures on community power as well as on how to define and
conceptualize
a city or urban place, there are few notions available to link the
two issues
coherently, focusing on the urban settlement as a political
economy.
This paper aims toward filling this need. I speculate that the
political
1 I have had the benefit of critical comments and assistance
from Richard Appelbaum,
Richard Baisden, Norman Bowers, Norton Long, Howard
Newby, Anthony Shih,
Tony Pepitone, Gerald Suttles, Gaye Tuchman, and Al Wyner.
AJS Volume 82 Number 2 309
2018 22:20:06 UTC

American Journal of Sociology
and economic essence of virtually any given locality, in the
present Amer-
ican context, is growth. I further argue that the desire for
growth provides
the key operative motivation toward consensus for members of
politically
mobilized local elites, however split they might be on other
issues, and
that a common interest in growth is the overriding commonality
among
important people in a given locale-at least insofar as they have
any
important local goals at all. Further, this growth imperative is
the most
important constraint upon available options for local initiative
in social
and economic reform. It is thus that I argue that the very
essence of a
locality is its operation as a growth machine.
The clearest indication of success at growth is a constantly
rising

urban-area population-a symptom of a pattern ordinarily
comprising an
initial expansion of basic industries followed by an expanded
labor force,
a rising scale of retail and wholesale commerce, more far-flung
and in-
creasingly intensive land development, higher population
density, and
increased levels of financial activity. Although throughout this
paper I
index growth by the variable population growth, it is this entire
syndrome
of associated events that is meant by the general term
"growth."2 I argue
that the means of achieving this growth, of setting off this
chain of phe-
nomena, constitute the central issue for those serious people
who care
about their locality and who have the resources to make their
caring felt
as a political force. The city is, for those who count, a growth
machine.
THE HUMAN ECOLOGY: MAPS AS INTEREST MOSAICS
I have argued elsewhere (Molotch 1967, 1973) that any given
parcel of

land represents an interest and that any given locality is thus an
aggregate
of land-based interests. That is, each landowner (or person who
otherwise
has some interest in the prospective use of a given piece of
land) has in
mind a certain future for that parcel which is linked somehow
with his or
her own well-being. If there is a simple ownership, the
relationship is
2 This association of related phenomena is the common
conceptualization which
students of the economic development of cities ordinarily
utilize in their analyses
(see, e.g., Alonso 1964, pp. 79-81; Leven 1964, pp. 140-44;
Brown 1974, pp. 48-51;
and Durr 1971, pp. 174-80). As Sunquist remarks in the context
of his study of
population policies in Western Europe, "The key to population
distribution is, of
course, job availability. A few persons-retired, notably, and
some independent pro-
fessionals such as artists, writers and inventors-may be free to
live in any locality
they choose but, for the rest, people are compelled to distribute
themselves in what-
ever pattern is dictated by the distribution of employment
opportunities. Some
investors may locate their investment in areas of surplus labour
voluntarily, and so

check the migration flow, and others may be induced by
government assistance to
do so. But if neither of these happens-if the jobs do not go
where the workers are
-the workers must go to the jobs, if they are not to accept
welfare as a way of life.
When population distribution is an end, then, job distribution is
inevitably the means"
(1975, p. 13).
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The City as a Growth Machine
straightforward: to the degree to which the land's profit
potential is
enhanced, one's own wealth is increased. In other cases, the
relationship
may be more subtle: one has interest in an adjacent parcel, and
if a
noxious use should appear, one's own parcel may be harmed.
More subtle
still is the emergence of concern for an aggregate of parcels:
one sees that
one's future is bound to the future of a larger area, that the

future enjoy-
ment of financial benefit flowing from a given parcel will
derive from the
general future of the proximate aggregate of parcels. When this
occurs,
there is that "we feeling" (McKenzie 1922) which bespeaks of
com-
munity. We need to see each geographical map-whether of a
small group
of land parcels, a whole city, a region, or a nation-not merely
as a de-
marcation of legal, political, or topographical features, but as a
mosaic
of competing land interests capable of strategic coalition and
action.
Each unit of a community strives, at the expense of the others,
to
enhance the land-use potential of the parcels with which it is
associated.
Thus, for example, shopkeepers at both ends of a block may
compete with
one another to determine in front of which building the bus
stop will be
placed. Or, hotel owners on the north side of a city may

compete with
those on the south to get a convention center built nearby (see
Banfield
1961). Likewise, area units fight over highway routes, airport
locations,
campus developments, defense contracts, traffic lights, one-
way street
designations, and park developments. The intensity of group
consciousness
and activity waxes and wanes as opportunities for and
challenges to the
collective good rise and fall; but when these coalitions are of
sufficiently
enduring quality, they constitute identifiable, ongoing
communities. Each
member of a community is simultaneously the member of a
number of
others; hence, communities exist in a nested fashion (e.g.,
neighborhood
within city within region), with salience of community level
varying both
over time and circumstance. Because of this nested nature of
communities,
subunits which are competitive with one another at one level

(e.g., in an
interblock dispute over where the bus stop should go) will be in
coalition
at a higher level (e.g., in an intercity rivalry over where the
new port
should go). Obviously, the anticipation of potential coalition
acts to con-
strain the intensity of conflict at more local loci of growth
competition.
Hence, to the degree to which otherwise competing land-
interest groups
collude to achieve a common land-enhancement scheme, there
is com-
munity-whether at the level of a residential block club, a
neighborhood
association, a city or metropolitan chamber of commerce, a
state develop-
ment agency, or a regional association. Such aggregates,
whether consti-
tuted formally or informally, whether governmental political
institutions
or voluntary associations, typically operate in the following
way: an at-
tempt is made to use government to gain those resources which

will
enhance the growth potential of the area unit in question.
Often, the
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2018 22:20:06 UTC
governmental level where action is needed is at least one level
higher than
the community from which the activism springs. Thus,
individual land-
owners aggregate to extract neighborhood gains from the city
government;
a cluster of cities may coalesce to have an effective impact on
the state
government, etc. Each locality, in striving to make these gains,
is in com-
petition with other localities because the degree of growth, at
least at any
given moment, is finite. The scarcity of developmental
resources means

that government becomes the arena in which land-use interest
groups com-
pete for public money and attempt to mold those decisions
which will deter-
mine the land-use outcomes. Localities thus compete with one
another to
gain the preconditions of growth. Historically, U.S. cities were
created and
sustained largely through this process;3 it continues to be the
significant
dynamic of contemporary local political economy and is
critical to the
allocation of public resources and the ordering of local issue
agendas.
Government decisions are not the only kinds of social activities
which
affect local growth chances; decisions made by private
corporations also
have major impact. When a national corporation decides to
locate a
branch plant in a given locale, it sets the conditions for the
surrounding
land-use pattern. But even here, government decisions are
involved: plant-
location decisions are made with reference to such issues as

labor costs,
tax rates, and the costs of obtaining raw materials and
transporting goods
to markets. It is government decisions (at whatever level) that
help deter-
mine the cost of access to markets and raw materials. This is
especially
so in the present era of raw material subsidies (e.g., the mineral
depletion
allowance) and reliance on government approved or subsidized
air trans-
port, highways, railways, pipelines, and port developments.
Government
decisions influence the cost of overhead expenses (e.g.,
pollution abatement
requirements, employee safety standards), and government
decisions affect
the costs of labor through indirect manipulation of
unemployment rates,
through the use of police to constrain or enhance union
organizing, and
through the legislation and administration of welfare laws (see
Piven and
Cloward 1972).

Localities are generally mindful of these governmental powers
and, in
addition to creating the sorts of physical conditions which can
best serve
industrial growth, also attempt to maintain the kind of
"business climate"
that attracts industry: for example, favorable taxation,
vocational train-
ing, law enforcement, and "good" labor relations. To promote
growth,
taxes should be "reasonable," the police force should be
oriented toward
protection of property, and overt social conflict should be
minimized (see
3 For accounts of how "boosterism" worked in this manner, see
Wade (1969) and
Harris (1976).
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Rubin 1972, p. 123; Agger, Goldrich, and Swanson 1964, p.
649).4 In-
creased utility and government costs caused by new
development should
be borne (and they usually are-see, e.g., Ann Arbor City
Planning De-
partment [1972]) by the public at large, rather than by those
responsible
for the "excess" demand on the urban infrastructure. Virtually
any issue
of a major business magazine is replete with ads from localities
of all types
(including whole countries) trumpeting their virtues in just
these terms
to prospective industrial settlers.5 In addition, a key role of
elected and
appointed officials becomes that of "ambassador" to industry,
to communi-
cate, usually with appropriate ceremony, these advantages to
potential
investors (see Wyner 1967).6
I aim to make the extreme statement that this organized effort
to affect

the outcome of growth distribution is the essence of local
government as
a dynamic political force. It is not the only function of
government, but it
is the key one and, ironically, the one most ignored. Growth is
not, in the
present analysis, merely one among a number of equally
important con-
cerns of political process (cf. Adrian and Williams 1963).
Among con-
temporary social scientists, perhaps only Murray Edelman
(1964) has
provided appropriate conceptual preparation for viewing
government in
such terms. Edelman contrasts two kinds of politics. First there
is the
"symbolic" politics which comprises the "big issues" of public
morality
and the symbolic reforms featured in the headlines and
editorials of the
daily press. The other politics is the process through which
goods and
services actually come to be distributed in the society. Largely
unseen,

and relegated to negotiations within committees (when it
occurs at all
within a formal government body), this is the politics which
determines
who, in material terms, gets what, where, and how (Lasswell
1936). This
is the kind of politics we must talk about at the local level: it is
the politics
4 Agger et al. remark, on the basis of their comparative study
of four U.S cities:
"[Members of the local elites] value highly harmony and unity-
'pulling together.'
They regard local community affairs as essentially nonpolitical,
and tend to associate
controversy with 'politics.' An additional factor reinforcing the
value of harmony in
many communities . . . is the nationwide competition among
communities for new
industries. Conflict is thought to create a highly unfavourable
image to outsiders, an
image that might well repel any prospective industry" (1964, p.
649).
5 See, e.g., the May 19, 1974, issue of Forbes, which had the
following ad placed by
the State of Pennsylvania: "Q: [banner headline] What state
could possibly cut taxes
at a time like this? A: Pennsylvania [same large type].
Pennsylvania intends to keep
showing businessmen that it means business. Pennsylvania.
Where business has a lot
growing for it. . . ." The state of Maryland ran this ad in the
same issue: "Maryland

Finances the Training. . . In short, we can finance practically
everything you need
to establish a manufacturing plant. . .."
6 The city of Los Angeles maintains an office, headed by a
former key business exec-
utive, with this "liaison" role as its specific task (see "L.A.'s
Business Envoy Speaks
Softly and Sits at a Big Desk," Los Angeles Times [August 26,
1974]).
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of distribution, and land is the crucial (but not the only)
variable in this
system.
The people who participate with their energies, and particularly
their
fortunes, in local affairs are the sort of persons who-at least in
vast dis-
proportion to their representation in the population-have the
most to gain
or lose in land-use decisions. Prominent in terms of numbers

have long
been the local businessmen (see Walton 1970) ,7 particularly
property
owners and investors in locally oriented financial institutions
(see, e.g.,
Spaulding 1951; Mumford 1961, p. 536), who need local
government
in their daily money-making routines. Also prominent are
lawyers, syndica-
tors, and realtors (see Bouma 1962) who need to put themselves
in situa-
tions where they can be most useful to those with the land and
property
resources.8 Finally, there are those who, although not directly
involved in
land use, have their futures tied to growth of the metropolis as
a whole.
At least, when the local market becomes saturated one of the
few possible
avenues for business expansion is sometimes the expansion of
the sur-
rounding community itself (see Adrian and Williams 1963, p.
24).9
This is the general outline of the coalition that actively
generates the

community "we feeling" (or perhaps more aptly, the "our
feeling")10 that
comes to be an influence in the politics of a given locality. It
becomes
manifest through a wide variety of techniques. Government
funds support
"boosterism" of various sorts: the Chamber of Commerce,
locality-promo-
tion ads in business journals and travel publications, city-
sponsored parade
7 The literature on community power is vast and controversial
but has been sum-
marized by Walton: he indicates, on the basis of 39 studies of
61 communities, that
"the proportion of businessmen found in the leadership group is
high irrespective
of the type of power structure found" (1970, p. 446). It is my
argument, of course,
that this high level of participation does indeed indicate the
exercise of power on
behalf of at least a portion of the elite. My analysis does not
assume that this portion
of the elite is necessarily always united with others of high
status on the concrete
issues of local land use and the uses of local government.
8Descriptions of some tactics typically employed in land-use
politics are contained
in McConnell (1966), Tolchin and Tolchin (1971), and
Makielski (1966), but a

sophisticated relevant body of literature does not yet exist.
9 Thus the stance taken by civic business groups toward growth
and land-use matters
affecting growth is consistently positive, although the intensity
of commitment to
that goal varies. In his study of New York City zoning,
Makielski indicates that "the
general business groups . . . approached zoning from an
economic viewpoint, although
this often led them to share the Reformer's ideology. Their
economic interest in the
city gave them a stake in a 'healthy,' 'growing community'
where tax rates were not
prohibitive, where city government was 'efficient,' and where
some of the problems
of the urban environment-a constricting labour force,
congestion, and lack of space
-were being attacked" (1966, p. 141). A similar dynamic has
been observed in a
medium-size Mexican city: "Despite many other differences,
basic agreement on the
primacy of stability and growth provides a basis for a dialogue
between government
and business" (Fagen and Tuohy 1972, p. 56).
10 Bruce Pringle suggested the latter phrase to me.
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floats, and stadia and other forms of support for professional
sports teams
carrying the locality name. The athletic teams in particular are
an extra-
ordinary mechanism for instilling a spirit of civic jingoism
regarding the
"progress" of the locality. A stadium filled with thousands
(joined by
thousands more at home before the TV) screaming for
Cleveland or
Baltimore (or whatever) is a scene difficult to fashion
otherwise. This
enthusiasm can be drawn upon, with a glossy claim of creating
a "greater
Cleveland," "greater Baltimore," etc., in order to gain general
acceptance
for local growth-oriented programs. Similarly, public school
curricula,
children's essay contests, soapbox derbies, spelling contests,
beauty pag-
eants, etc., help build an ideological base for local boosterism
and the
acceptance of growth. My conception of the territorial bond

among hu-
mans differs from those cast in terms of primordial instincts:
instead, I
see this bond as socially organized and sustained, at least in
part, by
those who have a use for it (cf. Suttles 1972, pp. 111-39). I do
not claim
that there are no other sources of civic jingoism and growth
enthusiasm
in American communities, only that the growth-machine
coalition mobilizes
what is there, legitimizes and sustains it, and channels it as a
political
force into particular kinds of policy decisions.
The local institution which seems to take prime responsibility
for the
sustenance of these civic resources-the metropolitan
newspaper-is also
the most important example of a business which has its interest
anchored
in the aggregate growth of the locality. Increasingly, American
cities are
one-newspaper (metropolitan daily) towns (or one-newspaper-
company

towns), and the newspaper business seems to be one kind of
enterprise
for which expansion to other locales is especially difficult. The
financial
loss suffered by the New York Times in its futile effort to
establish a
California edition is an important case in point. A paper's
financial status
(and that of other media to a lesser extent) tends to be wed to
the size
of the locality." As the metropolis expands, a larger number of
ad lines
can be sold on the basis of the increasing circulation base. The
local news
paper thus tends to occupy a rather unique position: like many
other local
businesses, it has an interest in growth, but unlike most, its
critical interest
is not in the specific geographical pattern of that growth. That
is, the cru-
cial matter to a newspaper is not whether the additional
population comes
to reside on the north side or south side, or whether the money
is made

through a new convention center or a new olive factory. The
newspaper
has no axe to grind, except the one axe which holds the
community elite
together: growth. It is for this reason that the newspaper tends
to achieve
11 Papers can expand into other industries, such as book
publishing and wood har-
vesting. The point is that, compared with most other industries,
they cannot easily
replicate themselves across geographical boundaries through
chains, branch plants,
and franchises.
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a statesman-like attitude in the community and is deferred to as
something
other than a special interest by the special interests. Competing
interests
often regard the publisher or editor as a general community
leader, as an
ombudsman and arbiter of internal bickering and, at times, as

an en-
lightened third party who can restrain the short-term profiteers
in the
interest of more stable, long-term, and properly planned
growth.12 The
paper becomes the reformist influence, the "voice of the
community,"
restraining the competing subunits, especially the small-scale,
arriviste
"fast-buck artists" among them. The papers are variously
successful in
their continuous battle with the targeted special interests.'3 The
media
attempt to attain these goals not only through the kind of
coverage they
develop and editorials they write but also through the kinds of
candidates
they support for local office. The present point is not that the
papers con-
trol the politics of the city, but rather that one of the sources of
their
special influence is their commitment to growth per se, and
growth is a
goal around which all important groups can rally.
Thus it is that, although newspaper editorialists have typically
been in
the forefront expressing sentiment in favor of "the ecology,"
they tend
nevertheless to support growth-inducing investments for their

regions. The
New York Times likes office towers and additional industrial
installations
in the city even more than it loves the environment. The Los
Angeles
Times editorializes against narrow-minded profiteering at the
expense of
the environment but has also favored the development of the
supersonic
transport because of the "jobs" it would lure to Southern
California. The
papers do tend to support "good planning principles" in some
form be-
cause such good planning is a long-term force that makes for
even more
potential future growth. If the roads are not planned wide
enough, their
narrowness will eventually strangle the increasingly intense
uses to which
the land will be put. It just makes good sense to plan, and good
planning
for "sound growth" thus is the key "environmental policy" of
the nation's
local media and their statesmen allies. Such policies of "good
planning"
should not be confused with limited growth or conservation:
they more
typically represent the opposite sort of goal.
Often leaders of public or quasi-public agencies (e.g.,
universities,
utilities) achieve a role similar to that of the newspaper
publisher: they
become growth "statesmen" rather than advocates for a certain

type or
12 In some cities (e.g., Chicago) it is the political machine that
performs this func-
tion and thus can "get things done." Political scientists (e.g.,
Edward Banfield) often
identify success in performing this function as evidence of
effective local government.
13 In his study of the history of zoning in New York City,
Makielski remarks: "While
the newspapers in the city are large landholders, the role of the
press was not quite
like that of any of the other nongovernmental actors. The press
was in part one of
the referees of the rules of the game, especially the informal
rules-calling attention
to what it considered violations" (1966, p. 189).
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intralocal distribution of growth. A university may require an
increase in
the local urban population pool to sustain its own expansion
plans and,
in addition, it may be induced to defer to others in the growth
machine

