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NATIONAL GROWTH POLICY
PART 2
SELECTED PAPERS
SUBMITTED TO THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND CURRENCY
HOUSE OE REPRESENTATIVES
N IN E T Y -SE C O N D CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
N A T IO N A L G R O W TH P O L IC Y
Printed for the use of the Committee on Banking and Currency
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
81-745
WASHINGTON : 1972
COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND CURRENCY
WRIGHT PATMAN, Texas, Chairman
W ILLIAM A. BARRETT, Pennsylvania
W ILLIAM B. W IDNALL, New Jersey
LEONOR K. (MRS. JOHN B.) SULLIVAN, FLORENCE P. DWYER, New Jersey
Missouri
ALBERT W. JOHNSON, Pennsylvania
HENRY S. JJEUSS, Wisconsin
J. W ILLIAM STANTON, Ohio
THOMAS L. ASHLEY, Ohio
BENJAMIN B. BLACKBURN, Georgia
W ILLIAM tS. MOORHEAD, Pennsylvania
GARRY BROWN, Michigan
ROBERT G. STEPHENS, Jr., Georgia
LAWRENCE G. WILLIAM S, Pennsylvania
FERNAND J. ST GERMAIN, Rhode Island
CHALMERS P. W YLIE, Ohio
HENRY B. GONZALEZ, Texas
MARGARET M. HECKLER, Massachusetts
JOSEPH G. MINISH, New Jersey
PHILIP M. CRANE, Illinois
RICHARD T. HANNA, California
JOHN H. ROUSSELOT, California
TOM S. GETTYS, South Carolina
STEWART B. McKINNEY, Connecticut
FRANK ANNUNZIO, Illinois
NORMAN F. LENT, New York
BILL ARCHER, Texas
THOMAS M. REES, California
CHARLES H. GRIFFIN, Mississippi
BILL FRENZEL, Minnesota
JAMES M. HANLEY, New York
FRANK J. BRASCO, New York
BILL CHAPPELL, Jr., Florida
EDWARD I. KOCH, New York
W ILLIAM R. COTTER, Connecticut
PARREN J. MITCHELL, Maryland
W ILLIAM P. CURLIN, Jr., Kentucky
P a u l N e l s o n , Clerk and Staff Director
C u r t is A . P r i n s , Chief Investigator
B e n e t D. G e l l m a n , Counsel
J o s e p h C. L e w i s , Professional Staff Member
S t u a r t D. H a l p e r t , Counsel
O r m a n S. F i n k , Minority Staff Member
S u b c o m m it t e e
on
H
o u s in g
W ILLIAM A. BARRETT, Pennsylvania, Chairman
LEONOR K. (MRS. JOHN B.) SULLIVAN,
Missouri
THOMAS L. ASHLEY, Ohio
W ILLIAM S. MOORHEAD, Pennsylvania
ROBERT G. STEPHENS, Jr., Georgia
FERNAND J. ST GERMAIN, Rhode Island
HENRY B. GONZALEZ, Texas
HENRY S. REUSS, Wisconsin
JOSEPH G. MINISH, New Jersey
W ILLIAM B. W IDNALL, New Jersey
FLORENCE P. DWYER, New Jersey
GARRY BROWN, Michigan
J. W ILLIAM STANTON, Ohio
BENJAMIN B. BLACKBURN, Georgia
MARGARET M. HECKLER, Massachusetts
G eorge G r o s s , Counsel
G e r a l d R. M c M u r r a y , Staff Director
B e n j a m i n B . M c K e e v e r , Assistant Counsel
C a s e y I r e l a n d , Minority Staff Member
T e r r e n c e B o y l e , Minority Counsel
(IT)
CONTENTS
Report of the Urban Growth Policy Study Group: “ Urban Growth
Policies in Six European Countries” ____________________________________
Berry, Brian J. L., Irving B. Harris professor of urban geography, The
University of Chicago, “ Balanced and Orderly- National Growth: One
Step Forward, Two Steps Back” ________________________________________
Bishop, C. E., and Daft, Lynn, former executive director and staff asso
ciate, respectively, National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty,
“ Rural Poverty— Four Years Later” ___________________________________
Burton, Richard P., and Garn, Harvey A., The Urban Institute, Wash
ington, D.C., “ The President’s 'Report on National Growth 1972’ : A
Critique and an Alternative Formulation” ______________________________
Forrester, Jay W., Germeshausen professor, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, “ Comments on National Growth” with attached text of
keynote address, “ Control of Urban Growth,” presented to the American
Public Works Association, Minneapolis, Minn., September 25, 1972____
Franklin, Herbert M., director, The Potomac Institute, Inc., Metropolitan
Housing Project, Washington, D.C., “ Metropolitan Growth and the
National Growth Report” _____________________________________________
Grey, Arthur L., chairman, Department of Urban Planning, University
of Washington, Seattle, “ Urban Planning and Tax Reform Considera
tions” ____________________________________________________________________
Hauser, Philip M., University of Chicago, “ ‘Report on National Growth
1972’ : A Review Article” ________________________________________________
Horton, Dr. Frank E., dean for advanced studies, University of Iowa,
Iowa City, Iowa, “ ‘ Report on National Growth 1972’ : An Assessment” .