(bankers, newspapers) upon whom it depends for the favorable
financial
and public-opinion environment necessary for institutional
enhancement.
There are certain persons, ordinarily conceived of as members
of the
elite, who have much less, if any, interest in local growth.
Thus, for exam-
ple, there are branch executives of corporations headquartered
elsewhere
who, although perhaps emotionally sympathetic with progrowth
outlooks,
work for corporations which have no vested interest in the
growth of the
locality in question. Their indirect interest is perhaps in the
existence of
the growth ideology rather than growth itself. It is that
ideology which in
fact helps make them revered people in the area (social worth
is often de-
fined in terms of number of people one employs) and which
provides the
rationale for the kind of local governmental policies most
consistent with

low business operating costs. Nonetheless, this interest is not
nearly as
strong as the direct growth interests of developers, mortgage
bankers, etc.,
and thus we find, as Schulze (1961) has observed, that there is
a tendency
for such executives to play a lesser local role than the
parochial, home-
grown businessmen whom they often replace.
Thus, because the city is a growth machine, it draws a special
sort of
person into its politics. These people-whether acting on their
own or on
behalf of the constituency which financed their rise to power-
tend to be
businessmen and, among businessmen, the more parochial sort.
Typically,
they come to politics not to save or destroy the environment,
not to repress
or liberate the blacks, not to eliminate civil liberties or enhance
them. They
may end up doing any or all of these things once they have
achieved access
to authority, perhaps as an inadvertent consequence of making

decisions
in other realms. But these types of symbolic positions are
derived from the
fact of having power-they are typically not the dynamics which
bring
people to power in the first place. Thus, people often become
"involved"
in government, especially in the local party structure and fund
raising, for
reasons of land business and related processes of resource
distribution.
Some are "statesmen" who think in terms of the growth of the
whole com-
munity rather than that of a more narrow geographical
delimitation. But
they are there to wheel and deal to affect resource distribution
through
local government. As a result of their position, and in part to
develop the
symbolic issues which will enable them (in lieu of one of their
opponents
or colleagues) to maintain that position of power, they get
interested in
such things as welfare cheating, busing, street crime, and the
price of meat.
This interest in the symbolic issues (see Edelman 1964) is thus

substan-
tially an aftereffect of a need for power for other purposes.
This is not to
say that such people don't "feel strongly" about these matters-
they do
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sometimes. It is also the case that certain moral zealots and
"concerned
citizens" go into politics to right symbolic wrongs; but the
money and
other supports which make them viable as politicians is usually
nonsym-
bolic money.
Those who come to the forefront of local government (and
those to
whom they are directly responsive), therefore, are not
statistically repre-
sentative of the local population as a whole, nor even
representative of the

social classes which produce them. The issues they introduce
into public
discourse are not representative either. As noted by Edelman,
the distribu-
tive issues, the matters which bring people to power, are more
or less
deliberately dropped from public discourse (see
Schattschneider 1960).
The issues which are allowed to be discussed and the positions
which the
politicians take on them derive from the world views of those
who come
from certain sectors of the business and professional class and
the need
which they have to whip up public sentiment without allowing
distributive
issues to become part of public discussion. It follows that any
political
change which succeeded in replacing the land business as the
key determi-
nant of the local political dynamic would simultaneously
weaken the power
of one of the more reactionary political forces in the society,
thereby affect-

ing outcomes with respect to those other symbolic issues which
manage to
gain so much attention. Thus, should such a change occur,
there would
likely be more progressive positions taken on civil liberties,
and less
harassment of welfare recipients, social "deviants," and other
defenseless
victims.
LIABILITIES OF THE GROWTH MACHINE
Emerging trends are tending to enervate the locality growth
machines.
First is the increasing suspicion that in many areas, at many
historical
moments, growth benefits only a small proportion of local
residents. Growth
almost always brings with it the obvious problems of increased
air and
water pollution, traffic congestion, and overtaxing of natural
amenities.
These dysfunctions become increasingly important and visible
as increased
consumer income fulfills people's other needs and as the
natural cleansing

capacities of the environment are progressively overcome with
deleterious
material. While it is by no means certain that growth and
increased den-
sity inevitably bring about social pathologies (see Fischer,
Baldassare, and
Ofshe 1974), growth does make such pathologies more difficult
to deal
with. For example, the larger the jurisdiction, the more
difficult it becomes
to achieve the goal of school integration without massive
busing schemes.
As increasing experience with busing makes clear, small towns
can more
easily have interracial schools, whether fortuitously through
spatial prox-
imity or through managed programs.
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2018 22:20:06 UTC
In addition, the weight of research evidence is that growth
often costs

existing residents more money. Evidently, at various
population levels,
points of diminishing returns are crossed such that additional
increments
lead to net revenue losses. A 1970 study for the city of Palo
Alto, Cali-
fornia, indicated that it was substantially cheaper for that city
to acquire
at full market value its foothill open space than to allow it to
become an
"addition" to the tax base (Livingston and Blayney 1971). A
study of
Santa Barbara, California, demonstrated that additional
population growth
would require higher property taxes, as well as higher utility
costs (Appel-
baum et al. 1974). Similar results on the costs of growth have
been ob-
tained in studies of Boulder, Colorado (cited in Finkler 1972),
and Ann
Arbor, Michigan (Ann Arbor City Planning Department 1972)
.14 Sys-
tematic analyses of government costs as a function of city size
and growth

have been carried out under a number of methodologies, but the
use of
the units of analysis most appropriate for comparison (urban
areas)
yields the finding that the cost is directly related both to size of
place
and rate of growth, at least for middle-size cities (see Follett
1976; Appel-
baum 1976). Especially significant are per capita police costs,
which
virtually all studies show to be positively related to both city
size and rate
of growth (see Appelbaum et al. 1974; Appelbaum 1976).
Although damage to the physical environment and costs of
utilities and
governmental services may rise with size of settlement,
"optimal" size is
obviously determined by the sorts of values which are to be
maximized
(see Duncan 1957). It may indeed be necessary to sacrifice
clean air to
accumulate a population base large enough to support a major
opera com-
pany. But the essential point remains that growth is certainly

less of a
financial advantage to the taxpayer than is conventionally
depicted, and
that most people's values are, according to the survey evidence
(Hoch
1972, p. 280; Finkler 1972, pp. 2, 23; Parke and Westoff 1972;
Mazie and
Rowlings 1973; Appelbaum et al. 1974, pp. 4.2-4.6) more
consistent with
small places than large. Indeed, it is rather clear that some
substantial
portion of the migrations to the great metropolitan areas of the
last decade
has been more in spite of people's values than because of them.
In the
recent words of Sundquist: "The notion commonly expressed
that Ameri-
cans have 'voted with their feet' in favor of the great cities is,
on the basis
of every available sampling, so much nonsense.. . . What is
called 'freedom
of choice' is, in sum, freedom of employer choice or, more
precisely, free-
dom of choice for that segment of the corporate world that
operates mobile

14 A useful bibliography of growth evaluation studies is
Agelasto and Perry (undated).
A study with findings contrary to those reported here (Gruen
and Gruen Associates
1972) limits cost evaluation to only three municipal services
and was carried out in
a city which had already made major capital expenditures that
provided it with huge
unused capacities in water, schools, and sewage.
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2018 22:20:06 UTC
enterprises. The real question, then, is whether freedom of
corporate choice
should be automatically honored by government policy at the
expense of
freedom of individual choice where those conflict" (1975, p.
258).
Taking all the evidence together, it is certainly a rather
conservative
statement to make that under many circumstances growth is a
liability

financially and in quality of life for the majority of local
residents. Under
such circumstances, local growth is a transfer of quality of life
and wealth
from the local general public to a certain segment of the local
elite. To
raise the question of wisdom of growth in regard to any
specific locality
is hence potentially to threaten such a wealth transfer and the
interests
of those who profit by it.
THE PROBLEMS OF JOBS
Perhaps the key ideological prop for the growth machine,
especially in
terms of sustaining support from the working-class majority
(Levison
1974), is the claim that growth "makes jobs." This claim is
aggressively
promulgated by developers, builders, and chambers of
commerce; it be-
comes a part of the statesman talk of editorialists and political
officials.
Such people do not speak of growth as useful to profits-rather,
they speak
of it as necessary for making jobs. But local growth does not,
of course,
make jobs: it distributes jobs. The United States will see next

year the
construction of a certain number of new factories, office units,
and high-
ways-regardless of where they are put. Similarly, a given
number of auto-
mobiles, missiles, and lampshades will be made, regardless of
where they
are manufactured. Thus, the number of jobs in this society,
whether in
the building trades or any other economic sector, will be
determined by
rates of investment return, federal decisions affecting the
money supply,
and other factors having very little to do with local decision
making. All
that a locality can do is to attempt to guarantee that a certain
proportion
of newly created jobs will be in the locality in question.
Aggregate empioy-
ment is thus unaffected by the outcome of this competition
among localities
to "make" jobs.
The labor force is essentially a single national pool; workers
are mobile
and generally capable of taking advantage of employment
opportunities
emerging at geographically distant points.15 As jobs develop in
a fast-
growing area, the unemployed will be attracted from other
areas in suffi-
cient numbers not only to fill those developing vacancies but

also to form
15 I am not arguing that the labor force is perfectly mobile, as
indeed there is strong
evidence that mobility is limited by imperfect information,
skill limitations, and
cultural and family ties. The argument is rather that the
essential mobility of the
labor force is sufficiently pronounced to make programs of
local job creation largely
irrelevant to long-term rates of unemployment.
320
2018 22:20:06 UTC
a work-force sector that is continuously unemployed. Thus, just
as local
growth does not affect aggregate employment, it likely has very
little long-
term impact upon the local rate of unemployment. Again, the
systematic
evidence fails to show any advantage to growth: there is no
tendency for
either larger places or more rapidly growing ones to have lower
unemploy-

ment rates than other kinds of urban areas. In fact, the tendency
is for
rapid growth to be associated with higher rates of
unemployment (for
general documentation, see Follett 1976; Appelbaum 1976;
Hadden and
Borgatta 1965, p. 108; Samuelson 1942; Sierra Club of San
Diego 1973).16
This pattern of findings is vividly illustrated through
inspection of rele-
vant data on the most extreme cases of urban growth: those
SMSAs which
experienced the most rapid rates of population increase over
the last two
intercensus decades. Tables 1 and 2 show a comparison of
population
growth and unemployment rates in the 25 areas which grew
fastest during
the 1950-60 and 1960-70 periods. In the case of both decade
comparisons,
half of the urban areas had unemployment rates above the
national figure
for all SMSAs.

Even the 25 slowest-growing (1960-70) SMSAs failed to
experience
particularly high rates of unemployment. Table 3 reveals that
although
all were places of net migration loss less than half of the
SMSAs of this
group had unemployment rates above the national mean at the
decade's
end.
Just as striking is the comparison of growth and unemployment
rates
for all SMSAs in California during the 1960-66 period-a time
of general
boom in the state. Table 4 reveals that among all California
metropolitan
areas there is no significant relationship (r = -17, z - .569)
between
1960-66 growth rates and the 1966 unemployment rate. Table 4
is also
instructive (and consistent with other tables) in revealing that
while there
is a wide divergence in growth rates across metropolitan areas,
there is no
comparable variation in the unemployment rates, all of which
cluster

within the relatively narrow range of 4.3%o-6.5%. Consistent
with my
previous argument, I take this as evidence that the mobility of
labor tends
to flatten out cross-SMSA unemployment rates, regardless of
widely diverg-
ing rates of locality growth. Taken together, the data indicate
that local
population growth is no solution to the problem of local
unemployment.
It remains possible that for some reason certain specific rates
of growth
may be peculiarly related to lower rates of unemployment and
that the
measures used in this and cited studies are insensitive to these
patterns.
16 This lack of relationship between local population change
and unemployment has
led others to conclusions similar to my own: "Economists
unanimously have agreed
that the only jurisdiction that should be concerned with the
effects of its policies on
the level of employment is the Federal government. Small
jurisdictions do not have
the power to effect significant changes in the level of
unemployment" (Levy and
Arnold 1972, p. 95).
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TABLE 1
GROWTH AND UNEMPLOYMENT RATES FOR 25
FASTEST-GROWING SMSAs, 1950-60
(%)
Unemployment Rate,
Metropolitan Area Rate of Growth 1960
1. Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood, Fla ............. 297.9 4.7
2. Anaheim-Santa Ana-Garden Grove, Calif. .. 225.6 4.6
3. Las Vegas, Nev . .......................... 163.0 6.7*
4. Midland, Tex . ........................... 162.6 4.9
5. Orlando, Fla . ............................ 124.6 5.1
6. San Jose, Calif . .......................... 121.1 7.0*
7. Odessa, Tex . ............................. 116.1 5.6*
8. Phoenix, Ariz . ........................... 100.0 4.7
9. W. Palm Beach, Fla .98.9 4.8
10. Colorado Springs, Colo .b................... 92.9 6.1*
11. Miami, Fla . .............................. 88.9 7.3*
12. Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla . ................ 88.8 5.1
13. Tucson, Ariz . ............................ 88.1 5.9*
14. Albuquerque, N. Mex . .................... 80.0 4.5
15. San Bernadino-Riverside-Ontario, Calif. 79.3 6.7*
16. Sacramento, Calif . ........................ 74.0 6.1*
17. Albany, Ga . ............................. 73.5 4.4

18. Santa Barbara, Calif . ..................... 72.0 3.6
19. Amarillo, Tex . ........................... 71.6 3.3
20. Reno, Nev. .............................. 68.8 6.1*
21. Lawton, Okla. 64.6 5.5*
22. Lake Charles, La .62.3 7.8*
23. El Paso, Tex .61.1 6.4*
24. Pensacola, Fla .54.9 5.3*
25. Lubbock, Tex ............. . . .. 54.7 3.9
Total U.S . .18.5 5.2
SOURCE.-U.S. Bureau of the Census 1962, tables 33, 154.
* Unemployment rate above SMSA national mean.
Similarly, growth in certain types of industries may be more
likely than
growth in others to stimulate employment without attracting
migrants.
It may also be possible that certain population groups, by
reason of cul-
tural milieu, are less responsive to mobility options than others
and thus
provide bases for exceptions to the general argument I am
advancing. The
present analysis does not preclude such future findings but
does assert,
minimally, that the argument that growth makes jobs is
contradicted by
the weight of evidence that is available.17
I conclude that for the average worker in a fast-growing region
job

security has much the same status as for a worker in a slower-
growing
region: there is a surplus of workers over jobs, generating
continuous
17It is also true that this evidence is based on federal data,
accumulated through
the work of socially and geographically disparate persons who
had purposes at hand
different from mine. This important reservation can only be
dealt with by noting
that the findings were consistent with the author's theoretical
expectations, rather than
antecedents of them. At a minimum, the results throw the
burden of proof on those
who would argue the opposite hypothesis.
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TABLE 2
GROWTH AND UNEMPLOYMENT RATES OF THE 25
FASTEST-GROWING SMSAs, 1960-70
(%)
Unemployment Rate,
Metropolitan Area Rate of Growth 1970

1. Las Vegas, Nev . ......................... 115.2 5.2*
2. Anaheim-Santa Ana-Garden Grove, Calif. .. 101.8 5.4*
3. Oxnard-Ventura, Calif . .................... 89.0 5.9*
4. Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood, Fla . ............ 85.7 3.4
5. San Jose, Calif . .......................... 65.8 5.8*
6. Colorado Springs, Colo .b.................. 64.2 5.5*
7. Santa Barbara, Calif . ..................... 56.4 6.4*
8. W. Palm Beach, Fla . ..................... 52.9 3.0
9. Nashua, N.H . ............................ 47.8 2.8
10. Huntsville, Ala .46.6 4.4
11. Columbia, Mo .45.8 2.4
12. Phoenix, Ariz .45.8 3.9
13. Danbury, Conn .44.3 4.2
14. Fayetteville, Ark .42.9 5.2*
15. Reno, Nev .42.9 6.2*
16. San Bernadino-Riverside-Ontario, Calif . 41.2 5.9*
17. Houston, Tex .40.0 3.0
18. Austin, Tex .39.3 3.1
19. Dallas, Tex .39.0 3.0
20. Santa Rosa, Calif .39.0 7.3*
21. Tallahassee, Fla. 38.8 3.0
22. Washington, D.C . 37.8 2.7
23. Atlanta, Ga. 36.7 3.0
24. Ann Arbor, Mich .35.8 5.0*
25. Miami, Fla .35.6 3.7
Total U.S . ................................... 16.6 4.3
SOURCE.-U.S. Bureau of the Census 1972, table 3, SMSAs.
* Unemployment rate above the SMSA national mean.
anxiety over unemployment18 and the effective depressant on
wages which
any lumpenproletariat of unemployed and marginally employed
tends to
exact (see, e.g., Bonacich 1975). Indigenous workers likely

receive little
benefit from the growth machine in terms of jobs; their
"native" status
gives them little edge over the "foreign" migrants seeking the
additional
jobs which may develop. Instead, they are interchangeable
parts of the
labor pool, and the degree of their job insecurity is expressed
in the local
unemployment rate, just as is the case for the nonnative
worker. Ironically,
it is probably this very anxiety which often leads workers, or at
least their
union spokespeople, to support enthusiastically employers'
preferred poli-
cies of growth. It is the case that an actual decline in local job
opportuni-
ties, or economic growth not in proportion to natural increase,
might
induce the hardship of migration. But this price is not the same
as, and
is less severe than, the price of simple unemployment. It could
also rather
18 For an insightful treatment of joblessness with respect to the
majority of the
American work force, see Levison (1974).
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TABLE 3
GROWTH, UNEMPLOYMENT, AND NET MIGRATION
RATES FOR THE 25 SLOWEST-GROWING
SMSAs, 1960-70
(%)
Rate of Net Unemployment,
SMSA Growth Migration 1970
1. Abilene, Tex. .............. .............. -5.3 -19.7 3.6
2. Altoona, Pa. ............... .............. -1.4 - 6.6 3.5
3. Amarillo, Tex. ............ ............... -3.4 -19.5 3.4
4. Brownsville-Harlingen-San Benito, Tex. -7.1 -32.1 6.6*
5. Charleston, W. Va ......................... -9.3 -19.0 4.1
6. Duluth-Superior, Minn.-Wis . .............. -4.1 -10.9 7.3*
7. Gadsden, Ala. ............. ............... -2.9 -12.4 7.3*
8. Huntington-Ashland, W. Va.-Ky.-Ohio ..... -0.4 - 9.7 5.1*
9. Jersey City, N.J. ........... .............. -0.5 - 7.5 4.7*
10. Johnstown, Pa . .......................... -6.4 -11.8 4.9*
11. McAllen-Pharr-Edinburgh, Tex . ............ -0.3 -25.4 5.9*
12. Midland, Tex ............ 3.4 -19.1 3.5
13. Montgomery, Ala . ........................ 0.9 -11.1 3.8
14. Odessa, Tex . ............................. 0.9 -16.7 4.3
15. Pittsburgh, Pa . .......................... -0.2 - 7.0 4.3
16. Pueblo, Colo. .............. .............. -0.4 -12.3 5.9*
17. St. Joseph, Mo . .......................... -4.0 - 9.2 3.9
18. Savannah, Ga . ........................... -0.3 -13.3 4.3
19. Scranton, Pa . ............................ -0.2 - 1.8 5.2*
20. Sioux City, Iowa .......... ............... -3.2 -13.5 4.4*
21. Steubenville-Weirton, Ohio-W. Va. ........ -1.3 - 8.9 3.7
22. Utica-Rome, MY. ....................... -1.7 -11.2 5.7*
23. Wheeling, W. Va.-Ohio .................... -4.0 - 8.3 4.2

24. Wichita Falls, Tex ......................... -2.6 -15.1 4.0
25. Wilkes-Barre-Hazleton, Pa. ...... ......... -1.3 - 3.5 4.0
Total US. ..............S..................... 16.6 ... 4.3
SOURCE.-U.S. Bureau of the Census 1972, table 3, SMSAs.
* Unemployment rate above SMSA national mean.
easily be compensated through a relocation subsidy for mobile
workers, as
is now commonly provided for high-salaried executives by
private corpora-
tions and in a limited way generally by the federal tax
deduction for job-
related moving expenses.
Workers' anxiety and its ideological consequences emerge from
the
larger fact that the United States is a society of constant
substantial job-
lessness, with unemployment rates conservatively estimated by
the Depart-
ment of Commerce at 4%-8%o of that portion of the work force
defined
as ordinarily active. There is thus a game of musical chairs
being played at
all times, with workers circulating around the country, hoping
to land in
an empty chair at the moment the music stops. Increasing the
stock of
jobs in any one place neither causes the music to stop more
frequently nor
increases the number of chairs relative to the number of
players. The only
way effectively to ameliorate this circumstance is to create a
full-employ-
ment economy, a comprehensive system of drastically

increased unemploy-
ment insurance, or some other device which breaks the
connection between
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TABLE 4
GROWTH AND UNEMPLOYMENT RATES FOR ALL
CALIFORNIA SMSAs, 1960-66
(%)
Rate of Average
Growth, Annual Unemployment
SMSA 1960-66 Change Rate, 1966
Anaheim-Santa Ana-Garden Grove ........ 65.0 8.3 4.3
Bakersfield .11.1 1.7 5.2
Fresno .12.3 1.9 6.5
Los Angeles-Long Beach .11.9 1.9 4.5
Modesto .............. .................. ...
Oxnard-Ventura .68.8 8.7 6.0
Sacramento .20.0 3.0 5.2
Salinas-Monterey .15.9 2.4 6.1
San Bernadino-Riverside. 27.9 4.0 6.2
San Diego .14.0 2.1 5.1

San Francisco-Oakland .11.1 1.7 4.4
San Jose .44.8 6.1 4.8
Santa Barbara .48.7 6.6 4.5
Santa Rosa ............. ................ . ... ...
Stockton .12.5 1.9 6.3
Vallejo-Napa .20.6 3.0 4.4
California mean .27.47 3.80 5.25
SOURCES.-For average annual change and rate of growth, U.S.
Bureau of the Census 1969, table 2;
for unemployment rate, 1966, State of California 1970, table C-
10.
a person's having a livelihood and the remote decisions of
corporate execu-
tives. Without such a development, the fear of unemployment
acts to make
workers politically passive (if not downright supportive) with
respect to
land-use policies, taxation programs, and antipollution
nonenforcement
schemes which, in effect, represent income transfers from the
general pub-
lic to various sectors of the elite (see Whitt 1975). Thus, for
many reasons,
workers and their leaders should organize their political might
more con-
sistently not as part of the growth coalitions of the localities in
which they

are situated, but rather as part of national movements which
aim to pro-
vide full employment, income security, and programs for
taxation, land
use, and the environment which benefit the vast majority of the
population.
They tend not to be doing this at present.
THE PROBLEM OF NATURAL INCREASE
Localities grow in population not simply as a function of
migration but also
because of the fecundity of the existing population. Some
means are obvi-
ously needed to provide jobs and housing to accommodate such
growth-
either in the immediate area or at some distant location. There
are ways
of handling this without compounding the environmental and
budgetary
problems of existing settlements. First, there are some
localities which are,
by many criteria, not overpopulated. Their atmospheres are
clean, water
325

2018 22:20:06 UTC
supplies plentiful, and traffic congestion nonexistent. In fact,
in certain
places increased increments of population may spread the costs
of existing
road and sewer systems over a larger number of citizens or
bring an in-
crease in quality of public education by making rudimentary
specialization
possible. In the state of California, for example, the great bulk
of the
population lives on a narrow coastal belt in the southern two-
thirds of the
state. Thus the northern third of the state consists of a large
unpopulated
region rich in natural resources, including electric power and
potable water.
The option chosen in California, as evidenced by the state
aqueduct, was

to move the water from the uncrowded north to the dense,
semiarid south,
thus lowering the environmental qualities of both regions, and
at a sub-
stantial long-term cost to the public budget. The opposite
course of action
was clearly an option.
The point is that there are relatively underpopulated areas in
this coun-
try which do not have "natural" problems of inaccessibility,
ugliness, or
lack of population-support resources. Indeed, the nation's most
severely
depopulated areas, the towns of Appalachia, are in locales of
sufficient re-
sources and are widely regarded as aesthetically appealing;
population out-
migration likely decreased the aesthetic resources of both the
migrants to
and residents of Chicago and Detroit, while resulting in the
desertion of a
housing stock and utility infrastructure designed to serve a
larger popula-
tion. Following from my more general perspective, I see lack of

population
in a given area as resulting from the political economic
decisions made to
populate other areas instead. If the process were rendered more
rational,
the same investments in roads, airports, defense plants, etc.,
could be made
to effect a very different land-use outcome. Indeed, utilization
of such
deliberate planning strategies is the practice in some other
societies and
shows some evidence of success (see Sundquist 1975); perhaps
it could be
made to work in the United States as well.
As a long-term problem, natural increase may well be phased
out. Ameri-
can birth rates have been steadily decreasing for the last
several years, and
we are on the verge of a rate providing for zero population
growth. If a
stable population actually is achieved, a continuation of the
present inter-
local competitive system will result in the proliferation of
ghost towns and
unused capital stocks as the price paid for the growth of the

successful
competing units. This will be an even more clearly
preposterous situation
than the current one, which is given to produce ghost towns
only on occa-
sion.
THE EMERGING COUNTERCOALITION
Although growth has been the dominant ideology in most
localities in the
United States, there has always been a subversive thread of
resistance.
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Treated as romantic, or as somehow irrational (see White and
White 1962),
this minority long was ignored, even in the face of
accumulating journalis-
tic portrayals of the evils of bigness. But certainly it was an
easy observa-
tion to make that increased size was related to high levels of
pollution,

traffic congestion, and other disadvantages. Similarly, it was
easy enough
to observe that tax rates in large places were not generally less
than those
in small places; although it received little attention, evidence
that per
capita government costs rise with population size was provided
a genera-
tion ago (see Hawley 1951). But few took note, though the very
rich,
somehow sensing these facts to be the case, managed to reserve
for them-
selves small, exclusive meccas of low density by tightly
imposing popula-
tion ceilings (e.g., Beverly Hills, Sands Point, West Palm
Beach, Lake
Forest).
In recent years, however, the base of the antigrowth movement
has be-
come much broader and in some localities has reached
sufficient strength
to achieve at least toeholds of political power. The most
prominent cases
seem to be certain university cities (Palo Alto, Santa Barbara,

Boulder,
Ann Arbor), all of which have sponsored impact studies
documenting the
costs of additional growth. Other localities which have imposed
growth
controls tend also to be places of high amenity value (e.g.,
Ramapo, N.Y.;
Petaluma, Calif.; Boca Raton, Fla.). The antigrowth sentiment
has become
an important part of the politics of a few large cities (e.g., San
Diego) and
has been the basis of important political careers at the state
level (includ-
ing the governorship) in Oregon, Colorado, and Vermont.
Given the objec-
tive importance of the issue and the evidence on the general
costs of growth,
there is nothing to prevent antigrowth coalitions from similarly
gaining
power elsewhere including those areas of the country which are
generally
considered to possess lower levels of amenity. Nor is there any
reason,
based on the facts of the matter, for these coalitions not to

further broaden
their base to include the great majority of the working class in
the localities
in which they appear.
But, like all political movements which attempt to rely upon
volunteer
labor to supplant political powers institutionalized through a
system of
vested economic interest, antigrowth movements are probably
more likely
to succeed in those places where volunteer reform movements
have a real-
istic constituency-a leisured and sophisticated middle class
with a tradi-
tion of broad-based activism, free from an entrenched machine.
At least,
this appears to be an accurate profile of those places in which
the anti-
growth coalitions have already matured.
Systematic studies of the social make up of the antigrowth
activists are
only now in progress (e.g., Fitts 1976), but it seems that the
emerging

countercoalition is rooted in the recent environmental
movements and re-
lies on a mixture of young activists (some are veterans of the
peace and
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civil rights movements), middle-class professionals, and
workers, all of
whom see their own tax rates as well as life-styles in conflict
with growth.
Important in leadership roles are government employees and
those who
work for organizations not dependent on local expansion for
profit, either
directly or indirectly. In the Santa Barbara antigrowth
movements, for
example, much support is provided by professionals from
research and
electronics firms, as well as branch managers of small "high-
technology"

corporations. Cosmopolitan in outlook and pecuniary interest,
they use
the local community only as a setting for life and work, rather
than as an
exploitable resource. Related to this constituency are certain
very wealthy
people (particularly those whose wealth derives from the
exploitation of
nonlocal environments) who continue a tradition (with some
modifications)
of aristocratic conservation.'9
Should it occur, the changes which the death of the growth
machine
will bring seem clear enough with respect to land-use policy.
Local gov-
ernments will establish holding capacities for their regions and
then legis-
late, directly or indirectly, to limit population to those levels.
The direction
of any future development will tend to be planned to minimize
negative
environmental impacts. The so-called natural process (see
Burgess 1925;
Hoyt 1939) of land development which has given American

cities their
present shape will end as the political and economic
foundations of such
processes are undermined. Perhaps most important, industrial
and business
land users and their representatives will lose, at least to some
extent, the
effectiveness of their threat to locate elsewhere should public
policies en-
danger the profitability they desire. As the growth machine is
destroyed
in many places, increasingly it will be the business interests
who will be
forced to make do with local policies, rather than the local
populations
having to bow to business wishes. New options for taxation,
creative land-
use programs, and new forms of urban services may thus
emerge as city
government comes to resemble an agency which asks what it
can do for
its people rather than what it can do to attract more people.
More specif-
ically, a given industrial project will perhaps be evaluated in
terms of its
social utility-the usefulness of the product manufactured-either
to the
locality or to the society at large. Production, merely for the
sake of

local expansion, will be less likely to occur. Hence, there will
be some
pressure to increase the use value of the country's production
apparatus
and for external costs of production to be borne internally.
19 Descriptions of the social makeup of American
environmentalists (who coincide as
a group only roughly with the no-growth activists) and of their
increasing militancy
are contained in Nash (1967), Bartell (1974), Dunlap and Gale
(1972), Faich and
Gale (1971). For a journalistic survey of no-growth activities,
see Robert Cahn,
"Mr. Developer, Someone Is Watching You" (Christian Science
Monitor [May 21,
1973], p. 9). A more comprehensive description is contained in
Reilly (1973).
328
2018 22:20:06 UTC
When growth ceases to be an issue, some of the investments
made in
the political system to influence and enhance growth will no
longer make

sense, thus changing the basis upon which people get involved
in govern-
ment. We can expect that the local business elites-led by land
developers
and other growth-coalition forces-will tend to withdraw from
local pol-
itics. This vacuum may then be filled by a more representative
and,
likely, less reactionary activist constituency. It is noteworthy
that where
antigrowth forces have established beachheads of power, their
programs
and policies have tended to be more progressive than their
predecessors'-
on all issues, not just on growth. In Colorado, for example, the
environ-
mentalist who led the successful fight against the Winter
Olympics also
successfully sponsored abortion reform and other important
progressive
causes. The environmentally based Santa Barbara "Citizens
Coalition"
(with city government majority control) represents a fusion of
the city's

traditional left and counterculture with other environmental
activists. The
result of the no-growth influence in localities may thus be a
tendency for
an increasing progressiveness in local politics. To whatever
degree local
politics is the bedrock upon which the national political
structure rests
(and there is much debate here), there may follow reforms at
the national
level as well. Perhaps it will then become possible to utilize
national insti-
tutions to effect other policies which both solidify the death of
the growth
machine at the local level and create national priorities
consistent with
the new opportunities for urban civic life. These are
speculations based
upon the questionable thesis that a reform-oriented, issue-based
citizens'
politics can be sustained over a long period. The historical
record is not
consistent with this thesis; it is only emerging political trends
in the

most affected localities and the general irrationality of the
present urban
system that suggest the alternative possibility is an authentic
future.
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Contentsp. 309p. 310p. 311p. 312p. 313p. 314p. 315p. 316p.
317p. 318p. 319p. 320p. 321p. 322p. 323p. 324p. 325p. 326p.
327p. 328p. 329p. 330p. 331p. 332Issue Table of
ContentsAmerican Journal of Sociology, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Sep.,
1976) pp. 291-511Front Matter [pp. ]Communities,
Associations, and the Supply of Collective Goods [pp. 291-
308]The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political
Economy of Place [pp. 309-332]Industrialization and the
Stratification of Cities in Suburban Regions [pp. 333-348]Logan
on Molotch and Molotch on Logan: Notes on the Growth
Machine-Toward a Comparative Political Economy of Place [pp.
349-352]Varieties of Growth Strategy: Some Comments on
Logan [pp. 352-355]The Anomie of Affluence: A Post-
Mertonian Conception [pp. 356-378]Research NoteRace,

Achievement, and Delinquency: A Further Look at Delinquency
in a Birth Cohort [pp. 379-387]Commentary and DebateAn
Assessment of Garnier and Hazelrigg's Paper on
Intergenerational Mobility in France [pp. 388-398]Reply to
Daniel Bertaux's Assessment [pp. 398-411]Some Comments on
Ritter and Hargens's "Test of the Asymmetry Hypothesis" [pp.
411-415]Reply to Schneider [pp. 415-417]Economy, Polity, and
Monotheism: Reply to Swanson [pp. 418-421]Comment on
Underhill's Reply [pp. 421-423]Ethnicity and Participation: A
Commentary [pp. 423-427]Review EssayIndividual Rights and
the State [pp. 428-442]Review: untitled [pp. 443-448]Book
ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 449-451]Review: untitled [pp.
452-458]Review: untitled [pp. 458-460]Review: untitled [pp.
510-511]Back Matter [pp. ]
Urbanism as a Way of Life
Author(s): Louis Wirth
Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Jul.,
1938), pp. 1-24
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2768119

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THE AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
VOLUME XLIV JULY 1938 NUMBER 1
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE
LOUIS WIRTH

ABSTRACT
The urbanization of the world, which is one of the most
impressive facts of modern
times, has wrought profound changes in virtually every phase
of social life. The recency
and rapidity of urbanization in the United States accounts for
the acuteness of our
urban problems and our lack of awareness of them. Despite the
dominance of urbanism
in the modern world we still lack a sociological definition of
the city which would take
adequate account of the fact that while the city is the
characteristic locus of urbanism,
the urban mode of life is not confined to cities. For
sociological purposes a city is a
relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of
heterogeneous individuals. Large
numbers account for individual variability, the relative absence
of intimate personal
acquaintanceship, the segmentalization of human relations
which are largely anony-
mous, superficial, and transitory, and associated
characteristics. Density involves di-
versification and specialization, the coincidence of close
physical contact and distant
social relations, glaring contrasts, a complex pattern of
segregation, the predominance
of formal social control, and accentuated friction, among other
phenomena. Hetero-
geneity tends to break down rigid social structures and to
produce increased mobility,
instability, and insecurity, and the affiliation of the individuals
with a variety of inter-
secting and tangential social groups with a high rate of

membership turnover. The
pecuniary nexus tends to displace personal relations, and
institutions tend to cater to
mass rather than to individual requirements. The individual
thus becomes effective
only as he acts through organized groups. The complicated
phenomena of urbanism
may acquire unity and coherence if the sociological analysis
proceeds in the light of
such a body of theory. The empirical evidence concerning the
ecology, the social
organization, and the social psychology of the urban mode of
life confirms the fruit-
fulness of this approach.
I. THE CITY AND CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION
Just as the beginning of Western civilization is marked by the
permanent settlement of formerly nomadic peoples in the
Mediter-
ranean basin, so the begilning of what is distinctively modern
in
our civilization is best signalized by the growth of great cities.
Nowhere has mankind been farther removed from organic
nature
2018 01:32:50 UTC

2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
than under the conditions of life characteristic of great cities.
The
contemporary world no longer presents a picture of small
isolated
groups of human beings scattered over a vast territory, as
Sumner
described primitive society.' The distinctive feature of the
mode of
living of man in the modern age is his concentration into
gigantic
aggregations around which cluster lesser centers and from
which
radiate the ideas and practices that we call civilization.
The degree to which the contemporary world may be said to be
"urban" is not fully or accurately measured by the proportion of
the
total population living in cities. The influences which cities
exert
upon the social life of man are greater than the ratio of the
urban
population would indicate, for the city is not only in ever
larger

degrees the dwelling-place and the workshop of modern man,
but
it is the initiating and controlling center of economic, political,
and
cultural life that has drawn the most remote parts of the world
into
its orbit and woven diverse areas, peoples, and activities into a
cosmos.
The growth of cities and the urbanization of the world is one of
the most impressive facts of modern times. Although it is
impossible
to state precisely what proportion of the estimated total world-
population of approximately i,8oo,ooo,ooo is urban, 69.2 per
cent
of the total population of those countries that do distinguish
be-
tween urban and rural areas is urban.2 Considering the fact,
more-
over, that the world's population is very unevenly distributed
and
that the growth of cities is not very far advanced in some of the
countries that have only recently been touched by
industrialism,
this average understates the extent to which urban
concentration

has proceeded in those countries where the impact of the
industrial
revolution has been more forceful and of less recent date. This
shift
from a rural to a predominantly urban society, which has taken
place within the span of a single generation in such
industrialized
areas as the United States and Japan, has been accompanied by
profound changes in virtually every phase of social life. It is
these
changes and their ramifications that invite the attention of the
so-
ciologist to the study of the differences between the rural and
the
x William Graham Sumner, Folkways (Boston, 1906), p. 12.
2 S. V. Pearson, The Growth and Distribution of Population
(New York, 1935), p. 211.
2018 01:32:50 UTC
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 3
urban mode of living. The pursuit of this interest is an
indispensable
prerequisite for the comprehension and possible mastery of
some of

the most crucial contemporary problems of social life since it
is
likely to furnish one of the most revealing perspectives for the
under-
standing of the ongoing changes in human nature and the social
order.3
Since the city is the product of growth rather than of
instantane-
ous creation, it is to be expected that the influences which it
exerts
upon the modes of life should not be able to wipe out
completely
the previously dominant modes of human association. To a
greater
or lesser degree, therefore, our social life bears the imprint of
an
earlier folk society, the characteristic modes of settlement of
which
were the farm, the manor, and the village. This historic
influence
is reinforced by the circumstance that the population of the city
itself is in large measure recruited from the countryside, where
a

mode of life reminiscent of this earlier form of existence
persists.
Hence we should not expect to find abrupt and discontinuous
varia-
tion between urban and rural types of personality. The city and
the
country may be regarded as two poles in reference to one or the
other of which all human settlements tend to arrange
themselves.
In viewing urban-industrial and rural-folk society as ideal
types of
communities, we may obtain a perspective for the analysis of
the
basic models of human association as they appear in
contemporary
civilization.
II. A SOCIOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF THE CITY
Despite the preponderant significance of the city in our
civiliza-
tion, however, our knowledge of the nature of urbanism and the
process of urbanization is meager. Many attempts have indeed
been
made to isolate the distinguishing characteristics of urban life.