Jordan, Vernon E., Jr., executive director, National Urban League, “ The
Need for a National Growth Policy” ____________________________________
Merriam, Robert E., chairman, Advisory Commission on Intergovern
mental Relations, “ ‘Report on National Growth 1972’ : A Comment” _
Schechter, Henry B., Senior Specialist in Housing, The Library of Congress,
“ National and Urban Growth Policy” ___________________ 1 ____________
Schnore, Leo F., University of Wisconsin (Madison), “ Urban Housing:
A Naive and Parochial View From a Midwestern Ivory Tower’ ’_______
Sternlieb, Dr. George, director, Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers,
The State University, New Brunswick, N.J., “ An Agenda for the
President” _______________________________________________________________
Thiss, George, executive director, The Upper Midwest Council, Minneapo
lis, Minn., “ The Upper Midwest Council: A Progress Report on Growth
Policy Studies” __________________________________________________________
Weissbourd, Bernard, president, Metropolitan Structures, Inc., Chicago,
111., “ Proposal for a New Housing Program: Satellite Communities” ___
Wheaton, William L. C., dean, College of Environmental Design, Uni
versity of California, Berkeley, “ ‘The President’s Report on National
Growth 1972’ : A Comment” ____________________________________________
(in )
Page
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855
863
889
URBAN G R O W TH PO LICIES IN S I X
EU R O PEAN COUNTRIES
A
R eport
of t h e
U
rban
G rowth P
o l ic y
S t u d y G roup
NOTE
In August-September, 1972, an Urban Growth Policy Study Group,
under the Chairmanship of Representative Thomas L. Ashley, sur
veyed urban growth policies in six European countries: the United
Kingdom, France, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and Hungary. The pur
pose of the survey was to determine whether any lessons could be
learned from the European experience in dealing with the economic,
social, and environmental problems that- have resulted from the metropolitanization of the American population. This report summarizes
the results of; the survey.
The report was prepared for the Study Group by the following in
dividuals :
Norman Beckman, Deputy Director of the Congressional Research
Service;
James L. Sundquist, Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution and
author of “Making Federalism Work,” published by Brookings in
1969’*
David B. Walker, Assistant Director of the Advisory Commission
on Intergovernmental Relations; and
Ralph R. Widner, Director of the Academy for Contemporary
Problems, and formerly Executive Director of the Appalachian Re
gional Commission.
I— M
e t r o p o l is a n d
C o u n t r y s id e : P r o b l e m
of
G rowth D
is t r ib u t io n
“Having a policy in urban affairs is no more a guarantor of success
than having one in foreign affairs. But it is a precondition of suc
cess.”— President’s Executive Order of January 29, 1969.
The United States has been transformed from a country that was
60 percent rural in 1900 to one almost 70 percent urban in 1970. More
importantly, the majority of Americans now live in a relatively few
giant metropolitan regions along the seaboards and the Great Lakes.
Since 1940 our national population has grown by 69 million, yet over
half our counties lost population during that same period while 40
percent of all Americans gravitated toward the metropolitan areas of
over one million people.
A shift of these dimensions in where people live and how they live
has spawned economic, social, and environmental problems for both
the receiving metropolitan areas and the non-metropolitan regions
and people left behind. Yet this metamorphosis of our national physi
cal, economic, and social structure has occurred in a vacuum of na
(555)
556
tional policy. During the 19th century, a sense of “Manifest Destiny”
led to a set of national policies and programs designed to encourage
the settlement and development of the great American heartland. No
matter what we now think of their results, within the context of their
times, these programs successfully achieved their objectives. In the
far different economic and social context of the 20th century, however,
those old visions of the American future no longer hold. The country’s
interior, once having filled up, is emptying out again and yet no vision
counterpart to that of the 19th century now guides us on our way.
During this century, federal policy with respect to our national
development has consisted of a patchwork of programs individually
intended in most cases to ameliorate symptoms rather than cope with
fundamental problems. A ll too frequently our approach to national
growth has consisted of congeries of inadequate, redundant, and some
times contradictory programs which many were coming to conclude
have aggravated rather than alleviated the pains associated with the
metropolitanization of the country. It is this which has prompted
growing support, including that of three national study commissions,
for the development of an overarching policy on national growth.
The objectives of such a policy must be to provide a broad framework
of national objectives within which federal, state, local and private
decisions can be orchestrated to carry out carefully considered strate
gies for shaping the future growth and development of the nation.
A WORLD-WIDE PROBLEM
These concerns and the debate over them are not peculiar to this
nation. The metropolitanization of population is as characteristic of
the developing countries as it is of the United States and other indus
trialized nations. The tide of rural humanity flooding into Calcutta
exceeds anything we have seen in this country. As Lloyd Rodwin, of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, commented several years
ago: “Mexico City in Mexico, Caracas in Venezuela, Rio de Janiero
and Sao Paulo in Brazil, Lagos in Nigeria, Tripoli in Libya, Bombay
and Calcutta in India, and Djakarta and Surabaja in Indonesia— are
but a few examples of urban areas where formidable metropolitan
development problems and starting differences in cultural patterns
and standards of living exist between the leading cities and the hinter
lands.”