Ge-
ographers, historians, economists, an?d political scientists have
in-
3 Whereas rural life in the United States has for a long time
been a subject of con-
siderable interest on the part of governmental bureaus, the most
notable case of a
comprehensive report being that submitted by the Country Life
Commission to Presi-
dent Theodore Roosevelt in I909, it is worthy of note that no
equally comprehensive
official inquiry-into urban life was undertaken until the
establishment of a Research
Committee on Urbanism of the National Resources Committee.
(Cf. Our Cities: Their
Role in the National Economy [Washington: Government
Printing Office, 1937].)
2018 01:32:50 UTC
corporated the points of view of their respective disciplines
into
diverse definitions of the city. While in no sense intended to

super-
sede these, the formulation of a sociological approach to the
city
may incidentally serve to call attention to the interrelations be-
tween them by emphasizing the peculiar characteristics of the
city
as a particular form of human association. A sociologically
signifi-
cant definition of the city seeks to select those elements of
urbanism
which mark it as a distinctive mode of human group life.
The characterization of a community as urban on the basis of
size alone is obviously arbitrary. It is difficult to defend the
present
census definition which designates a community of 2,500 and
above
as urban and all others as rural. The situation would be the
same if
the criterion were 4,000, 8,ooo, IO,OOO, 25,000, or ioo,ooo
popula-
tion, for although in the latter case we might feel that we were
more
nearly dealing with an urban aggregate than would be the case
in-

communities of lesser size, no definition of urbanism can hope
to be
completely satisfying as long as numbers are regarded as the
sole
criterion. Moreover, it is not difficult to demonstrate that
communi-
ties of less than the arbitrarily set number of inhabitants lying
with-
in the range of influence of metropolitan centers have greater
claim
to recognition as urban communities than do larger ones
leading
a more isolated existence in a predominantly rural area.
Finally, it
should be recognized that census definitions are unduly
influenced
by the fact that the city, statistically speaking, is always an ad-
ministrative concept in that the corporate limits play a decisive
role in delineating the urban area. Nowhere is this more clearly
apparent than in the concentrations of population on the
peripheries
of great metropolitan centers which cross arbitrary
administrative
boundaries of city, county, state, and nation.
As long as we identify urbanism with the physical entity of the

city, viewing it merely as rigidly delimited in space, and
proceed as
if urban attributes abruptly ceased to be manifested beyond an
arbitrary boundary line, we are not likely to arrive at any
adequate
conception of urbanism as a mode of life. The technological
develop-
ments in transportation and communication which virtually
mark
a new epoch in human history have accentuated the role of
cities
as dominant elements in our civilization and have enormously
ex-
2018 01:32:50 UTC
IURBANISM AS A WAY OF LIPE 5
tended the urban mode of living beyond the confines of the city
itself. The dominance of the city, especially of the great city,
may
be regarded as a consequence of the concentration in cities of
in-
dustrial and commercial, financial and administrative facilities
and

activities, transportation and communication lines, and cultural
and recreational equipment such as the press, radio stations,
thea-
ters, libraries, museums, concert halls, operas, hospitals, higher
edu-
cational institutions, research and publishing centers,
professional
organizations, and religious and welfare institutions. Were it
not
for the attraction and suggestions that the city exerts through
these
instrumentalities upon the rural population, the differences
between
the rural and the urban modes of life would be even greater
than
they are. Urbanization no longer denotes merely the process by
which persons are attracted to a place called the city and
incorpo-
rated into its system of life. It refers also to that cumulative ac-
centuation of the characteristics distinctive of the mode of life
which is associated with the growth of cities, and finally to the
changes in the direction of modes of life recognized as urban
which
are apparent among people, wherever they may be, who have

come
under the spell of the influences which the city exerts by virtue
of
the power of its institutions and personalities operating through
the
means of communication and transportation.
The shortcomings which attach to number of inhabitants as a
criterion of urbanism apply for the most part to density of
popula-
tion as well. Whether we accept the density of io,ooo persons
per
square mile as Mark Jefferson4 proposed, or I,OOO, which
Willcox5
preferred to regard as the criterion of urban settlements, it is
clear
that unless density is correlated with significant social
characteris-
tics it can furnish only an arbitrary basis for differentiating
urban
from rural communities. Since our census enumerates the night
rather than the day population of an area, the locale of the most
intensive urban life-the city center-generally has low
population
density. and the industrial and commercial areas of the city,
which

4 "The Anthropogeography of Some Great Cities," Bull.
American Geographical
Society, XLI (I909), 537-66.
5 Walter F. Willcox, "A Definition of 'City' in Terms of
Density," in E. W. Burgess,
The Urban Community (Chicago, I926), p. II9.
2018 01:32:50 UTC
contain the most characteristic economic activities underlying
urban
society, would scarcely anywhere be truly urban if density were
literally interpreted as a mark of urbanism. Nevertheless, the
fact
that the urban community is distinguished by a large
aggregation
and relatively dense concentration of population can scarcely
be
left out of account in a definition of the city. But these criteria
must
be seen as relative to the general cultural context in which
cities
arise and exist and are sociologically relevant only in so far as

they
operate as conditioning factors in social life.
The same criticisms apply to such criteria as the occupation of
the inhabitants, the existence of certain physical facilities,
institu-
tions, and forms of political organization. The question is not
whether cities in our civilization or in others do exhibit these
dis-
tinctive traits, but how potent they are in molding the character
of social life into its specifically urban form. Nor in
formulating a
fertile definition can we afford to overlook the great variations
be-
tween cities. By means of a typology of cities based upon size,
location, age, and function, such. as we have undertaken to
establish
in our recent report to the National Resources Committee,6 we
have
found it feasible to array and classify urban communities
ranging
from struggling small towns to thriving world-metropolitan
centers;
from isolated trading-centers in the midst of agricultural
regions to

thriving world-ports and commercial and industrial
conurbations.
Such differences as these appear crucial because the social
char-
acteristics and influences of these different "cities" vary
widely.
A serviceable definition of urbanism should not only denote the
essential characteristics which all cities-at least those in our
cul-
ture-have in common, but should lend itself to the discovery of
their variations. An industrial city will differ significantly in
social
respects from a commercial, mining, fishing, resort, university,
and
capital city. A one-industry city will present different sets of
social
characteristics from a multi-industry city, as will an
industrially
balanced from an imbalanced city, a suburb from a satellite, a
resi-
dential suburb from an industrial suburb, a city within a
metropoli-
tan region from one lying outside, an old city from a new one,
a

6 Op. cit., p. 8.
2018 01:32:50 UTC
southern city from a New England, a middle-western from a
Pacific
Coast city, a growing from a stable and from a dying city.
A sociological definition must obviously be inclusive enough
to
comprise whatever essential characteristics these different
types
of cities have in common as social entities, but it obviously
cannot
be so detailed as to take account of all the variations implicit in
the manifold classes sketched above. Presumably some of the
char-
acteristics of cities are more significant in conditioning the
nature of
urban life than others, and we may expect the outstanding
features
of the urban-social scene to vary in accordance with size,
density,
and differences in the functional type of cities. Moreover, we
may
infer that rural life will bear the imprint of urbanism in the

measure
that through contact and communication it comes under the in-
fluence of cities. It may contribute to the clarity of the
statements
that follow to repeat that while the locus of urbanism as a mode
of
life is, of course, to be found characteristically in places which
fulfil
the requirements we shall set up as a definition of the city,
urbanism
is not confined to such localities but is manifest in varying
degrees
wherever the influences of the city reach.
While urbanism, or that complex of traits which makes up the
characteristic mode of life in cities, and urbanization, which
denotes
the development and extensions of these factors, are thus not
ex-
clusively found in settlements which are cities in the physical
and
demographic sense, they do, nevertheless, find their most pro-
nounced expression in such areas, especially in metropolitan
cities.
In formulating a definition of the city it is necessary to
exercise
caution in order to avoid identifying urbanism as a way of life
with
any specific locally or historically conditioned cultural
influences
which, while they may significantly affect the specific

character of
the community, are not the essential determinants of its
character
as a city.
It is particularly important to call attention to the danger of
confusing urbanism with industrialism and modern capitalism.
The
rise of cities in the modern world is undoubtedly not
independent
of the emergence of modern power-driven machine technology,
mass
production, and capitalistic enterprise. B'ut different as the
cities
of earlier epochs may have been by virtue of their development
in a
2018 01:32:50 UTC
preindustrial and precapitalistic order from the great cities of
today,
they were, nevertheless, cities.
For sociological purposes a city may be defined as a relatively
large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially
heterogeneous

individuals. On the basis of the postulates which this minimal
defi-
nition suggests, a theory of urbanism may be formulated in the
light of existing knowledge concerning social groups.
III. A THEORY OF URBANISM
In the rich literature on the city we look in vain for a theory of
urbanism presenting in a systematic fashion the available
knowledge
concerning the city as a social entity. We do indeed have
excellent
formulations of theories on such special problems as the
growth of
the city viewed as a historical trend and as a recurrent
process,7 and
we have a wealth of literature presenting insights of
sociological
relevance and empirical studies offering detailed information
on a
variety of particular aspects of urban life. But despite the
multi-
plication of research and textbooks on the city, we do not as
yet
have a comprehensive body of compendent hypotheses which
may

be derived from a set of postulates implicitly contained in a
socio-
logical definition of the city, and from our general sociological
knowl-
edge which may be substantiated through empirical research.
The
closest approximations to a systematic theory of urbanism that
we
have are to be found in a penetrating essay, "Die Stadt," by
Max
Weber,8 and a memorable paper by Robert E. Park on "The
City:
Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the
Urban
Environment."9 But even these excellent contributions are far
from
constituting an ordered and coherent framework of theory upon
which research might profitably proceed.
In the pages that follow we shall seek to set forth a limited
number
of identifying characteristics of the city. Given these
characteristics
we shall then indicate what consequences or further
characteristics
follow from them in the light of general sociological theory and
7 See Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, et al., The City
(Chicago, I925), esp.
chaps. ii and iii; Werner Sombart, "Stadtische Siedlung, Stadt,"
Handwdrterbutch der

Soziologie, ed. Alfred Vierkandt (Stuttgart, I93I); see also
bibliography.
8 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tiubingen, I925), Part II, chap.
viii, pp. 5I4-60I.
9 Park, Burgess, et al., op. cit., chap. i.
2018 01:32:50 UTC
empirical research. We hope in this manner to arrive at the
essential
propositions comprising a theory of urbanism. Some of these
propo-
sitions can be supported by a considerable body of already
available
research materials; others may be accepted as hypotheses for
which
a certain amount of presumptive evidence exists, but for which
more
ample and exact verification would be required. At least such a
procedure will, it is hoped, show what in the way of systematic
knowledge of the city we now have and what are the crucial

and
fruitful hypotheses for future research.
The central problem of the sociologist of the city is to discover
the
forms of social action and organization that typically emerge in
relatively permanent, compact settlements of large numbers of
heterogeneous individuals. We must also infer that urbanism
will
assume its most characteristic and extreme form in the measure
in
which the conditions with which it is congruent are present.
Thus
the larger, the more densely populated, and the more
heterogeneous
a community, the more accentuated the characteristics
associated
with urbanism will be. It should be recognized, however, that
in the
social world institutions and practices may be accepted and
con-
tinued for reasons other than those that originally brought them
into existence, and that accordingly the urban mode of life may
be

perpetuated under conditions quite foreign to those necessary
for
its origin.
Some justification may be in order for the choice of the
principal
terms comprising our definition of the city. The attempt has
been
made to make it as inclusive and at the same time as denotative
as
possible without loading it with unnecessary assumptions. To
say
that large numbers are necessary to constitute a city means, of
course, large numbers in relation to a restricted area or high
density
of settlement. There are, nevertheless, good reasons for treating
large numbers and density as separate factors, since each may
be
connected with significantly different social consequences.
Similarly
the need for adding heterogeneity to numbers of population as a
necessary and distinct criterion of urbanism might be
questioned,
since we should expect the range of differences to increase

with
numbers. In defense, it may be said that the city shows a kind
and
degree of heterogeneity of population which cannot be wholly
ac-
2018 01:32:50 UTC
Io THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
counted for by the law of large numbers or adequately
represented
by means of a normal distribution curve. Since the population
of
the city does not reproduce itself, it must recruit its migrants
from
other cities, the countryside, and-in this country until recently-
from other countries. The city has thus historically been the
melt-
ing-pot of races, peoples, and cultures, and a most favorable
breed-
ing-ground of new biological and cultural hybrids. It has not
only

tolerated but rewarded individual differences. It has brought to-
gether people from the ends of the earth because they are
different
and thus useful to one another, rather than because they are
homo-
geneous and like-minded.Io
There are a number of sociological propositions concerning the
relationship between (a) numbers of population, (b) density of
settle-
ment, (c) heterogeneity of inhabitants and group life, which can
be
formulated on the basis of observation and research.
SIZE OF THE POPULATION AGGREGATE
Ever since Aristotle's Politics,", it has been recognized that in-
creasing the number of inhabitants in a settlement beyond a
certain
limit will affect the relationships between them and the
character
-0 The justification for including the term "permanent" in the
definition may appear
necessary. Our failure to give an extensive justification for this
qualifying mark of the
urban rests on the obvious fact that unless human settlements
take a fairly permanent
root in a locality the characteristics of urban life cannot arise,
and conversely the living

together of large numbers of heterogeneous individuals under
dense conditions is not
possible without the development of a more or less
technological structure.
I" See esp. vii. 4. 4-I4. Translated by B. Jowett, from which the
following may be
quoted:
"To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things,
plants, animals,
implements; for none of these retain their natural power when
they are too large or too
small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled
..... [A] state when
composed of too few is not as a state ought to be, self-
sufficing; when of too many,
though self-sufficing in all mere necessaries, it is a nation and
not a state, being almost
incapable of constitutional government. For who can be the
general of such a vast
multitude, or who the herald, unless he have the voice of a
Stentor?
"A state then only begins to exist when it has attained a
population sufficient for a
good life in the political community: it may indeed somewhat
exceed this number.
But, as I was saying, there must be a limit. What should be the
limit will be easily
ascertained by experience. For both governors and governed
have duties to perform;

the special functions of a governor are to command and to
judge. But if the citizens
of a state are to judge and to distribute offices according to
merit, then they must know
each other's characters; where they do not possess this
knowledge, both the election to
2018 01:32:50 UTC
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE II
of the city. Large numbers involve, as has been pointed out, a
greater range of individual variation. Furthermore, the greater
the
number of individuals participating in a process of interaction,
the
greater is the potential differentiation between them. The
personal
traits, the occupations, the cultural life, and the ideas of the
mem-
bers of an urban community may, therefore, be expected to
range
between more widely separated poles than those of rural
inhabi-

tants.
That such variations should give rise to the spatial segregation
of individuals according to color, ethnic heritage, economic
and social
status, tastes and preferences, may readily be inferred. The
bonds
of kinship, of neighborliness, and the sentiments arising out of
living
together for generations under a common folk tradition are
likely
to be absent or, at best, relatively weak in an aggregate the
members
of which have such diverse origins and backgrounds. Under
such
circumstances competition and formal control mechanisms
furnish
the substitutes for the bonds of solidarity that are relied upon
to
hold a folk society together.
Increase in the number of inhabitants of a community beyond a
few hundred is bound to limit the possibility of each member of
the
community knowing all the others personally. Max Weber, in
recog-

nizing the social significance of this fact, pointed out that from
a
sociological point of view large numbers of inhabitants and
density
of settlement mean that the personal mutual acquaintanceship
be-
tween the inhabitants which ordinarily inheres in a
neighborhood
is lacking.,2 The increase in numbers thus involves a changed
char-
acter of the social relationships. As Simmel points out:
[If] the unceasing external contact of numbers of persons in the
city should
be met by the same number of inner reactions as in the small
town, in which
one knows almost every person he meets and to each of whom
he has a positive
offices and the decision of lawsuits will go wrong. When the
population is very large
they are manifestly settled at haphazard, which clearly ought
not to be. Besides, in an
overpopulous state foreigners and metics will readily acquire
the rights of citizens, for
who will find them out? Clearly, then, the best limit of the
population of a state is the
largest number which suffices for the purposes of life, and can
be taken in at a single
view. Enough concerning the size of a city."

I2 Op. cit., p. 5I4.
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I2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
relationship, one would be completely atomized internally and
would fall into
an unthinkable mental condition.13
The multiplication of persons in a state of interaction under
condi-
tions which make their contact as full personalities impossible
pro-
duces that segmentalization of human relationships which has
some-
times been seized upon by students of the mental life of the
cities
as an explanation for the "schizoid" character of urban
personality.
This is not to say that the urban inhabitants have fewer
acquaint-
ances than rural inhabitants, for the reverse may actually be
true;

it means rather that in relation to the number of people whom
they
see and with whom they rub elbows in the course of daily life,
they
know a smaller proportion, and of these they have less
intensive
knowledge.
Characteristically, urbanites meet one another in highly seg-
mental roles. They are, to be sure, dependent upon more people
for the satisfactions of their life-needs than are rural people
and thus
are associated with a greater number of organized groups, but
they
are less dependent upon particular persons, and their
dependence
upon others is confined to a highly fractionalized aspect of the
other's
round of activity. This is essentially what is meant by saying
that
the city is characterized by secondary rather than primary
contacts.
The contacts of the city may indeed be face to face, but they
are

nevertheless impersonal, superficial, transitory, and segmental.
The
reserve, the indifference, and the blase outlook which urbanites
manifest in their relationships may thus be regarded as devices
for
immunizing themselves against the personal claims and
expecta-
tions of others.
The superficiality, the anonymity, and the transitory character
of urban-social relations make intelligible, also, the
sophistication
and the rationality generally ascribed to city-dwellers. Our ac-
quaintances tend to stand in a relationship of utility to us in the
sense that the role which each one plays in our life is
overwhelmingly
regarded as a means for the achievement of our own ends.
Whereas,
therefore, the individual gains, on the one hand, a certain
degree of
emancipation or freedom from the personal and emotional
controls
13 Georg Simmel, "Die Grossstadte und das Geistesleben," Die
Grossstadt, ed.
Theodor Petermann (Dresden, I903), pp. I87-206.