EXPERIEXCE I X EUROPE
It is in Europe and North America that metropolitanization is most
advanced. And some European countries have made considerably
more headway than the United States in attempting to achieve more
desirable patterns of national growth. These policies are being con
tinually modified and improved. For this reason an Urban Growth
Policy Study Group under the chairmanship of Representative
Thomas L. Ashley undertook a reconnaissance of current growth
policy experience in the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Finland,
557
Poland, and Hungary. These six nations span a wide spectrum of
political ideology and organization, ranging from the democratic
systems of the United Kingdom and France through the democratic
socialism of Sweden and Finland to the highly-centralized one-party
systems of Poland and Hungary. These countries face common prob
lems of metropolitanization.
MIGRATION FROM COUNTRYSIDE TO METROPOLIS
Five out of the six countries are experiencing substantial rural
out-migration into one or* a few metropolitan centers as they shift
from labor-intensive agriculture to a manufacturing and serviceoriented economy more like that of the United States. Only Great
Britain has completed the transition to a metropolitan economy. Its
population is 90 percent urban and the internal migrations of its people
are from urban area to urban area rather than from countryside to
metropolis. This is a situation closely analogous to that in the United
States. The growth of metropolitan areas in the United States is now
much less dependent than in the past upon rural out-migration and
foreign immigration. The Commission on Population Growth and the
American Future estimates that only four million of the increase
in U.S. metropolitan population will come from rural out-migration
between now and the year 2000. Immigration from overseas will ac
count for about 10 million of the increase during the same period. The
remaining 67 million in projected increase of the U.S. metropolitan
population is expected to come from births in families already living
in metropolitan areas.
The implications of these estimates for future patterns of national
urban growth are profound. In the future the growth of some metro
politan areas will occur at the expense of others rather than of the non
metropolitan regions as in the past. It is probable that metropolitan
residents will tend to leave the older, larger, more blighted industrial
metropolitan areas for the less congested, less obsolescent metropoli
tan regions of moderate size. The Commission on Population Growth
and the American Future has estimated that the number of metro
politan areas of over one million will increase from 29 to between 44
and 50 by the year 2000, but it guesses that 60 to 80 existing metro
politan areas will lose population during that same period. It is well
to remember that the loss of population in declining central cities in
the past decade exceeded the loss of population in rural areas during
the same years. Because of our heavy reliance on the local property
tax to finance local services the implications of these alterations in
urban growth patterns are obvious. The decline of urban services in
many areas is apt to accelerate unless alternative sources for financing
them are developed.
W e face the imminent prospect of wholesale abandonment of many
urban neighborhoods, with all that implies. As immigration and rural
out-migration taper off, the American city’s traditional role of “con
verter” of rural people and immigrants into industrial and service
558
workers will diminish. The low cost housing, slum, and tenement areas
which in the past served as half-way houses for families on the way to
something better will no longer have any economic or social justifica
tion. They will slowly be abandoned. As this process accelerates, the
metropolis is likely to change form. The old downtown center will notbe looked to for the economic and social functions it once played.
W ith the possible exception of London, no European city visited
by the Urban Growth Policy Study Group has faced a situation com
parable to that which will face the U.S. in the coming decades. The
growth of Paris, Stockholm, Helsinki, Warsaw, and Budapest is still
fueled by rural outmigration. The French have been concerned for a
decade and a half over the steady concentration of people and economic
activity in Paris, a trend which threatened to turn the rest of France
into an economic and demographic desert. The Finns have seen the
population of the northern half of their country pour into Helsinki
or leave Finland entirely. The Swedes are concerned because most of
their people are concentrated in Stockholm and two other metropolitan
areas of southern Sweden. They are not concerned because Stockholm
is too big, as the French are over Paris, but because the depopulation
of the Swedish north threatens to erode the social structure in that
section of their nation. The Hungarians share a similar concern over
the domination of their national economy by Budapest. Only the Poles
are unconcerned with the outflow of rural people into their metro
politan areas. Lagging behind the rest of Europe in their rate of
modernization, the Poles see metropolitanization as a process essential
to absorb a “surplus” rural population.
GOALS OP EUROPEAN GROWTH POLICY
The central concern of growth policy in all six European countries
visited is the regional distribution of growth. In no country was the
goal of further national economic growth in question. Economic growth
was viewed as the basic means to achieve social objectives such as
improved income, housing, education, health, welfare, recreation, and
so on. European growth policies are intended to ameliorate disparities
in income and welfare between regions of the country and to a lesser
extent to minimize deleterious effects of economic growth on the
natural environment.
The goals and objectives of urban growth policies in these six coun
tries naturally vary from country to country, but to some degree all
are aimed at:
Balanced welfare
Achieving a more “balanced” distribution of income and social
well being among the various regions of the country.
Centralization/de-centralization
Establishing a linked set of local and national public institu
tions which make it possible to develop at the national level over
all growth strategies, policies, and objectives integrated with re
559
gional or metropolitan planning and implementation that is partly
a product of a reformed local governmental system and is directly
accountable to local officials and the affected constituency.
Environmental protection
Channeling future growth away from areas suffering from en
vironmental overload or which possess qualities worthy of special
protection and toward areas where disruption of the environment
can be minimized.
Metropolitan development
Promoting more satisfactory patterns of metropolitan devel
opment through the development of new areawide governmental
bodies and the use of special land use controls, new towns, housing
construction, new transportation systems, and tax incentives and
disincentives.
Nonmetropolitan development
Diverting present growth into hitherto by-passed regions of the
country by developing “growth centers” in presently non-metro
politan regions, constructing new transportation links between
such regions and centers of economic activity, using various in
centives and disincentives to encourage or compel location of
economic activity in such areas, and forcibly relocating certain
government activities into them. The success of such approaches
is mixed, but instructive.
II— E uropean
G
rowth
P o l ic ie s
The fundamental fact about national policies on urban growth in
the six European countries visited is that, unlike in the United States,
such policies exist. They vary in scope and effectiveness, but in every
country a political consensus has been reached that the national settle
ment pattern is of such importance from many standpoints— economic
efficiency, public service costs, amenity of living, environmental con
sequences of concentration— that it is an appropriate matter to be
governed by conscious national policy. Where a clear national growth
policy has not yet been adopted, it is in the process of formulation.
FRANCE
French policy on urban growth originated in concern over the heavy
and growing concentration of population in the Paris basin. What is
defined as the Paris urban agglomeration grew by 45 percent between
1950 and 1970, compared to 19 percent for the rest of the country. The
agglomeration contained 14 percent of the country’s total population
in 1950 and 17 percent in 1970, with the prospect of 20 percent by the
turn of the century.
With general agreement in the country that such concentration was
undesirable, France adopted a series of policies that provide incentives,
on the one hand, for industrial development outside the Paris region
560
and disincentives, 011 the other, for development inside. As a con
sequence of these policies, the government claims that net migration
into the Paris region has been stopped. Annual growth in the region
has been reduced from 180,000 to 120,000. The excess of births over
deaths will result in some further growth, but the hope is to stabilize
the region’s total population at 14 million by the year 2000.
Incentives.— Several kinds of incentives are available to investors,
depending on where the investment is located:
(1) Cash grants of up to 25 percent of the amount invested;
(2) Decentralization indemnities for enterprises that move their
production facilities outside the Paris region (up to 500,000
francs):
(3) Accelerated depreciation of construction costs;
(4) Other tax incentives, including exemption from local busi
ness license taxes, in whole or in part, for periods of up to five
years; reduction of the transfer taxes levied when a business
change ownership; and a reduction from 10 to 5 percent of the
tax due on the capital gain derived from the sale of developable
land; and
(5) Subsidies for personnel training and moving expenses.
The country has been divided into five zones and the incentives are
made available as follows:
In Zone I, which includes the agricultural, undeveloped areas of
western, central, and southwestern France, all are available.
In Zone II, which includes depressed industrial and mining areas,
all are available except accelerated depreciation.
In Zones I I I and IV , which include the rest of France outside the
Paris region, all are available except accelerated depreciation and
cash grants. The other tax incentives are available only in the case of
enterprises transferred from Paris.
In Zone V , which is the Paris region, none are available.
The Office of Territorial Development and Kegional x\ction, which
has the responsibility for inter-ministerial coordination of these pro
grams on behalf of the Prime Minister, found in a survey of 43 com
panies that the average cumulative after-tax benefit of the investment
incentives amounted to 25.6 percent.
Disincentives and Relocation.— Building is not prohibited in the
Paris region, except in designated forest areas, but a special tax is
levied per square meter on all new industrial and commercial con
struction, including office buildings. In addition, the government par
ticipates extensively in industrial locational decisions through its full
or partial ownership of many enterprises. The intent is to limit any
new industry in the region to industries serving the region’s popu
lation and to relocate whatever enterprise can be induced to leave.
As the result of both the incentives and the disincentives, whereas
50 percent of France's new construction in 1964 was in the Paris region,
by 1971 that had been reduced to less than 10 percent. In 1964. all but
one automobile plant was located anywhere in France outside of Paris ;
since that date, no expansion of the industry has taken place in the
561
capital. Western France lias been designated as the area for expansion
of the electronics industry, formerly heavily concentrated in Paris.
The government's own activities in the electronic field, such as military
research and training installations, have been moved from Paris to
Brittany. The higher education system is also being decentralized.
The Equilibrium Metropolises.— To keep people from migrating to
Paris, the French reasoned that the country’s largest provincial cities
had to be developed as effective counter-attractions. Eight cities (or
urban clusters of neighboring cities) were designated as “metropoles
d’equilibre.” An interdisciplinary team of central ministry officials has
been assigned to each equilibrium metropolis to help prepare its plan
in consultation with local officials.
The eight metropolises are given preference in the allocation of
government funds for public works and for the development of cul
tural amenities. In addition, a special cash grant is available to enter
prises that locate their non-industrial facilities (headquarters, ad
ministration, research and development, etc.) in those centers or in cer
tain smaller regional centers outside the Paris region.