2018 01:32:50 UTC
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE I3
of intimate groups, he loses, on the other hand, the spontaneous
self-expression, the morale, and the sense of participation that
comes
with living in an integrated society. This constitutes essentially
the
state of anomie or the social void to which Durkheim alludes in
at-
tempting to account for the various forms of social
disorganization
in technological society.
The segmental character and utilitarian accent of interpersonal
relations in the city find their institutional expression in the
prolifer-
ation of specialized tasks which w1e see in their most
developed form
in the professions. The operations of the pecuniary nexus leads
to
predatory relationships, which tend to obstruct the efficient

function-
ing of the social order unless checked by professional codes
and occu-
pational etiquette. The premium put upon utility and efficiency
sug-
gests the adaptability of the corporate device for the
organization of
enterprises in which individuals can engage only in groups. The
advantage that the corporation has over the individual
entrepreneur
and the partnership in the urban-industrial world derives not
only
from the possibility it affords of centralizing the resources of
thou-
sands of individuals or from the legal privilege of limited
liability
and perpetual succession, but from the fact that the corporation
has no soul.
The specialization of individuals, particularly in their occupa-
tions, can proceed only, as Adam Smith pointed out, upon the
basis
of an enlarged market, which in turn accentuates the division of
labor. This enlarged market is only in part supplied by the

city's
hinterland; in large measure it is found among the large
numbers
that the city itself contains. The dominance of the city over the
surrounding hinterland becomes explicable in terms of the
division
of labor which urban life occasions and promotes. The extreme
de-
gree of interdependence and the unstable equilibrium of urban
life
are closely associated with the division of labor and the
specializa-
tion of occupations. This interdependence and instability is in-
creased by the tendency of each city to specialize in those
functions
in which it has the greatest advantage.
In a commnunity composed of a larger number of individuals
than
can know one another intimately and can be assembled in one
spot,
it becomes necessary to communicate through indirect mediums
and
2018 01:32:50 UTC

to articulate individual interests by a process of delegation.
Typical-
ly in the city, interests are made effective through
representation.
The individual counts for little, but the voice of the
representative
is heard with a deference roughly proportional to the numbers
for
whom he speaks.
While this characterization of urbanism, in so far as it derives
from large numbers, does not by any means exhaust the
sociological
inferences that might be drawn from our knowledge of the rela-
tionship of the size of a group to the characteristic behavior of
the
members, for the sake of brevity the assertions made may serve
to
exemplify the sort of propositions that might be developed.
DENSITY
As in the case of numbers, so in the case of concentration in
limi-

ted space, certain consequences of relevance in sociological
analysis
of the city emerge. Of these only a few can be indicated.
As Darwin pointed out for flora and fauna and as Durkheim'4
noted in the case of human societies, an increase in numbers
when
area is held constant (i.e., an increase in density) tends to
produce
differentiation and specialization, since only in this way can
the
area support increased numbers. Density thus reinforces the
effect
of numbers in diversifying men and their activities and in
increasing
the complexity of the social structure.
On the subjective side, as Simmel has suggested, the close
physical
contact of numerous individuals necessarily produces a shift in
the
mediums through which we orient ourselves to the urban
milieu, es-
pecially to our fellow-men. Typically, our physical contacts are
close
but our social contacts are distant. The urban world puts a
premium

on visual recognition. We see the uniform which denotes the
role
of the functionaries and are oblivious to the personal
eccentricities
that are hidden behind the uniform. We tend to acquire and
develop
a sensitivity to a world of artefacts and become progressively
farther
removed from the world of nature.
We are exposed to glaring contrasts between splendor and
squalor,
between riches and poverty, intelligence and ignorance, order
and
chaos. The competition for space is great, so that each area
gen-
14 E. Durkheim, De la division du travail social (Paris, I932),
p. 248.
2018 01:32:50 UTC
erally tends to be put to the use which yields the greatest
economic
return. Place of work tends to become dissociated from place of

residence, for the proximity of industrial and commercial
establish-
ments makes an area both economically and socially
undesirable for
residential purposes.
Density, land values, rentals, accessibility, healthfulness,
prestige,
aesthetic consideration, absence of nuisances such as noise,
smoke,
and dirt determine the desirability of various areas of the city
as
places of settlement for different sections of the population.
Place
and nature of work, income, racial and ethnic characteristics,
social
status, custom, habit, taste, preference, and prejudice are
among
the significant factors in accordance with which the urban
popula-
tion is selected and distributed into more or less distinct
settlements.
Diverse population elements inhabiting a compact settlement
thus
tend to become segregated from one another in the degree in

which
their requirements and modes of life are incompatible with one
another and in the measure in which they are antagonistic to
one
another. Similarly, persons of homogeneous status and needs
un-
wittingly drift into, consciously select, or are forced by circum-
stances into, the same area. The different parts of the city thus
acquire specialized functions. The city consequently tends to
re-
semble a mosaic of social worlds in which the transition from
one
to the other is abrupt. The juxtaposition of divergent
personalities
and modes of life tends to produce a relativistic perspective
and a
sense of toleration of differences which may be regarded as
pre-
requisites for rationality and which lead toward the
secularization
of life.'5
The close living together and working together of individuals
who
have no sentimental and emotional ties foster a spirit of
competition,

aggrandizement, and mutual exploitation. To counteract
irresponsi-
bility and potential disorder, formal controls tend to be
resorted
to. Without rigid adherence to predictable routines a large
compact
is The extent to which the segregation of the population into
distinct ecological and
cultural areas and the resulting social attitude of tolerance,
rationality, and secular
mentality are functions of density as distinguished from
heterogeneity is difficult to
determine. Most likely we are dealing here with phenomena
which are consequences of
the simultaneous operation of both factors.
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ii6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
society would scarcely be able to maintain itself. The clock and
the
traffic signal are symbolic of the basis of our social order in
the

urban world. Frequent close physical contact, coupled with
great
social distance, accentuates the reserve of unattached
individuals
toward one another and, unless compensated for by other
opportuni-
ties for response, gives rise to loneliness. The necessary
frequent
movement of great numbers of individuals in a congested
habitat
gives occasion to friction and irritation. Nervous tensions
which
derive from such personal frustrations are accentuated by the
rapid
tempo and the complicated technology under which life in
dense
areas must be lived.
HETEROGENEITY
The social interaction among such a variety of personality
types
in the urban milieu tends to break down the rigidity of caste
lines
and to complicate the class structure, and thus induces a more
ramified and differentiated framework of social stratification
than

is found in more integrated societies. The heightened mobility
of
the individual, which brings him within the range of
stimulation
by a great number of diverse individuals and subjects him to
fluc-
tuating status in the differentiated social groups that compose
the
social structure of the city, tends toward the acceptance of
instability
and insecurity in the world at large as a norm. This fact helps
to
account, too, for the sophistication and cosmopolitanism of the
urbanite. No single group has the undivided allegiance of the
indi-
vidual. The groups with which he is affiliated do not lend
them-
selves readily to a simple hierarchical arrangement. By virtue
of
his different interests arising out of different aspects of social
life,
the individual acquires membership in widely divergent groups,
each of which functions only with reference to a single segment
of
his personality. Nor do these groups easily permit of a
concentric
arrangement so that the narrower ones fall within the
circumference

of the more inclusive ones, as is more likely to be the case in
the
rural community or in primitive societies. Rather the groups
with
which the person typically is affiliated are tangential to each
other
or intersect in highly variable fashion.
Partly as a result of the physical footlooseness of the
population
and partly as a result of their social mobility, the turnover in
group
2018 01:32:50 UTC
membership generally is rapid. Place of residence, place and
char-
acter of employment, income and interests fluctuate, and the
task
of holding organizations together and maintaining and
promoting
intimate and lasting acquaintanceship between the members is
difficult. This applies strikingly to the local areas within the
city

into which persons become segregated more by virtue of
differences
in race, language, income, and social status, than through
choice
or positive attraction to people like themselves.
Overwhelmingly
the city-dweller is not a home-owner, and since a transitory
habitat
does not generate binding traditions and sentiments, only rarely
is he truly a neighbor. There is little opportunity for the
individual
to obtain a conception of the city as a whole or to survey his
place
in the total scheme. Consequently he finds it difficult to
determine
what is to his own "best interests" and to decide between the
issues
and leaders presented to him by the agencies of mass
suggestion.
Individuals who are thus detached from the organized bodies
which
integrate society comprise the fluid masses that make collective
be-

havior in the urban community so unpredictable and hence so
problematical.
Although the city, through the recruitment of variant types to
perform its diverse tasks and the accentuation of their
uniqueness
through competition and the premium upon eccentricity,
novelty,
efficient performance, and inventiveness, produces a highly
differ-
entiated population, it also exercises a leveling influence.
Wherever
large numbers of differently constituted individuals congregate,
the
process of depersonalization also enters. This leveling tendency
in-
heres in part in the economic basis of the city. The
development of
large cities, at least in the modern age, was largely dependent
upon
the concentrative force of steam. The rise of the factory made
possi-
ble mass production for an impersonal market. The fullest
exploita-
tion of the possibilities of the division of labor and mass
production,

however, is possible only with standardization of processes and
products. A money economy goes hand in hand with such a
system
of production. Progressively as cities have developed upon a
back-
ground of this system of production, the pecuniary nexus which
implies the purchasability of services and things has displaced
per-
sonal relations as the basis of association. Individuality under
these
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i8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
circumstances must be replaced by categories. When large
numbers
have to make common use of facilities and institutions, an
arrange-
ment must be made to adjust the facilities and institutions to
the
needs of the average person rather than to those of particular
indi-

viduals. The services of the public utilities, of the recreational,
educational, and cultural institutions must be adjusted to mass
re-
quirements. Similarly, the cultural institutions, such as the
schools,
the movies, the radio, and the newspapers, by virtue of their
mass
clientele, must necessarily operate as leveling influences. The
po-
litical process as it appears in urban life could not be
understood
without taking account of the mass appeals made through
modern
propaganda techniques. If the individual would participate at
all
in the social, political, and economic life of the city, he must
sub-
ordinate some of his individuality to the demands of the larger
com-
munity and in that measure immerse himself in mass
movements.
IV. THE RELATION BETWEEN A THEORY OF URBANISM
AND SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

By means of a body of theory such as that illustratively
sketched
above, the complicated and many-sided phenomena of urbanism
may be analyzed in terms of a limited number of basic
categories.
The sociological approach to the city thus acquires an essential
unity and coherence enabling the empirical investigator not
merely
to focus more distinctly upon the problems and processes that
prop-
erly fall in his province but also to treat his subject matter in a
more
integrated and systematic fashion. A few typical findings of
em-
pirical research in the field of urbanism, with special reference
to
the United States, may be indicated to substantiate the
theoretical
propositions set forth in the preceding pages, and some of the
crucial
problems for further study may be outlined.
On the basis of the three variables, number, density of
settlement,

and degree of heterogeneity, of the urban population, it appears
possible to explain the characteristics of urban life and to
account
for the differences between cities of various sizes and types.
Urbanism as a characteristic mode of life may be approached
empirically from three interrelated perspectives: (i) as a
physical
structure comprising a population base, a technology, and an
eco-
2018 01:32:50 UTC
logical order; (2) as a system of social organization involving a
characteristic social structure, a series of social institutions,
and a
typical pattern of social relationships; and (3) as a set of
attitudes
and ideas, and a constellation of personalities engaging in
typical
forms of collective behavior and subject to characteristic
mecha-

nisms of social control,
URBANISM IN ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Since in the case of physical structure and ecological processes
we are able to operate with fairly- objective indices, it becomes
pos-
sible to arrive at quite precise and generally quantitative
results.
The dominance of the city over its hinterland becomes
explicable
through the functional characteristics of the city which derive
in
large measure from the effect of numbers and density. Many of
the technical facilities and the skills and organizations to which
urban life gives rise can grow and prosper only in cities where
the
demand is sufficiently great. The nature and scope of the
services
rendered by these organizations and institutions and the
advantage
which they enjoy over the less developed facilities of smaller
towns
enhances the dominance of the city and the dependence of ever
wider regions upon the central metropolis.

The urban-population composition shows the operation of
selec-
tive and differentiating factors. Cities contain a larger
proportion
of persons in the prime of life than rural areas which contain
more
old and very young people. In this, as in so many other
respects,
the larger the city the more this specific characteristic of
urbanism
is apparent. With the exception of the largest cities, which have
attracted the bulk of the foreign-born males, and a few other
special
types of cities, women predominate numerically over men. The
heterogeneity of the urban population is further indicated along
racial and ethnic lines. The foreign born and their children
consti-
tute nearly two-thirds of all the inhabitants of cities of one
million
and over. Their proportion in the urban population declines as
the
size of the city decreases, until in the rural areas they comprise
only
about one-sixth of the total population. The larger cities

similarly
have attracted more Negroes and other racial groups than have
the
smaller communities. Considering that age, sex, race, and
ethnic
2018 01:32:50 UTC
origin are associated with other factors such as occupation and
interest, it becomes clear that one major characteristic of the
urban-
dweller is his dissimilarity from his fellows. Never before have
such
large masses of people of diverse traits as we find in our cities
been
thrown together into such close physical contact as in the great
cities
of America. Cities generally, and American cities in particular,
com-
prise a motley of peoples and cultures, of highly differentiated
modes
of life between which there often is only the faintest

communication,
the greatest indifference and the broadest tolerance,
occasionally
bitter strife, but always the sharpest contrast.
The failure of the urban population to reproduce itself appears
to be a biological consequence of a combination of factors in
the
complex of urban life, and the decline in the birth-rate
generally
may be regarded as one of the most significant signs of the
urbaniza-
tion of the Western world. While the proportion of deaths in
cities
is slightly greater than in the country, the outstanding
difference
between the failure of present-day cities to maintain their
popula-
tion and that of cities of the past is that in former times it was
due
to the exceedingly high death-rates in cities, whereas today,
since
cities have become more livable from a health standpoint, it is
due
to low birth-rates. These biological characteristics of the urban

population are significant sociologically, not merely because
they
reflect the urban mode of existence but also because they
condition
the growth and future dominance of cities and their basic social
organization. Since cities are the consumers rather than the
pro-
ducers of men, the value of human life and the social
estimation of
the personality will not be unaffected by the balance between
births
and deaths. The pattern of land use, of land values, rentals, and
ownership, the nature and functioning of the physical
structures, of
housing, of transportation and communication facilities, of
public
utilities-these and many other phases of the physical
mechanism
of the city are not isolated phenomena unrelated to the city as a
social entity, but are affected by and affect the urban mode of
life.
URBANISM AS A FORM OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
The distinctive features of the urban mode of life have often

been described sociologically as consisting of the substitution
of sec-
2018 01:32:50 UTC
URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 2I
ondary for primary contacts, the weakening of bonds of
kinship,
and the declining social significance of the family, the
disappearance
of the neighborhood, and the undermining of the traditional
basis
of social solidarity. All these phenomena can be substantially
veri-
fied through objective indices. Thus, for instance, the low and
de-
clining urban-reproduction rates suggest that the city is not
con-
ducive to the traditional type of family life, including the
rearing
of children and the maintenance of the home as the locus of a
whole

round of vital activities. The transfer of industrial, educational,
and recreational activities to specialized institutions outside the
home has deprived the family of some of its most characteristic
historical functions. In cities mothers are more likely to be em-
ployed, lodgers are more frequently part of the household,
marriage
tends to be postponed, and the proportion of single and
unattached
people is greater. Families are smaller and more frequently
without
children than in the country. The family as a unit of social life
is
emancipated from the larger kinship group characteristic of the
country, and the individual members pursue their own
diverging
interests in their vocational, educational, religious,
recreational, and
political life.
Such functions as the maintenance of health, the methods of
alleviating the hardships associated with personal and social
in-
security, the provisions for education, recreation, and cultural
ad-

vancement have given rise to highly specialized institutions on
a
community-wide, statewide, or even national basis. The same
factors
which have brought about greater personal insecurity also
underlie
the wider contrasts between individuals to be found in the
urban
world. While the city has broken down the rigid caste lines of
pre-
industrial society, it has sharpened and differentiated income
and
status groups. Generally, a larger proportion of the adult-urban
population is gainfully employed than is the case with the
adult-
rural population. The white-collar class, comprising those
employed
in trade, in clerical, and in professional work, are
proportionately
more numerous in large cities and in metropolitan centers and
in
smaller towns than in the country.
On the whole, the city discourages an economic life in which
the
individual in time of crisis has a basis of subsistence to fall

back
2018 01:32:50 UTC
upon, and it discourages self-employment. While incomes of
city
people are on the average higher than those of country people,
the
cost of living seems to be higher in the larger cities. Home
owner-
ship involves greater burdens and is rarer. Rents are higher and
absorb a larger proportion of the income. Although the urban-
dweller has the benefit of many communal services, he spends
a
large proportion of his income for such items as recreation and
ad-
vancement and a smaller proportion for food. What the
communal
services do not furnish the urbanite must purchase, and there is
virtually no human need which has remained unexploited by
com-

mercialism. Catering to thrills and furnishing means of escape
from
drudgery, monotony, and routine thus become one of the major
functions of urban recreation, which at its best furnishes means
for
creative self-expression and spontaneous group association, but
which more typically in the urban world results in passive
spectator-
ism on the one hand, or sensational record-smashing feats on
the
other.
Being reduced to a stage of virtual impotence as an individual,
the urbanite is bound to exert himself by joining with others of
similar interest into organized groups to obtain his ends. This
re-
sults in the enormous multiplication of voluntary organizations
di-
rected toward as great a variety of objectives as there are
human
needs and interests. While on the one hand the traditional ties
of
human association are weakened, urban existence involves a

much
greater degree of interdependence between man and man and a
more complicated, fragile, and volatile form of mutual
interrelations
over many phases of which the individual as such can exert
scarcely
any control. Frequently there is only the most tenuous relation-
ship between the economic position or other basic factors that
de-
termine the individual's existence in the urban world and the
vol-
untary groups with which he is affiliated. While in a primitive
and
in a rural society it is generally possible to predict on the basis
of
a few known factors who will belong to what and who will
associate
with whom in almost every relationship of life, in the city we
can
only project the general pattern of group formation and
affiliation,
and this pattern will display many incongruities and contradic-
tions.