The additional smaller centers were added when it became appar ent
that, if growth were channeled wholly into the equilibrium metrop
olises, they too would in time become overgrown. Nevertheless, incen
tives for the development of the major metropolises outside Paris—
Lyons, Marseille, Bordeaux, etc.— were not reduced. French policy in
all its aspects places heavy emphasis on the growth center concept,
offering industrial development incentives to larger cities (except in
Paris) that are not available to smaller ones and allocating grants-inaid with preference to larger communities.
UNITED KINGDOM
Great Britain’s national growth policy dates to the 1930’s, when
heavy unemployment in the older industrial areas in the North of
England, Scotland, and Wales resulted in heavy migration to London
and the other counties of the South. The response was a general agree
ment that policies had to be devised to stem migration and to encour
age the redevelopment of the areas suffering population loss. The
policies have been evolving for nearly forty years, and while there has
been disagreement on the means for achieving the objective there has
been a continuing consensus among all political parties and successive
governments as to the objective itself.
As in France, the complex of programs now in effect includes both
incentives for development in areas of outmigration and disincentives
for the development of areas of inmigration.
Incentives.— Again as in France, the United Kingdom has been
zoned to provide the basis for differential treatment under the various
development assistance programs:
Special development areas include the most depressed of the
old industrial and mining regions of Scotland, Wales, and the
North of England.
562
Development areas include almost all of t-lie remainder of Scot
land and Wales, as well as the northernmost region of England
and the Liverpool area.
Intermediate areas include a wide belt of the North just below
the development area and centering upon Manchester, Leeds, and
Sheffield.
Derelict land clearance areas include a smaller segment of the
North.
The basic system of incentives is now one of cash grants, amounting
to 22 percent in the special development areas and 20 percent in the
other assisted areas. The cash grants supersede a system of subsidies
through depreciation allowances: the new approach had to be adopted
when the liberal depreciation allowances previously granted only to
the assisted regions were extended to the whole country.
Disincentives.— In the London and Birmingham areas and other
parts of the South, central government permission is required for all
new industrial construction of more than a designated minimum size.
To obtain a permit, an investor must make a showing to the Ministry
of Trade and Industry that the activity proposed to be undertaken in
the South can not be undertaken as well in an assisted area.
Dispersal within the Sov.theast.— Recognizing that some growth in
the Southeast counties surrounding London is inevitable, planners for
that region propose to concentrate that growth in a few designated
areas 25 to 50 miles from the center of London— beyond the greenbelt
that girdles the city. The plan will be enforced through the process
of planning approvals, whereby local plans are disapproved by the na
tional government if they are inconsistent with the national objectives,
and local developments are then rejected by local authorities if they
are inconsistent with the local plan. Through this strategy for con
centrating industrial growth in a few areas, prime agricultural land
and areas of outstanding natural beauty throughout the region— as
well as the original London greenbelt— are to be preserved.
Effects.— Figures released a few years ago showed that since the
1961-64 period, new factory construction approved for London and
the South had been cut in half, while in the development areas it had
risen by two-tliirds. The result has been to bring the unemployment
rate in the development areas down to the level in the South for the
first time. Migration to the South, while it has not ended, is no longer
a matter for alarm. Most of the regions that had been losing popula
tion to the South are now holding their own. The population in
creases in the South have been so well dispersed that the London
urban agglomeration grew between 1950 and 1970 by only 60,000 a
year: a rate less than the national average. The London agglomera
tion’s share of the national population declined from 20.8 percent in
1950 to 20.6 percent in 1970.
SWEDEN
Pressures for an urban growth policy have been less severe in
Sweden. The total population of the country is only 8 million— less
than that, of the London urban agglomeration. Sweden has only three
563
metropolitan centers, and the largest of these, Stockholm, has but 1.4
million people. The country is close to a zero rate of population
growth.
Nevertheless, concern was aroused in recent years by internal mi
gration that was draining population out of the north and west of
the country into the south and east. Two-thirds of the country’s
growth was taking place in its metropolitan areas, all in the south*
The metropolitan areas were suffering from pollution problems and
housing shortages while the areas losing population were being*
drained of sufficient manpower to sustain an economy and were in
creasingly unable to support schools, hospitals, and cultural institu
tions. In 1969, therefore, the government concluded that policies
should be instituted to stem migration and the program was approved
by parliament almost unanimously. Sweden has adopted both incen
tive and disincentive measures.
Incentives.— A development area was designated covering the
northern and western two-thirds of the country and divided into an
inner and outer zone. Within the development area, the following in
centives are available to investors:
1. Special employment grants (12,500 kroner a year for each
new worker hired and kept three years).
2. Training grants.
3. Low-interest loans.
4. Reimbursement of 15 to 35 percent of the transportation costs
of finished and semi-finished goods.
In the first six years, it is estimated that 25,000 new jobs will be
created, at a cost of 1.7 billion kroner.
Disincentives and Relocation.— Since 1970, firms desiring to locate
or expand in the metropolitan areas have been required to consult
with the government. In the first eighteen months, perhaps only five
firms were deferred from expanding or locating in Stockholm and
a Royal Commission is now considering whether stronger disincen
tives should be adopted, such as penalty taxes.
In 1971, a measure was approved for the relocation of 6,500 gov
ernment employees in 30 agencies from Stockholm to 13 places in the
hinterland. Another 4,500 will be relocated by 1978. Ultimately about
12 percent of the administrative employees of the central government
will be relocated. Relocated were such functions as military schools
and research laboratories.
Regional Concentration..— Sweden’s policy, like that of France, is
one of national dispersal, but regional concentration. The Swedish
plan, however, calls for much smaller growth centers than those in
France. The primary centers now are cities in the neighborhood of
30,000— which a University of Stockholm study concluded was the
minimum size necessary for the support of efficient business serv
ices—but the planners believe the centers should ultimately be about
100,000 in population, sufficient to support a university, a medical cen
ter, a large library, and so on. Subsidiary to the primary centers will
be local service centers.
564
The counties are now in the process of determining the infrastruc
ture requirements of their growth centers. Employees of the national
government in the field form teams to guide the county planning proc
ess. The plans are commented on by the municipalities, and finally re
viewed and approved by the central government.
FINLAN D
Finland’s total population is only about equal to that of the Detroit
metropolitan area and the small natural increase has in recent years
been about balanced by emigration. Nevertheless the Helsinki metro
politan area has been growing at the rate of 20,000, or 3 percent, per
year while the rest of the country has been declining and all political
parties agree that internal migration needs to be stemmed.
On the one hand, Helsinki is suffering from traffic congestion pollu
tion, and the necessity to tap water sources 100 kilometers away. On
the other hand, the established infrastructure in the rest of the coun
try is being wasted as population declines there. Unless migration is
checked, it is anticipated that the level of public services will decline
in Helsinki as well as in the hinterland.
There is yet no agreement, however, on the means of stabilizing
population. The country still has no settled policy. What ministry
officials hopefully describe as “the last” parliamentry committee on
the subject is now searching for one.
The eventual policy will probably embody measures like those of
Sweden, the United Kingdom, France, and Poland, which are seen as
models. It will include a strategy for development of the North and
East, which are the sources of heaviest outmigration, and for the
eqiiilization of public services and levels of welfare throughout the
country. The urban parties favor a growth center strategy as the
means of decentralizing industry, but the agrarian parties have not
yet embraced that concept.
Meanwhile, a limited system of incentives has been established to
aid industry in the North and East and in the Finnish archipelago. A
Regional Development. Fund, with a budget of 100 million marks,
provides loans, equity capital, and interest subsidies to investors in
those areas. Incentives are highest in growth centers, which are located
in iron and copper mining regions. Policy is formed by a Council for
Developing Areas in the Prime Minister's office, made up of govern
ment officials and private members. The Council's greatest achieve
ment so far is to divert a steel plant to the North. But there are no dis
incentives to retard further industrial development in Helsinki, and
even state-owned and mixed-ownership industries are still making
their decisions generally independent of population distribution
considerations.
POLAND
Poland's capital city, Warsaw, has been rebuilt rapidly since its
almost total destruction during and after the uprising of 1944, but it
565
is still small by the standards of European capitals, with a current
population of 1.3 million. Polish policy discussions since the war,
therefore, have centered not upon checking the growth of the capital,
as in other European countries, but upon -decentralizing the industrial
and urban complex of Upper Silesia, which accounts for one-third
of Poland's industrial output and encouraging “surplus” rural popu
lation to move into the urban centers. The rate of housing construc
tion has played the major role in determining the magnitude of this
desired population re-distribution.
A Growth Center Strategy.— Immediately after the war, the gov
ernment decided to create three new industrial areas to rival Upper
Silesia centered on mineral deposits to be developed. That scheme
turned out to be unrealistic; the new infrastructure was too costly,
and labor was not} available in the designated areas. So, in 1956, the
government reversed itself and decided to attempt the decentraliza
tion of jobs and industry through the development of existing growth
centers.
The official plan calls for about 60 centers of up to 100,000 popula
tion each, three or four in each of the 17 regions, each center as the
capital of a subregion. By this means, the population of Upper Silesia
would be leveled off at 3 million, that of Warsaw at 2 million. Despite
official policy, however, the trend toward population concentration in
the existing major centers has not been checked. The Warsaw town
planners are planning for a city of 3 million within 20 years.
Reconsideration Noio Under W ay.— A new department of the cen
tral government has now been established to review the present official
plan and come up with a new one by June 1973. The department func
tions under the guidance of a 60-member board, made up in equal
numbers of ministry heads, regional officials, and experts from the
Academy of Sciences.
The board is considering four models, with a view to adopting the
best features of each in an integrated scheme:
1. The present official plan.
2. An essentially laissez faire model, that would accept and
try to make the most of the movement toward centralization.
Efforts would be concentrated upon making the agglomerations
livable and effiicent, while asisgning to the rest of the country
the role of preserving natural resources.
3. A model based upon the growth center concept but with 30
instead of 60 centers. Each center would be surrounded by a
greenbelt and might have satellite centers beyond the greenbelt.