2018 01:32:50 UTC
URBAN PERSONALITY AND COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR
It is largely through the activities of the voluntary groups, be
their objectives economic, political, educational, religious,
recrea-
tional, or cultural, that the urbanite expresses and develops his
personality, acquires status, and is able to carry on the round of
activities that constitute his life-career. It may easily be
inferred,
however, that the organizational framework which these highly
dif-
ferentiated functions call into being does not of itself insure
the
consistency and integrity of the personalities whose interests it
en-
lists. Personal disorganization, mental breakdown, suicide,
delin-
quency, crime, corruption, and disorder might be expected
under

these circumstances to be more prevalent in the urban than in
the
rural community. This has been confirmed in so far as
comparable
indices are available; but the mechanisms underlying these phe-
nomena require further analysis.
Since for most group purposes it is impossible in the city to
appeal
individually to the large number of discrete and differentiated
indi-
viduals, and since it is only through the organizations to which
men
belong that their interests and resources can be enlisted for a
col-
lective cause, it may be inferred that social control in the city
should
typically proceed through formally organized groups. It
follows,
too, that the masses of men in the city are subject to
manipulation
by symbols and stereotypes managed by individuals working
from
afar or operating invisibly behind the scenes through their
control

of the instruments of communication. Self-government either in
the
economic, the political, or the cultural realm is under these
circum-
stances reduced to a mere figure of speech or, at best, is
subject to
the unstable equilibrium of pressure groups. In view of the
ineffec-
tiveness of actual kinship ties we create fictional kinship
groups.
In the face of the disappearance of the territorial unit as a basis
of
social solidarity we create interest units. Meanwhile the city as
a
community resolves itself into a series of tenuous segmental
rela-
tionships superimposed upon a territorial base with a definite
center
but without a definite periphery and upon a division of labor
which
far transcends the immediate locality and is world-wide in
scope.
The larger the number of persons in a state of interaction with
one

another the lower is the level of communication and the greater
is
2018 01:32:50 UTC
the tendency for communication to proceed on an elementary
level,
i.e., on the basis of those things which are assumed to be
common
or to be of interest to all.
It is obviously, therefore, to the emerging trends in the com-
munication system and to the production and distribution
technolo-
gy that has come into existence with modern civilization that
we
must look for the symptoms which will indicate the probable
future
development of urbanism as a mode of social life. The
direction of
the ongoing changes in urbanism will for good or ill transform
not

only the city but the world. Some of the more basic of these
factors
and processes and the possibilities of their direction and
control
invite further detailed study.
It is only in so far as the sociologist has a clear conception of
the
city as a social entity and a workable theory of urbanism that
he
can hope to develop a unified body of reliable knowledge,
which
what passes as "urban sociology" is certainly not at the present
time. By taking his point of departure from a theory of
urbanism
such as that sketched in the foregoing pages to be elaborated,
tested,
and revised in the light of further analysis and empirical
research,
it is to be hoped that the criteria of relevance and validity of
factual
data can be determined. The miscellaneous assortment of
discon-
nected information which has hitherto found its way into socio-

logical treatises on the city may thus be sifted and incorporated
into a coherent body of knowledge. Incidentally, only by means
of
some such theory will the sociologist escape the futile practice
of
voicing in the name of sociological science a variety of often
un-
supportable judgments concerning such problems as poverty,
hous-
ing, city-planning, sanitation, municipal administration,
policing,
marketing, transportation, and other technical issues. While the
sociologist cannot solve any of these practical problems-at
least
not by himself-he may, if he discovers his proper function,
have an
important contribution to make to their comprehension and
solu-
tion. The prospects for doing this are brightest through a
general,
theoretical, rather than through an ad hoc approach.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
2018 01:32:50 UTC

Contentsp. 1p. 2p. 3p. 4p. 5p. 6p. 7p. 8p. 9p. 10p. 11p. 12p.
13p. 14p. 15p. 16p. 17p. 18p. 19p. 20p. 21p. 22p. 23p. 24Issue
Table of ContentsAmerican Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 1
(Jul., 1938) pp. i-xvi+1-186Volume Information [pp. ]Urbanism
as a Way of Life [pp. 1-24]The Influence of Disparity of
Incomes on Welfare [pp. 25-35]Intelligence as a Selective
Factor in Rural-Urban Migrations [pp. 36-58]Population
Succession in Chicago: 1898-1930 [pp. 59-69]Ecological Areas
and Marriage Rates [pp. 70-85]The Isometric Map as a
Technique of Social Research [pp. 86-96]Culture Conflict and
Crime [pp. 97-103]Higher Degrees in Sociology Conferred in
1937 [pp. 104-112]Student's Dissertations in Sociology [pp.
113-131]Letters to the Editor [pp. 132-135]News and Notes [pp.
136-147]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 148-150]Review:
untitled [pp. 150-151]Review: untitled [pp. 151-152]Review:
untitled [pp. 156]Review: untitled [pp. 156-157]Review:
untitled [pp. 160]Review: untitled [pp. 160-161]Review:
untitled [pp. 163]Review: untitled [pp. 164]Review: untitled
[pp. 164]Review: untitled [pp. 165]Review: untitled [pp.
165]Review: untitled [pp. 166]Review: untitled [pp. 166-
167]Review: untitled [pp. 167-168]Review: untitled [pp. 168-
169]Review: untitled [pp. 170-171]Review: untitled [pp.
175]Review: untitled [pp. 175]Review: untitled [pp. 175-
178]Review: untitled [pp. 178]Review: untitled [pp.
181]Bibliography [pp. 182-186]

“The City as a Distorted Price System”
Psychology Today (1968)
Wilbur Thompson
EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
The subfield of urban economics is relatively new. Unlike urban
geography, which has existed since the time that Aristotle (p.
249) was writing in the fifth
century BCE, urban sociology, which originated in late
nineteenth-century Germany and flowered in the 1920s and
1930s with the Chicago School sociologists
like Ernest W. Burgess (p. 178) and Louis Wirth (p. 115), or the
field of urban planning in which, as Peter Hall describes,
university-level courses were first
taught in 1909 (p. 431), economics departments only began to
teach courses in urban economics after a remarkable book by
Wilbur Thompson, titled A Preface
To Urban Economics, was published in 1965.
Scholars from a specific discipline often feel people trained in
the discipline will be the best decision-makers. Architect Frank
Lloyd Wright had the fanciful
vision that a county architect should be the key policy-maker at
the local level (p. 388). Similarly, Thompson proposes the idea
that cities should have a “city
economist” to shape city policy. While cities don’t have a
position like that today, economists within government and the
private and nonprofit sectors now
bring the theory and practice of urban economics and public
finance that Thompson and other economists have developed to
bear on decision-making.
Three concepts Thompson introduces are fundamental in urban

economics: the idea of collectively consumed public goods,
merit goods designed to
encourage desired behaviors, and payments to redistribute
income.
Public goods are provided by government at no cost for the use
of everyone. Air pollution control, police, and city streets are
examples. Thompson sees a
place for this kind of good in private free-market economies.
Public goods cost money. There is a price associated with
providing them. But, unlike the cost of
goods in the private market, the price of these public goods is
often implicit, rather than explicit. While a consumer will weigh
how much one shirt or a pot
costs and is acutely aware of increases or decreases in the price
of gasoline, he or she does not think how much it will cost
(society) to drive from home to
school on a public street or think, “Oh, it’s a hot muggy day,
I’ll be paying a lot for government to control air pollution
today.” Tax dollars are paying for the
street and the air pollution control, but in complicated ways,
invisible to the ordinary consumer, and little related to market
realities. People don’t sum up the
cost of highway engineering, asphalt, construction workers,
maintenance, policing, and the myriad other costs of building
and maintaining a highway and
divide by some factor that accurately reflects one small trip in
relation to the total number of users and the number of miles
they drive over the life of the
highway. They consider the trip a free good, rather than one that
is really costing them something.
The failure to think through intended policy and price public
goods accordingly, Thomson argues, leads to muddled and
sometimes irrational policy. An

example Thompson gives of how inattention to price can lead to
bad public policy involves fireproofing. A rational public policy
might be to encourage
homeowners to invest in fireproofing their homes in order to
reduce the risk of fire. This costs each individual homeowner
money, and a fireproofed home
will be worth more than it was before the fireproofing. Since
homeowners’ property taxes are based on the value of their
homes, property taxes will go up.
Having his property tax go up penalizes the prudent homeowner,
whose investment reduces the cost of firemen responding to a
fire or the risk of a fire on his
property spreading to adjacent properties. If another homeowner
in the same neighborhood does nothing to fireproof his house
and lets it deteriorate into a
firetrap, he will be rewarded by lower property taxes. An
alternative approach would be to reward the homeowner who
fireproofs with some form of tax
abatement or tax credit and to penalize the non-performing
homeowner by increasing his taxes (and perhaps using the extra
money to improve the fire
department so it can handle the increased risk he is imposing on
society).
Merit goods are goods that government provides for free
because there has been a collective decision that they are so
important that everyone should have
them regardless of whether they would voluntarily choose them
and without regard to ability to pay. Free polio shots are an
example. With rare exceptions,
governments provide children with free polio shots.
Governments virtually everywhere want children immunized
against polio regardless of their parents’
ability to pay because any child who gets polio is likely to be
permanently crippled for life – bringing suffering to the child
and his family and huge medical

bills that someone will have to pay. The crippled child will
probably never be able to work and will be a permanent burden
on his family and the public. This
tragedy could have been averted for a few pennies in a single,
simple, painless vaccination. Thompson calls merit goods a case
of the majority playing God,
and coercing the minority by the use of bribes to change their
behavior. This is extreme rhetoric, but it emphasizes his belief,
shared by liberal Western
economists, that only a few very important goods should be
merit goods. This view is quite different from the view in
socialist countries, which believe many
more goods should be provided by the state rather than the
private sector. Some people oppose some merit goods (even, in
rare instances, polio vaccinations)
on the ground that government has no right ever to play God
and coerce a minority, but Thompson argues that merit goods
should be used sparingly in
situations where they are very important and command near
universal support. Thompson argues that paying for merit
goods, such as polio immunizations,
is a legitimate governmental activity that should not be subject
to market pricing in rare cases where the public interest requires
the majority to force
everyone to cooperate.
Payments to redistribute income are a third kind of payment that
is not governed by price. The classic example Thompson gives
is welfare payments to the
indigent, such as a monthly payment to a blind, elderly person
with no assets or income. One group (taxpayers) pays; another
group (indigent, elderly, blind
people) receives the good. In communist countries and countries
with a culture that supports a large welfare state such as the
Scandinavian countries and the
Netherlands, government may pay for virtually all of the costs

of health and education for everyone and provide a reasonably
high minimum welfare
payment to indigent people. The United States, United
Kingdom, and most other countries have a much more
restricted policy regarding income
redistribution. They dislike large, cumbersome bureaucracies
and distrust the ability of government to manage redistributive
policies. Accordingly, they rely
primarily on private market solutions to meet almost all basic
human needs.
An overarching concept that applies to each of these three types
of public funding is “market failure.” The idea is that to the
extent possible good and
services should be provided by private markets with no
government bureaucracy overseeing who provides what to
whom. The law of supply and demand will
provide efficient solutions to human needs. Only when markets
fail because individuals simply cannot individually provide a
collective good such as a
highway, poor or stubborn people put themselves and others at
risk by not getting polio vaccinations for their children, or an
indigent, elderly blind person
will starve to death without government aid should government
intervene.
Thompson feels that, if clearly identified and intended, each of
these three types of goods – public
goods, merit goods, and redistributive payments – can serve a
useful role. Often, however, he feels
that there is too little thought about the purpose of such
payments and conceptual sloppiness
about what is intended. If there were a city economist in a city,
she might, for example, force a

city council to think through just how much of a subsidy they
care to give to a museum. While the
city council may regard museum visits as a legitimate public
good that should be supported by
public tax dollars, a careful examination might lead them to
decide that there should be a
differential fee structure so that students and senior citizens can
visit the museum free, but other
museum visitors will have to pay an entrance charge that will
help pay museum costs. They might
conclude that free museum admission is just not as important as
polio shots, road maintenance, or
aid to the indigent elderly blind. They might conclude that
people with resources, not government,
should decide how much visiting a museum is worth to them.
Alternatively, the city economist
might convince the city council that a low museum entrance fee
is necessary when the museum
first opens in order to lure patrons, but once patronage is
established, higher fees are in order.
More extreme examples of public goods that Thomson argues
should be carefully scrutinized, but
often are not, include municipal golf courses and marinas. Does
it make sense for taxpayers to
subsidize golfers and yacht owners? Are these merit goods?
Public goods? Goods worthy of
redistributive policy?
Thompson was an early advocate of using price to ration scarce
goods – particularly use of highways and parking spaces. Since
this seminal article was
written, congestion pricing has become common in many parts
of the world. Tolls are set high during peak commute hours.
People who value their mobility
highly at certain times of the day, such as affluent commuters
rushing to get to work on time in the morning, will be willing to

pay the high toll cost and will
appreciate the lack of congestion. People for whom mobility at
that time is less important, such as friends planning to get
together to work out at the gym,
may choose to exercise after the morning commute rush hour
and before the evening rush hour when congestion pricing is
lower in order to save the higher
toll.
This selection appeared in the popular US publication
Psychology Today in 1968. Thompson’s seminal urban
economics book is A Preface to Urban
Economics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965). Thompson
also wrote An Econometric Model of Postwar State Industrial
Development (Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 1959).
The leading contemporary urban economics text is Arthur O.
O’Sullivan, Urban Economics, 8th edn (Chicago: McGraw-Hill,
2013). Other urban economics
texts include Philip McCann, Urban and Regional Economics
(New York and London: Routledge, 2012), Jan Brueckner,
Lectures on Urban Economics
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), John McDonald and Daniel
MacMillan, Urban Economics: Theory and Policy (Oxford and
New York: Wiley-Blackwell,
2006), Brendan O’Flaherty, City Economics (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2005), and Robert W. Wassmer (ed.),
Readings in Urban Economics:
Issues and Public Policy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
A large scholarly anthology of writings on urban economics is
Ronan Paddison et al. (eds.), Urban Studies: Economy (Los
Angeles and London: Sage, 2010).
Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities (New York: Vintage, 1970)
and Edward Glaeser, Triumph of the City (Colchester and New

York: Penguin, 2012) are
readable, provocative contrarian books based on each author’s
highly original approach to urban economics. Jacobs sees cities
as incubators of new economic
ideas and argues in favor of experimentation. Glaeser overturns
many conventional assumptions in urban economics with lively
examples from Dubai,
Kinshasa, Detroit, London, Rio de Janeiro and other cities
discussed in The City Reader.
The failure to use price – as an explicit system – in the public
sector of the metropolis is at the root of many, if not most,
of our urban problems. Price, serving its historic functions,
might be used to ration the use of existing facilities, to signal
the desired directions of new public investment, to guide the
distribution of income, to enlarge the range of public choice
and to change tastes and behavior. Price performs such
functions in the private market place, but it has been virtually
eliminated from the public sector. We say “virtually eliminated”
because it does exist but in an implicit, subtle, distorted
sense that is rarely seen or acknowledged by even close
students of the city, much less by public managers. Not
surprisingly, this implicit price system results in bad
economics.
We think of the property tax as a source of public revenue, but
it can be reinterpreted as a price. Most often, the
property tax is rationalized on “ability-to-pay” grounds with
real property serving as a proxy for income. When the
correlation between income and real property is challenged,
the apologist for the property tax shifts ground and
rationalizes it as a “benefit” tax. The tax then becomes a “price”
which the property owner pays for the benefits received
– fire protection, for example. But this implicit “price” for fire
services is hardly a model of either efficiency or equity. Put

in a new furnace and fireproof your building (reduce the
likelihood of having a fire) and your property tax (fire service
premium) goes up, let your property deteriorate and become a
firetrap and your fire protection premium goes down! One
bright note is New York City’s one-year tax abatement on new
pollution-control equipment; a timid step but in the right
direction.
Often “urban sprawl” is little more than a color word which
reflects (betrays?) the speaker’s bias in favor of high
population density and heavy interpersonal interaction – his
“urbanity.” Still, typically, the price of using urban fringe
space has been set too low – well below the full costs of
running pipes, wires, police cars and fire engines farther than
would be necessary if building lots were smaller. Residential
developers are, moreover, seldom discouraged (penalized by
price) from “leap frogging” over the contiguous, expensive
vacant land to build on the remote, cheaper parcels.
Ordinarily, a flat price is charged for extending water or sewers
to a new household regardless of whether the house is
placed near to or far from existing pumping stations.
Again, the motorist is subject to the same license fees and tolls,
if any, for the extremely expensive system of streets,
bridges, tunnels, and traffic controls he enjoys, regardless of
whether he chooses to drive downtown at the rush hour and
thereby pushes against peak capacity or at off-peak times when
it costs little or nothing to serve him. To compound this
distortion of prices, we usually set the toll at zero. And when
we do charge tolls, we quite perversely cut the commuter
(rush-hour) rate below the off-peak rate.
It is not enough to point out that the motorist supports
roadbuilding through the gasoline tax. The social costs of noise,

air pollution, traffic control and general loss of urban amenities
are borne by the general taxpayer. In addition, drivers
during off-peak hours overpay and subsidize rush-hour drivers.
Four lanes of expressway or bridge capacity are needed
in the morning and evening rush hours where two lanes would
have served if movements had been random in time and
direction: that is, near constant in average volume. The peak-
hour motorists probably should share the cost of the first
two lanes and bear the full cost of the other two that they alone
require. It is best to begin by carefully distinguishing
where market tests are possible and where they are not.
Otherwise, the case for applying the principles of price is
misunderstood; either the too-ardent advocate overstates his
case or the potential convert projects too much. In either
case, a “disenchantment” sets in that is hard to reverse.
Much of the economics of the city is “public economies,” and
the pricing of urban public services poses some very
difficult and even insurmountable problems. Economists have,
in fact, erected a very elegant rationalization of the public
economy almost wholly on the nonmarketability of public goods
and services. While economists have perhaps oversold
the inapplicability of price in the public sector, let us begin
with what we are not talking about.
The public economy supplies “collectively consumed” goods,
those produced and consumed in one big indivisible
lump. Everyone has to be counted in the system, there is no
choice of in or out. We cannot identify individual benefits,
therefore we cannot exact a quid pro quo. We cannot exclude
those who would not pay voluntarily; therefore we must
turn to compulsory payments: taxes. Justice and air-pollution
control are good examples of collectively consumed public
services.
A second function of the public economy is to supply “merit

goods.” Sometimes the majority of us become a little
paternalistic and decide that we know what is best for all of us.
We believe some goods are especially meritorious, like
education, and we fear that others might not fully appreciate
this truth. Therefore, we produce these merit goods, at
considerable cost, but offer them at a zero price. Unlike the first
case of collectively consumed goods, we could sell these
merit goods. A schoolroom’s doors can be closed to those who
do not pay, quite unlike justice. But we choose to open the
doors wide to ensure that no one will turn away from the service
because of its cost, and then we finance the service
with compulsory payments. Merit goods are a case of the
majority playing God, and “coercing” the minority by the use
of bribes to change their behavior.
A third classic function of government is the redistribution of
income. Here we wish to perform a service for one
group and charge another group the cost of that service. Welfare
payments are a clear case. Again, any kind of a private
market or pricing mechanism is totally inappropriate; we
obviously do not expect welfare recipients to return their
payments. Again, we turn to compulsory payments: taxes. In
sum, the private market may not be able to process certain
goods and services (pure “public goods”), or it may give the
“wrong” prices (“merit goods”), or we simply do not want the
consumer to pay (income-redistributive services).
But the virtual elimination of price from the public sector is an
extreme and highly simplistic response to the special
requirements of the public sector. Merit goods may be
subsidized without going all the way to zero prices. Few would
argue for full-cost admission prices to museums, but a good
case can be made for moderate prices that cover, say, their
daily operating costs, (e.g., salaries of guards and janitors, heat
and light).

Unfortunately, as we have given local government more to do,
we have almost unthinkingly
extended the tradition of “free” public services to every new
undertaking, despite the clear trend in
local government toward the assumption of more and more
functions that do not fit the neat
schema above. The provision of free public facilities for
automobile movement in the crowded
cores of our urban areas can hardly be defended on the grounds
that: (a) motorists could not be
excluded from the expressways if they refused to pay the toll, or
(b) the privately operated motor
vehicle is an especially meritorious way to move through
densely populated areas, or (c) the
motorists cannot afford to pay their own way and that the
general (property) taxpayers should
subsidize them. And all this applies with a vengeance to
municipal marinas and golf courses.
PRICES TO RATION THE USE OF EXISTING FACILITIES
We need to understand better the rationing function of price as
it manifests itself in the urban public sector: how the
demand for a temporarily (or permanently) fixed stock of a
public good or service can be adjusted to the supply. At any
given time the supply of street, bridge, and parking space is
fixed; “congestion” on the streets and a “shortage” of parking
space express demand greater than supply at a zero price, a
not too surprising phenomenon. Applying the market
solution, the shortage of street space at peak hours
(“congestion”) could have been temporarily relieved
(rationalized) by
introducing a short-run rationing price to divert some motorists
to other hours of movement, some to other modes of
transportation, and some to other activities.

Public goods last a long time and therefore current additions to
the stock are too small to relieve shortages quickly and
easily. The rationing function of price is probably more
important in the public sector where it is customarily ignored
than
in the private sector where it is faithfully expressed.
Rationing need not always be achieved with money, as when a
motorist circles the block over and over looking for a
place to park. The motorist who is not willing to “spend time”
waiting and drives away forfeits the scarce space to one
who will spend time (luck averaging out). The parking
“problem” may be reinterpreted as an implicit decision to keep
the
money price artificially low (zero or a nickel an hour in a
meter) and supplement it with a waiting cost or time price. The
problem is that we did not clearly understand and explicitly
agree to do just that.
The central role of price is to allocate – across the board –
scarce resources among competing ends to the point where
the value of another unit of any good or service is equal to the
incremental cost of producing that unit. Expressed loosely,
in the long run we turn from using prices to dampen demand to
fit a fixed supply to adjusting the supply to fit the
quantity demanded, at a price which reflect the production
costs.
Prices which ration also serve to signal desired new directions
in which to reallocate resources. If the rationing price
exceeds those costs of production which the user is
expected to bear directly, more resources should ordinarily
be
allocated to that activity. And symmetrically a rationing
price below the relevant costs indicates an uneconomic

provision of that service in the current amounts. Rationing
prices reveal the intensity of the users’ demands. How much
is it really worth to drive into the heart of town at rush hour or
launch a boat? In the long run, motorists and boaters
should be free to choose, in rough measure, the amount of street
and dock space they want and for which they are willing
to pay. But, as in the private sector of our economy, free choice
would carry with it full (financial) responsibility for that
choice.
We need also to extend our price strategy to “factor prices”; we
need a sophisticated wage policy for local public
employees. Perhaps the key decision in urban development
pertains to the recruiting and assignment of elementary- and
secondary-school teachers. The more able and experienced
teachers have the greater range of choice in post and quite
naturally they choose the newer schools in the better
neighborhoods, after serving the required apprenticeship in the
older schools in the poorer neighborhoods. Such a pattern of
migration certainly cannot implement a policy of equality of
opportunity.
This author argued six years ago that egalitarianism in the
public school system has been overdone; even the army
recognizes the role of price when it awards extra “jump pay” to
paratroopers, only a slightly more hazardous occupation
than teaching behind the lines. Besides, it is male teachers
whom we need to attract to slum schools, both to serve as
father figures where there are few males at home and to serve
quite literally as disciplinarians. It is bad economics to
insist on equal pay for teachers everywhere throughout the
urban area when males have a higher productivity in some
areas and when males have better employment opportunities
outside teaching – higher “opportunity costs” that raise
their supply price. It is downright silly to argue that “equal pay
for equal work” is achieved by paying the same money

wage in the slums as in the suburbs.
About a year ago, on being offered premium salaries for service
in ghetto schools, the teachers rejected, by name and
with obvious distaste, any form of “jump pay.” One facile
argument offered was that they must protect the slum child
from the stigma of being harder to teach, a nicety surely lost on
the parents and outside observers. One suspects that the
real reason for avoiding salary differentials between the “slums
and suburbs” is that the teachers seek to escape the hard
choice between the higher pay and the better working
conditions. But that is precisely what the price system is
supposed
to do: equalize sacrifice.
PRICES TO GUIDE THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME
A much wider application of tolls, fees, fines, and other
“prices” would also confer greater control over the distribution
of
income for two distinct reasons. First, the taxes currently used
to finance a given public service create implicit and
unplanned redistribution of income. Second, this drain on our
limited supply of tax money prevents local government
from undertaking other programs with more explicit and
planned redistributional effects.
More specifically, if upper-middle- and upper-income motorists,
golfers, and boaters use subsidized public streets, golf
links, and marinas more than in proportion to their share of
local tax payments from which the subsidy is paid, then
these public activities redistribute income toward greater
inequality. Even if these activities were found to be neutral
with respect to the distribution of income, public provision of

these discretionary services comes at the expense of a
roughly equivalent expenditure on the more classic public
services: protection, education, public health, and welfare.
Self-supporting public golf courses are so common and marinas
are such an easy extension of the same principle that it
is much more instructive to test the faith by considering the
much harder case of the public museum: “culture.” Again, we
must recall that it is the middle- and upper-income classes who
typically visit museums, so that free admission becomes,
in effect, redistribution toward greater inequality, to the extent
that the lower-income nonusers pay local taxes (e.g.,
property taxes directly or indirectly through rent, local sales
taxes). The low prices contemplated are not, moreover, likely
to discourage attendance significantly and the resolution of
special cases (e.g., student passes) seems well within our
competence.
Unfortunately, it is not obvious that “free” public marinas as
tennis courts pose foregone alternatives – “opportunity
costs.” If we had to discharge a teacher or policeman every time
we built another boat dock or tennis court, we would see
the real cost of these public services. But in a growing
economy, we need only not hire another teacher or policeman
and
that is not so obvious. In general, then, given a binding local
budget constraint – scarce tax money – to undertake a local
public service that is unequalizing or even neutral in income
redistribution is to deny funds to programs that have the
desired distributional effect, and is to lose control over equity.
Typically, in oral presentations at question time, it is necessary
to reinforce this point by rejoining, “No, I would not
put turnstiles in the playgrounds in poor neighborhoods, rather
it is only because we do put turnstiles at the entrance to
the playgrounds for the middle- and upper-income groups that

we will be able to ‘afford’ playgrounds for the poor.”
PRICES TO ENLARGE THE RANGE OF CHOICE
But there is more at stake in the contemporary chaos of hidden
and unplanned prices than “merely” efficiency and equity.
There is no urban goal on which consensus is more easily
gained than the pursuit of great variety and choice –
“pluralism.” The great rural to urban migration was prompted as
much by the search for variety as by the decline of
agriculture and rise of manufacturing. Wide choice is seen as
the saving grace of bigness by even the sharpest critics of
the metropolis. Why, then, do we tolerate far less variety in our
big cities than we could have? We have lapsed into a
state of tyranny by the majority, in matters of both taste and
choice.
In urban transportation the issue is not, in the final analysis,
whether users of core-area street
space at peak hours should or should not be required to pay
their own way in full. The problem is,
rather, that by not forcing a direct quid pro quo in money, we
implicitly substitute a new means of
payment – time in the transportation services “market.” The
peak-hour motorist does pay in full,
through congestion and time delay. But implicit choices blur
issues and confuse decision making.
Say we were carefully to establish how many more dollars
would have to be paid in for the additional capacity needed
to save a given number of hours spent commuting. The majority
of urban motorists perhaps would still choose the
present combination of “underinvestment” in highway,
bridge and parking facilities, with a compensatory heavy
investment of time in slow movement over these crowded

facilities. Even so, a substantial minority of motorists do prefer
a different combination of money and time cost. A more
affluent, long-distance commuter could well see the current
level
of traffic congestion as a real problem and much prefer to spend
more money to save time. If economies of scale are so
substantial that only one motorway to town can be supported, or
if some naturally scarce factor (e.g., bridge or tunnel
sites) prevents parallel transportation facilities of different
quality and price, then the preferences of the minority must be
sacrificed to the majority interest and we do have a real
“problem.” But, ordinarily, in large urban areas there are a
number of near-parallel routes to town, and an unsatisfied
minority group large enough to justify significant
differentiation of one or more of these streets and its diversion
to their use. Greater choice through greater scale is, in
fact, what bigness is all about.
The simple act of imposing a toll, at peak hours, on one of these
routes would reduce its use, assuming that nearby
routes are still available without user charges, thereby speeding
movement of the motorists who remain and pay. The toll
could be raised only to the point where some combination of
moderately rapid movement and high physical output were
jointly optimized. Otherwise the outcry might be raised that the
public transportation authority was so elitist as to
gratify the desire of a few very wealthy motorists for very rapid
movement, heavily overloading the “free” routes. It is,
moreover, quite possible, even probable, that the newly
converted, rapid-flow, toll-route would handle as many vehicles
as it did previously as a congested street and not therefore spin
off any extra load on the free routes.
Our cities cater, at best, to the taste patterns of the middle-
income class, as well they should, but not so exclusively.
This group has chosen, indirectly through clumsy and

insensitive tax-and-expenditure decisions and ambiguous
political
processes, to move about town flexibly and cheaply, but slowly,
in private vehicles. Often, and almost invariably in the
larger urban areas, we would not have to encroach much on this
choice to accommodate also those who would prefer to
spend more money and less time, in urban movement. In
general, we should permit urban residents to pay in their most
readily available “currency” – time or money.
Majority rule by the middle class in urban transportation has not
only disenfranchised the affluent commuter, but
more seriously it has debilitated the low-fare, mass transit
system on which the poor depend. The effect of widespread
automobile ownership and use on the mass transportation
system is an oft-told tale: falling bus and rail patronage leads
to less frequent service and higher overhead costs per trip and
often higher fares which further reduce demand and
service schedules. Perhaps two-thirds or more of the urban
residents will tolerate and may even prefer slow, cheap
automobile movement. But the poor are left without access to
many places of work – the suburbanizing factories in
particular – and they face much reduced opportunities for
comparative shopping, and highly constrained participation in
the community life in general. A truly wide range of choice in
urban transportation would allow the rich to pay for fast
movement with money, the middle-income class to pay for the
privacy and convenience of the automobile with time, and
the poor to economize by giving up (paying with) privacy.
A more sophisticated price policy would expand choice in other
directions. Opinions differ as to the gravity of the
water-pollution problem near large urban areas. The minimum
level of dissolved oxygen in the water that is needed to
meet the standards of different users differs greatly, as does the
incremental cost that must be incurred to bring the

dissolved oxygen levels up to successively higher standards.
The boater accepts a relatively low level of “cleanliness”
acquired at relatively little cost. Swimmers have higher
standards attained only at much higher cost. Fish and fisherman
can thrive only with very high levels of dissolved oxygen
acquired only at the highest cost. Finally, one can imagine an
elderly convalescent or an impoverished slum dweller or a
confirmed landlubber who is not at all interested in the
nearby river. What, then, constitutes “clean”?
“Beyond Suburbia: The Rise of the Technoburb”
from Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (1987)
Robert Fishman
EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
Robert Fishman is a professor of history at the University of
Michigan who established his academic reputation with his first
book, the magisterial Urban
Utopias in the Twentieth Century (1977), a study of the work of
Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright (see
Part Five of this volume). For
his second book, Fishman decided to address a seemingly
prosaic, non-visionary subject – the history of suburbia – only
to discover that “the suburban ideal”
was, in the final analysis, yet another form of utopia, the utopia
of the urban middle class.
As the real focus of Bourgeois Utopias is the suburban ideal,
more than suburbia itself, the logic of Fishman’s analysis leads
him to many surprising
insights and conclusions. In the medieval period and up
through the eighteenth century, suburbs were clusters of

houses inhabited by poor and/or
disreputable people on the outskirts of towns, just outside the
walls. When suburbs were first established for the upper and
middle classes – a phenomenon
that has thrived more in North America than in Europe where
working-class suburbs and banlieus often predominate – the
ideal was to create a perfect
synthesis of urban sophistication and rural virtue. Here was a
conception as utopian as that of any visionary social reformer
but with an important difference:
“Where other modern utopias have been collectivist,” writes
Fishman, “suburbia has built its vision of community on the
primacy of private property and the
individual family.”
What suburbia has evolved into today is “technoburbia,” a
dominant new urban reality that can no longer be considered
suburbia in the traditional sense.
In Redmond, Washington, and in Cupertino, California, the
Microsoft and Apple corporate headquarters mix with
residential neighborhoods, retail centers,
and even bands of open space to make up a new urban form
where city and suburb – urbanized and un-urbanized areas,
high-tech and conventional
development – flow seamlessly together.
To describe this new reality Fishman has coined two new terms
“technoburb” and “techno-city.” Fishman defines technoburbs
as peripheral zones, perhaps
as large as a county, that have emerged as viable socioeconomic
units. The new technoburbs are spread out along highway
growth corridors. Along the
highways of metropolitan regions shopping malls, industrial
parks, campus-like office complexes, hospitals, schools, and a
whole range of housing types
succeed each other.

By “techno-city” Fishman means the whole metropolitan region
that has been transformed by the coming of the technoburb. In
Fishman’s view we may
still refer to the New York Metropolitan region as “New York
City,” but increasingly by “New York City” we mean the entire
New York City region. And much
of the economic and cultural life of the region no longer resides
just in the core city. The old central cities have become
increasingly marginal, while the
technoburb has emerged as the focus of American life. In
Fishman’s view, the new technoburbs surrounding the old urban
cores do not represent “the
suburbanization of the United States,” as Kenneth T. Jackson
(p. 73) would have it, but “the end of suburbia in its traditional
sense and the creation of a new
kind of decentralized city.” That suburbia has become the city
itself is, perhaps, the final irony of modern urbanism.
Fishman lays out a strong indictment of what is wrong with
technoburbs. They consist of an unplanned jumble of discordant
elements – housing, industry,
commerce, even agriculture – with little coherent pattern or
structure. They waste land. Technoburbs are dependent on
highway systems, yet their highway
systems are in a state of chronic chaos. They have no proper
boundaries, but consist of a crazy quilt of separate and
overlapping political jurisdictions that
make meaningful region-wide planning virtually impossible
and, as Myron Orfield observes (p. 338), access to revenue to
pay for local government services
becomes highly inequitable. And at a time when issues of
environmental sustainability predominate in discussions of
urban planning that emphasize the
superiority of dense, compact center cities, the “greening” of
technoburbia may need to become one of the central concerns of

planning practice.
For all that, Fishman notes that all new urban forms appeared
chaotic in their early stages. Even the most “organic” cityscapes
of the past evolved slowly
after much chaos and trial and error. For example, it took
planners of genius like Frederick Law Olmsted (p. 364) and
Ebenezer Howard (p. 371) to create
orderly parks and garden suburbs (like Olmsted’s Riverside, a
romantic suburb on the outskirts of Chicago) out of the chaos of
the nineteenth-century city or
to first imagine and then actually build Garden Cities like
Letchworth and Welwyn. Fishman acknowledges that there is a
functional logic to sprawl. Perhaps,
he speculates, if sprawl is better understood and better managed
it might prove to be a positive rather than a negative
development. Fishman looks to Frank
Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City vision (p. 388) as an example of
how inspired planners may yet devise an aesthetic to tame
technoburbia, while Robert
Bruegmann’s selection from Sprawl: A Compact History (p.
218) suggests that building ever-outward is merely a logical,
indeed “natural” response to
increased population pressures and the desire of the middle
class to avoid the disagreeable aspects of inner-city life.
The techno-city, Fishman concludes, is still under construction
both physically and culturally. How it will evolve is unclear,
although Richard Florida (p.
163) offers persuasive insights into who will live in the new
techno-communities and how they will work and socially
interact. The jury is still out on whether
technoburbia will ultimately be judged as an advance over
earlier urban forms. Another question is how technoburbia
relates to the cities of the emerging
global society discussed in Part Eight of this book.

This selection is from Fishman’s Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise
and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1987). His other
major books on cities are Urban
Utopias in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books,
1977) and The American Planning Tradition: Culture and Policy
(Washington: Woodrow Wilson
Center Press, 2000).
For other views of emerging postmodern suburbia, see journalist
Joel Garreau’s Edge City (New York: Anchor, 1992), Edward
Soja’s “Taking Los Angeles
Apart” from Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space
in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1989), Michael
Dear’s “The Los Angeles School of
Urbanism: An Intellectual History” (p. 187), and Peter
Calthorpe and William Fulton’s The Regional City: Planning for
the End of Sprawl (Washington, DC:
Island Press, 2001). For an excellent collection of articles on
the history of suburbia, see Becky Nicolaides and Andrew
Wiese (eds.), The Suburb Reader
(London and New York: Routledge, 2006). Also of interest are
two recent books that call for a reconfiguration of the city–
suburb relationship: Myron Orfield,
American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality
(Washington: Brookings Institution, 2002) and David Rusk,
Cities Without Suburbs: A Census 2000 Update
(Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003).
If the nineteenth century could be called the Age of Great
Cities, post-1945 America would appear to be the Age of Great
Suburbs. As central cities stagnated or declined in both
population and industry, growth was channeled almost
exclusively to the peripheries. Between 1950 and 1970

American central cities grew by 10 million people, their suburbs
by
85 million. Suburbs, moreover, accounted for at least three-
quarters of all new manufacturing and retail jobs generated
during that period. By 1970 the percentage of Americans living
in suburbs was almost exactly double what it had been in
1940, and more Americans lived in suburban areas (37.6
percent) than in central cities (31.4 percent) or in rural areas
(31
percent). In the 1970s central cities experienced a net out-
migration of 13 million people, combined with an
unprecedented deindustrialization, increasing poverty levels,
and housing decay.
[…]
From its origins in eighteenth-century London, suburbia has
served as a specialized portion of the
expanding metropolis. Whether it was inside or outside the
political borders of the central city, it
was always functionally dependent on the urban core.
Conversely, the growth of suburbia always
meant a strengthening of the specialized services at the core.
In my view, the most important feature of postwar
American development has been the almost simultaneous
decentralization of housing, industry, specialized services,
and office jobs; the consequent breakaway of the urban
periphery from a central city it no longer needs; and the
creation of a decentralized environment that nevertheless
possesses all the economic and technological dynamism we
associate with the city. This phenomenon, as remarkable as it
is unique, is not suburbanization but a new city.