4. A scheme based upon growth corridors rather than centers.
The corridors would be the present highway and railroad routes
linking the major cities, along which 87 percent of the popula
tion already lives. Modernization of infrastructure would be
concentrated at key point along the corridors, particularly at
intersections.
Government officials suggest that the new department is leaning
toward the fourth alternative, as the best balance between making
566
the most of the present productive facilities— which is important to
maximization of output—while achieving some decentralization.
Some of the urgency surrounding the move to redistribute popula
tion after the war has disappeared with a decline in the rate of
population increase. An annual growth rate of 2 percent (4.5 percent
in urban areas) in the first postwar decade has now fallen below 1
percent and; is expected to reach .49 percent by 1986-90.
H UN GAR Y
Hungary has experienced a heavy internal migration from its
southern agricultural region to Budapest and the industrial belt
along the northern border of the country. Budapest now has a popula
tion of over 2 million, almost 25 percent of the country’s total.
Regarding this trend as detrimental both to the capital and to
the areas of outmigration, the government assigned its planners to
work out a program for balanced growth. The outcome was a hier
archical system of communities, which was adopted last year:
1. Major centers. Five in number, these cities would have the
“high-level” institutions and facilities necessary to provide na
tional and regional services.
2. Minor centers. These are existing urban communities, 122 in
all, that would be organized to offer “medium-level” services.
3. Villages, About 800 in total, the villages would offer “basic”
public services.
4. Other communities. The remaining 2000 communes would be
allowed to stagnate, as investment was concentrated in the three
types of larger communities to bring their services up to the
planned levels. It is hoped and expected that these communities
will die.
The major and minor centers have been designated. The villages
are now being selected in plans being prepared for each county that
are to be adopted by the county councils by the end of 1972.
Incentives and, disincentives.— Current action programs are aimed
primarily at checking the growth of Budapest, which the government
hopes to stabilize at 2,350,000. The capital’s share of the country's
industrial population has fallen from 55 percent in 1966 to 38 percent
now, and immigration has dropped from 40,000 a year to 15,000 in
the same period.
This has been accomplished through subsidies to industries that
locate in the hinterland and through a deliberate relocation policy.
A ll industries employing* substantial numbers of production workers
have been required— and assisted— to move, and no new manufac
turing plants have been permitted in the Budapest region. In addi
tion, migration has been discouraged through restrictions of housing:
home-buying in Budapest and renting of publicly-owned apartments
has been limited to persons who have lived in the city for five years.
The relocated industries lost productivity at the outset that they
have not yet regained. Much of the skilled labor force elected to remain
in Budapest when the industries moved, and training of new employees
has taken time.
Again, a slowing of the rate of population growth has removed
much of the pressure on population distribution policy. The growth
567
rate is now C.3 percent, and the present population of 10 million is
expected to reach only 11 million by the year 2000.
Ill—
I ntergovernmental F
in
ram ew ork
E
fo r
G row th P
o l ic ie s
urope
Each of the nations visited is experiencing various of the adjust
ment problems generated by rapid urban growth. For some, the chief
threat stems from excessive congestion; for others, the challenge is
the erosion of the population and infrastructure of major rural areas;
and for still others, the dilemma encompasses both the serious im
balances caused by sparsity of settlement in some areas and by exces
sive density in others.
Despite these variations, it is the unceasing pace of metropolitan
growth, especially in capital city areas, which has been the most prom
inent manifestation of the demographic, economic, and environmental
imbalances that have emerged in these nations chiefly during the past
quarter of a century. And with this, the need for governmental— par
ticularly national governmental— intervention has emerged. But at the
subnational levels, as in the United States, major difficulties have
arisen because the traditional local units— whether cities, towns, com
munes, boroughs, or counties— generally have lacked the geographic
reach to cope with the problems of galloping growth or dramatic
decline. The very terms— “conurbations” and “agglomerations”—
underscore this jurisdictional gap in the urban areas, while the data
on population, public services and fiscal trends for various rural areas
highlight the jurisdictional and other challenges confronting the de
clining localit ies in these regions.
The need for improved relationships between the national govern
ment and the localities, especially in the planning and developmental
processes, and the desire to meld more adequately national and local
efforts at the regional level required an intergovernmental frame
work to plan and implement growth strategies.
The Basic Setting
A t the outset, however, it should be noted that these are unitary
political systems with which we are dealing. In a formal, constitutional
sense as well as an informal, operational and political sense, none of
the six countries visited possessed a legislative body at the national
level composed exclusi vely of representatives of component units. None
gives such units a special role in amending its written or unwritten
constitiition. None provides for a spatial or territorial, in contrast to
a functional, division of governmental powers. Put another way, none
of the four constitutional democracies visited has adopted the federal
principle as a means of strengthening the basis of its governmental
system. And with the two people’s republics, the ideology underlying
their formal constitutions as well as their informal party set-up runs
counter to the idea of power divided on a territorial basis. Formal
power then in all these systems is geographically concentrated in the
capitals, though how this power may be exercised or delegated is
another matter— one that suggests variations and, as we shall see, dif
fering approaches to local government and administration.