Unfortunately, we lack a convenient name for this new city,
which has taken shape on the outskirts of all our major
urban centers. Some have used the terms “exurbia” or
“outer city.” I suggest (with apologies) two neologisms: the
“technoburb” and the “techno-city.” By “technoburb” I mean a
peripheral zone, perhaps as large as a county, that has
emerged as a viable socioeconomic unit. Spread out along its
highway growth corridors are shopping malls, industrial
parks, campuslike office complexes, hospitals, schools, and a
full range of housing types. Its residents look to their
immediate surroundings rather than to the city for their jobs
and other needs; and its industries find not only the
employees they need but also the specialized services.
The new city is a technoburb not only because high tech
industries have found their most congenial homes in such
archetypal technoburbs as Silicon Valley in northern California
and Route 128 in Massachusetts. In most technoburbs
such industries make up only a small minority of jobs, but the
very existence of the decentralized city is made possible
only through the advanced communications technology which
has so completely superseded the face-to-face contact of
the traditional city. The technoburb has generated urban
diversity without traditional urban concentration.
By “techno-city” I mean the whole metropolitan region that has
been transformed by the coming of the technoburb.
The techno-city usually still bears the name of its principal city,
for example, “the New York metropolitan area”; its sports
teams bear that city’s name (even if they no longer play within
the boundaries of the central city); and its television
stations appear to broadcast from the central city. But the
economic and social life of the region increasingly bypasses its
supposed core. The techno-city is truly multicentered, along the
pattern that Los Angeles first created. The technoburbs,
which might stretch over seventy miles from the core in all

directions, are often in more direct communication with one
another – or with other techno-cities across the country – than
they are with the core. The techno-city’s real structure is
aptly expressed by the circular superhighways or beltways that
serve so well to define the perimeters of the new city. The
beltways put every part of the urban periphery in contact with
every other part without passing through the central city
at all.
[…]
The old central cities have become increasingly marginal, while
the technoburb has emerged as the focus of American
life. The traditional suburbanite – commuting at ever-increasing
cost to a center where the available resources barely
duplicate those available much closer to home – becomes
increasingly rare. In this transformed urban ecology the history
of suburbia comes to an end.
PROPHETS OF THE TECHNO-CITY
Like all new urban forms, the techno-city and its technoburbs
emerged not only unpredicted but unobserved. We are still
seeing this new city through the intellectual categories of the
old metropolis. Only two prophets, I believe, perceived the
underlying forces that would lead to the techno-city at the time
of their first emergence. Their thoughts are therefore
particularly valuable in understanding the new city.
At the turn of the twentieth century, when the power and
attraction of the great city was at its peak, H.G. Wells
daringly asserted that the technological forces that had created
the industrial metropolis were now moving to destroy it.
In his 1900 essay “The Probable Diffusion of Great Cities,”
Wells argued that the seemingly inexorable concentration of
people and resources in the largest cities would soon be
reversed. In the course of the twentieth century, he prophesied,

the metropolis would see its own resources drain away to
decentralized “urban regions” so vast that the very concept of
“the city” would become, in his phrase, “as obsolete as
‘mailcoach.’”
Wells based his prediction on a penetrating analysis of the
emerging networks of transportation and communication.
Throughout the nineteenth century, rail transportation had been
a relatively simple system favoring direct access to large
centers. With the spread of branchlines and electric tramways,
however, a complex rail network had been created that
could serve as the basis for a decentralized region. (As Wells
wrote, Henry E. Huntington was proving the truth of his
propositions for the Los Angeles region.)
Wells pictured the “urban region” of the year 2000 as a series of
villages with small homes and factories set in the open
fields, yet connected by high speed rail transportation to any
other point in the region. (It was a vision not very different
from those who saw Los Angeles developing into just such a
network of villages.) The old cities would not completely
disappear, but they would lose both their financial and their
industrial functions, surviving simply because of an inherent
human love of crowds. The “post-urban” city, Wells predicted,
will be “essentially a bazaar, a great gallery of shops and
places of concourse and rendezvous, a pedestrian place, its
pathways reinforced by lifts and moving platforms, and
shielded from the weather, and altogether a very spacious,
brilliant, and entertaining agglomeration.” In short, the great
metropolis will dwindle to what we would today call a massive
shopping mall, while the productive life of the society
would take place in the decentralized urban region.

Wells’s prediction was taken up in the late 1920s and early
1930s by Frank Lloyd Wright, who moved from similar
assumptions to an even more radical view. Wright had actually
seen the beginnings of the automobile and truck era; he
was, perhaps not coincidentally, living mostly in Los Angeles in
the late 1910s and early 1920s. Wright, like Wells, argued
that “the great city was no longer modern” and that it was
destined to be replaced by a decentralized society.
He called this new society Broadacre City. It has often been
confused with a kind of universal suburbanization, but for
Wright “Broadacres” was the exact opposite of the suburbia he
despised. He saw correctly that suburbia represented the
essential extension of the city into the countryside, whereas
Broadacres represented the disappearance of all previously
existing cities.
As Wright envisioned it, Broadacres was based on universal
automobile ownership combined with a network of
superhighways, which removed the need for population to
cluster in a particular spot. Indeed, any such clustering was
necessarily inefficient, a point of congestion rather than of
communication. The city would thus spread out over the
countryside at densities low enough to permit each family to
have its own homestead and even to engage in part-time
agriculture. Yet these homesteads would not be isolated; their
access to the superhighway grid would put them within
easy reach of as many jobs and specialized services as any
nineteenth-century urbanite. Traveling at more than sixty
miles an hour, each citizen would create his own city within the
hundreds of square miles he could reach in an hour’s
drive.
Like Wells, Wright saw industrial production inevitably leaving
the cities for the space and convenience of rural sites.
But Wright went one step further in his attempt to envision the

way that a radically decentralized environment could
generate that diversity and excitement which only cities had
possessed.
He saw that even in the most scattered environment, the
crossing of major highways would possess a certain special
status. These intersections would be the natural sites of what he
called the roadside market, a remarkable anticipation of
the shopping center: “great spacious roadside pleasure places
these markets, rising high and handsome like some flexible
form of pavilion – designed as places of cooperative exchange,
not only of commodities but of cultural facilities.” To the
roadside markets he added a range of highly civilized yet small
scale institutions: schools, a modern cathedral, a center
for festivities, and the like. In such an environment, even the
entertainment functions of the city would disappear. Soon,
Wright devoutly wished, the centralized city itself would
disappear.
Taken together, Wells’s and Wright’s prophecies constitute a
remarkable insight into the decentralizing tendencies of
modern technology and society. Both were presented in utopian
form, an image of the future presented as somehow
“inevitable” yet without any sustained attention to how it would
actually be achieved. Nevertheless, something like the
transformation that Wells and Wright foresaw has taken place
in the United States, a transformation all the more
remarkable in that it occurred without a clear recognition that it
was happening. While diverse groups were engaged in
what they believed was “the suburbanization” of America, they
were in fact creating a new city.
[…]

TECHNOBURB/TECHNO-CITY: THE STRUCTURE OF THE
NEW METROPOLIS
To claim that there is a pattern or structure in the new American
city is to contradict what appears to be overwhelming
evidence. One might sum up the structure of the technoburb by
saying that it goes against every rule of planning. It is
based on two extravagances that have always aroused the ire of
planners: the waste of land inherent in a single family
house with its own yard, and the waste of energy inherent in the
use of the personal automobile. The new city is
absolutely dependent on its road system, yet that system is
almost always in a state of chaos and congestion. The
landscape of the technoburb is a hopeless jumble of housing,
industry, commerce, and even agricultural uses. Finally, the
technoburb has no proper boundaries; however defined, it is
divided into a crazy quilt of separate and overlapping
political jurisdictions, which make any kind of coordinated
planning virtually impossible.
Yet the technoburb has become the real locus of growth and
innovation in our society. And there is a real structure in
what appears to be wasteful sprawl, which provides enough
logic and efficiency for the technoburb to fulfill at least some
of its promises.
If there is a single basic principle in the structure of the
technoburb, it is the renewed linkage of work and residence.
The suburb had separated the two into distinct environments;
its logic was that of the massive commute, in which
workers from the periphery traveled each morning to a single
core and then dispersed each evening. The technoburb,
however, contains both work and residence within a single
decentralized environment.
By the standards of a preindustrial city where people often lived
and worked under the same roof, or even of the turn

of the century industrial zones where factories were an
integral part of working class neighborhoods, the linkage
between work and residence in the technoburb is hardly close. A
recent study of New Jersey shows that most workers
along the state’s growth corridors now live in the same county
in which they work. But this relative dispersion must be
contrasted to the former pattern of commuting into urban cores
like Newark or New York. In most cases traveling time to
work diminishes, even when the distances traveled are still
substantial; as the 1980 census indicates, the average journey
to work appears to be diminishing both in distance and, more
importantly, in time.
For commuting within the technoburb is multidirectional,
following the great grid of highways and secondary roads
that, as Frank Lloyd Wright understood, defines the
community. This multiplicity of destinations makes public
transportation highly inefficient, but it does remove that terrible
bottleneck which necessarily occurred when work was
concentrated at a single core within the region. Each house in a
technoburb is within a reasonable driving time of a truly
“urban” array of jobs and services, just as each workplace along
the highways can draw upon an “urban” pool of workers.
Those who believed that the energy crisis of the 1970s would
cripple the technoburb failed to realize that the new city
had evolved its own pattern of transportation in which a
multitude of relatively short automobile journeys in a multitude
of different directions substitutes for that great tidal wash in
and out of a single urban core which had previously defined
commuting. With housing, jobs, and services all on the
periphery, this sprawl develops its own form of relative
efficiency.
The truly inefficient form would be any attempted revival of the
former pattern of long distance mass transit commuting
into a core area. To account for the new linkage of work and

residence in the technoburb, we must first confront this
paradox: the new city required a massive and coordinated
relocation of housing, industry, and other “core” functions to
the periphery; yet there were no coordinators directing the
process. Indeed, the technoburb emerged in spite of, not
because of, the conscious purposes motivating the main actors.
The postwar housing boom was an attempt to escape
from urban conditions; the new highways sought to channel
traffic into the cities; planners attempted to limit peripheral
growth; the government programs that did the most to destroy
the hegemony of the old industrial metropolis were
precisely those designed to save it.
This paradox can be seen clearly in the area of transportation
policy. Wright had grasped the basic point in his
Broadacre City plan: a fully developed highway grid eliminates
the primacy of a central business district. It creates a
whole series of highway crossings, which can serve as business
centers while promoting the multidirectional travel that
prevents any single center from attaining unique importance.
Yet, from the time of Robert Moses to the present, highway
planners have imagined that the new roads, like the older rail
transportation, would enhance the importance of the old
centers by funneling cars and trucks into the downtown area and
the surrounding industrial belt. At most, the highways
were to serve traditional suburbanization; in other words, the
movement from the periphery to the core during morning
rush hours and the reverse movement in the afternoon. The
beltways, those crucial “Main Streets” of the technoburb,
were designed simply to allow interstate traffic to avoid going
through the central cities.
The history of the technoburb, therefore, is the history of those
deeper structural features of modern society first
described by Wells and Wright taking precedence over
conscious intentions. For purposes of clarity I shall now divide

this discussion of the making of the techno-city into two
interrelated topics: housing and job location.
Housing
The great American postwar housing boom was perhaps the
purest example of the suburban dream in action, yet its
ultimate consequence was to render suburbia obsolete. Between
1950 and 1970, on the average, 1.2 million housing units
were built each year, the vast majority as suburban single
family dwellings; the nation’s housing stock increased by 21
million units or over 50 percent. In the 1970s the boom
continued even more strongly: twenty million more new units
were added, almost as many as in the previous two decades. It
was precisely this vast production of new residences that
shifted the center of gravity in the United States from the urban
core to the periphery and thus ensured that these vital
and expanding areas could no longer remain simply bedroom
communities.
This great building boom, which seems so characteristic of
post-1945 conditions, in fact had its origins early in the
twentieth century in the first attempts to universalize suburbia
throughout the United States. It can be seen essentially as
a continuation of the 1920s building boom, which had been cut
off for two decades by the Depression and the war. As
George Sternlieb reminds us, the American automobile industry
in 1929 was producing as many cars per capita as it did
in the 1980s, and real estate developers had already plotted out
subdivisions in out-lying areas that were only built up in
the 1960s and 1970s.
[…]
Even the late 1970s combination of stagnant real income with

high interest rates, gasoline prices, and land values did
not diminish the desirability of the new single family house. In
1981 a median American family earned only 70 percent of
what was needed to make the payments on the median priced
house; by 1986, the median family could once again afford
the median house. Single family houses still constitute 67
percent of all occupied units, down only 2 percent since 1970
despite the increase in costs; moreover, a survey of potential
home buyers in 1986 showed that 85 percent intended to
purchase a detached, single family suburban house, while only
15 percent were looking at condominium apartments or
townhouses. The “single,” as builders call it, is still alive and
well on the urban periphery.
This continuing appeal of the single should not, however,
obscure the crucial changes that have transformed the
meaning and context of the house. The new suburban house of
the 1950s, like its predecessors for more than a century,
existed precisely to isolate women and the family from urban
economic life; it defined an exclusive zone of residence
between city and country. Now a new house might adjoin a
landscaped office park with more square feet of new office
space than in a downtown building, or might be just down the
highway from an enclosed shopping mall with a sales
volume that exceeds those of the downtown department stores,
or might overlook a high tech research laboratory making
products that are exported around the world. No longer a refuge,
the single family detached house on the periphery is
preferred as a convenient base from which both spouses can
rapidly reach their jobs.
Without the simultaneous movement of jobs along with
housing, the great “suburban” boom would surely have
exhausted itself in ever longer journeys to workplaces in a
crowded core on overburdened highways and mass transit

facilities. And the new peripheral communities would have been
in reality the “isolation wards” for women that critics
have called them, instead of becoming the setting for the
reintegration of middle-class women into the work force as they
have. The unchanging image of the suburban house and the
suburban bedroom community has obscured the crucial
importance of this transformation in work location, the subject
of the next section.
Job location
As those who have tried to plan the process have painfully
learned, job location has its own autonomous rules. The
movement of factories away from the urban core after 1945 took
place independently of the housing boom and probably
would have occurred without it. Nevertheless, the simultaneous
movement of housing and jobs in the 1950s and 1960s
created an unforeseen “critical mass” of entrepreneurship and
expertise on the perimeters, which allowed the technoburb
to challenge successfully the two century long economic
dominance of the central city.
[…]
At the same time, the growing importance of trucking meant
that factories were no longer as dependent on the
confluence of rail lines which existed only in the old factory
zones. Workers had their automobiles, so factories could
scatter along the periphery without concern about the absence of
mass transit. (The scattering of aircraft plants and other
factories in Los Angeles in the 1930s prefigured this trend.) The
process gained momentum as a result of thousands of
uncoordinated decisions in which managers allowed their inner
city plants to run down and directed new investment
toward the outskirts …

These changes in job location during the 1950s and 1960s were,
however, only a prelude to the real triumph of the
technoburb: the luring of both managerial office employment
and advanced technological laboratories and production
facilities from the core to the peripheries. This process may be
divided into three parts. First came the establishment of
“high tech” growth corridors in such diverse locations as
Silicon Valley, California; Silicon Prairie, between Dallas and
Fort Worth; the Atlanta Beltway; Route 1 between Princeton
and New Brunswick, New Jersey; Westchester County, New
York; Route 202 near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; and Route
128 outside Boston. The second step was the movement of
office bureaucracies, especially the so-called back office, from
center city high-rises to technoburb office parks; and the
final phase was the movement of production-service
employment – banks, accountants, lawyers, advertising
agencies,
skilled technicians, and the like – to locations within the
technoburb, thus creating that vital base of support personnel
for larger firms.
Indeed, this dramatic surge toward the technoburb has been so
sweeping that we must now ask whether Wright’s
ultimate prophecy will be fulfilled: the disappearance of the old
urban centers. Is the present-day boom in downtown
office construction and inner city gentrification simply a
last hurrah for the old city before deeper trends in
decentralization lead to its ultimate decay?
In my view, the final diffusion that Wells and Wright predicted
is unlikely, if only because both underestimated the
forces of economic and political centralization that
continue to exist in the late twentieth century. If physical
decentralization had indeed meant economic decentralization,
then the urban cores would by now be ghost towns. But

large and powerful organizations still seek out a central location
that validates their importance, and the historic core of
great cities still meets that need better than the office
complexes on the outskirts. Moreover, the corporate and
government headquarters in the core still attract a wide variety
of specialized support services – law firms, advertising,
publishing, media, restaurants, entertainment centers,
museums, and more – that continue to make the center cities
viable.
The old factory zones around the core have also survived, but
only in the painfully anomalous sense of housing those
too poor to earn admission to the new city of prosperity at the
periphery. The big city, therefore, will not disappear in the
foreseeable future, and residents of the technoburbs will
continue to confront uneasily both the economic power and elite
culture of the urban core and its poverty. Nevertheless, the
technoburb has become the true center of American society.
THE MEANING OF THE NEW CITY
Beyond the structure of the techno-city and its technoburbs,
there is the larger question: what is the impact of this
decentralized environment on our culture? Can anyone say of
the technoburb, as Olmsted said of the suburb a century
ago, that it represents “the most attractive, the most refined, and
the most soundly wholesome forms of domestic life, and
the best application of the arts of civilization to which mankind
has yet attained”? Most planners in fact say the exact
opposite. Their indictment can be divided into two parts. First,
decentralization has been a social and economic disaster
for the old city and for the poor, who have been increasingly
relegated to its crowded, decayed zones. It has resegregated
American society into an affluent outer city and an indigent
inner city, while erecting ever higher barriers that prevent
the poor from sharing in the jobs and housing of the
technoburbs.

Second, decentralization has been seen as a cultural disaster.
While the rich and diverse architectural heritage of the
cities decays, the technoburb has been built up as a standardized
and simplified sprawl, consuming time and space,
destroying the natural landscape. The wealth that postindustrial
America has generated has been used to create an ugly
and wasteful pseudocity, too spread out to be efficient,
too superficial to create a true culture. The truth of both
indictments is impossible to deny, yet it must be rescued from
the polemical overstatements that seem to afflict anyone
who deals with these topics. The first charge is the more
fundamental, for it points to a genuine structural discontinuity
in post-1945 decentralization. By detaching itself physically,
socially, and economically from the city, the technoburb is
profoundly antiurban as suburbia never had been.
Suburbanization strengthened the central core as the cultural
and
economic heart of an expanding region; by excluding industry,
suburbia left intact and even augmented the urban factory
districts.
Technoburb development, however, completely undermines the
factory district and potentially threatens even the
commercial core. The competition from new sites on the
outskirts renders obsolete the whole complex of housing and
factory sites that had been built up in the years 1890 to 1930
and provides alternatives to the core for even the most
specialized shopping and administrative services.
This competition, moreover, has occurred in the context of a
massive migration of southern blacks to northern cities.
Blacks, Hispanics, and other recent migrants could afford

housing only in the old factory districts, which were being
abandoned by both employers and the white working class. The
result was a twentieth century version of Disraeli’s “two
nations.” Now, however, the outer reaches of affluence include
both the middle class and the better-off working class – a
majority of the population; while the largely black and Hispanic
minority are forced into decaying neighborhoods, which
lack not only decent housing but jobs.
This bleak picture has been modified somewhat by the
continued ability of the traditional urban cores to retain certain
key areas of white collar and professional employment; and by
the choice of some highly paid core workers to live in
high-rise or recently renovated housing around the core.
Compared both to the decaying factory zones and to peripheral
expansion, the “gentrification” phenomenon has been highly
visible yet statistically insignificant. It has done as much to
displace low income city dwellers as to benefit them. The late
twentieth century American environment thus shows all
the signs of the two nations syndrome: one caught in an
environment of poverty, cut off from the majority culture,
speaking its own languages and dialects; the other an
increasingly homogenized culture of affluence, more and more
remote from an urban environment it finds dangerous.
[…]
The case against the technoburb can easily be summarized.
Compared even to the traditional suburb, it at first appears
impossible to comprehend. It has no clear boundaries; it
includes discordant rural, urban, and suburban elements; and it
can best be measured in counties rather than in city blocks.
Consequently the new city lacks any recognizable center to
give meaning to the whole. Major civic institutions seem
scattered at random over an undifferentiated landscape.

Even planned developments – however harmonious they
might appear from the inside – can be no more than
fragments in a fragmented environment. A single house, a single
street, even a cluster of streets and houses can be and
frequently are well designed. But true public space is lacking or
totally commercialized. Only the remaining pockets of
undeveloped farmland maintain real openness, and these pockets
are inevitably developed, precipitating further flight
and further sprawl.
The case for the techno-city can only be made hesitantly
and conditionally. Nevertheless, we can hope that its
deficiencies are in large part the early awkwardness of a new
urban type. All new city forms appear in their early stages
to be chaotic. “There were a hundred thousand shapes and
substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their
places, upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the
earth, moldering in the water, and unintelligible as any
dream.” This was Charles Dickens describing London in 1848,
in his novel Dombey and Son (Chapter 6). As I have
indicated, sprawl has a functional logic that may not be
apparent to those accustomed to more traditional cities. If that
logic is understood imaginatively, as Wells and especially
Wright attempted to do, then perhaps a matching aesthetic can
be devised.

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