81-745— 72— pt. 2--------2
568
Closely allied to this question of the formal and spatial focus of
authority in their constitutional and governmental systems is the
nature and structure of their political party systems. Here again the
centralizing principle tends to dominate regardless of whether it is the
basically two-party system of the United Kingdom; the multipary
systems of France,'Finland, and Sweden; or the one party Communist
regimes of Poland and Hungary. Constituency organizations exist in
all of these nations, but the position of the parties’ apparatus at the
national level in nearly all cases is strong, since most of the avenues
to political advancement generally are controlled by these bodies.
Finally, the focus of efforts to develop the components of a coherent
growth policy are central government-oriented in the six nations
visited. Local jurisdictions, as we shall see, have been assigned various
roles in the implementation of policies. But the initiative and basic
framework for these policies— whether they relate to housing, new
towns, balanced economic growth, the environment, or even local gov
ernmental reform— come from the national government.
A unitary governmental system, a centralized party system, and
national initiatives for growth and other policies— these are three basic
factors that condition these countries’ efforts to develop improved
interlevel relationships as a conscious part of their regional develop
ment and urban growth strategies.
In tergore rumen tal In novation s
Capital City Region Reform.— One facet of intergovernmental inno
vation in the countries visited is the restructuring, to a greater or
lesser degree, of the local governmental pattern of their capital city
regions— all of wThich have proven to be prime urban growth magnets.
GREAT BRITAIN
In the case of Great Britain, a basic change was launched with the
London Government Act of 1963 and the resulting establishment of
the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1966. The GLC became the
LT.K/s first example of an elected regional body, providing a range of
areawide services as well as a basic planning and traffic authority for
a large metropolitan complex. The Council’s area covers 620 square
miles and its 100 elected counselors and 16 aldermen collectively are
responsible to an electorate numbering over eight million. In essence,
this reorganization set up a two-tier governmental system with total
responsibility for local governmental services in the area shared or
divided between the GLC and the 32 London area borough councils
and the Corporation of the City of London. The Council’s members
organize on a party basis and its decisions are implemented by 15
departments.
FRANCE
With France, an Act of August 2, 1961, established the District
cle la Region Parisienne and with it a regional assembly (District
Board), the first of its kind for the country. This representative body
may advise the Regional Prefect, appointed by the central govern
ment, on all aspects of regional policy. It adopts a budget funded by
regional taxes, and may help finance major infrastructure and various
569
facilities within its jurisdiction. The regional physical plan for the
Paris region came before the Board for its approval and the Board
subsequently agreed to finance the local governmental share of pri
mary road costs and to guarantee loans contracted by the regional
public corporation (in which it has representation) set up to construct
tive new towns in the area. In short, the body has certain advisory,
fiscal, planning and approval powers, and serves as an ally of and
check on some actions of the Regional Prefect and the national
ministeries.
FINLAN D
In Finland, the multi jurisdictional problems of the capital city
region led to the establishment of the cooperative Commission of the
Metropolitan Area of Helsinki in 1971 after some six years of study
as well as encouragement from the central Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The Commission’s jurisdiction encompasses the City of Helsinki, the
towns of Espoo and Kauniainen, and the Borough of Vantaa which
form an urban region and acount for 18 percent of the population.
The Commission’s charter spells out a lengthy list of functional areas
in which the four jurisdictions will strive to cooperate. The 38 mem
bers of this areawide body are selected by the constituent jurisdictions
and are apportioned roughly on a basis of each jurisdiction’s popula
tion. The Commission’s expenses are assessed on a comparable basis.
In most respects, then, the Commission is a Finnish counterpart of
many American Councils of Governments with their confederal, volun
tary, advisory, non-implementing characteristics. Only its representa
tional formula provides a significant point of contrast. A proposal to
permit the voluntary transfer of local functions to the Commission is
expected to encounter severe opposition both in and out of Parliament.
SWEDEN
Sweden adopted a different approach for its capital city region
when in June 1966 the then Stockholm County Council, a second tier
government for 28 suburban communes, and Stockholm City Council
decided to unite in a new County Council, which would serve as the
secondary commune (areawide government) for the city and its su
burbs and begin operating in 1971. Subsequent preparatory work in
dicated the need for Parliamentary action on certain of statutory
aspects of the merger and this transpired in 1969. Since January 1,
1971 the County of Stockholm has operated as a single County Council
Municipality responsible to and for nearly one and one haif million
people. The 149 County Councilors are directly elected from 15 con
stituencies— seven in Stockholm and eight in the rest of the county.
Among its basic functions are regional planning, the operation of
public transport, vocational training and rehabilitation, the public
dental service, care of the mentally ill, and health and medical serv
ices. It determines the County’s taxation rates and authories all allo
cations to the activities of the county commune. An executive com
mittee, appointed by the Council, serves as its administrative head
with eight departments or groups actively managing the Council’s
activities. The localities within the new county have not been abolished
by this metropolitan reorganization, but still perform certain basically
570
local functions, as primary communes. Practically all functions of an
areawide nature come within the County Council’s purview, however,
and the latter’s regional plans serve as guides for municipal efforts.
Despite the appearance of a city-county merger, this reorganization
of the Stockholm area’s governmental system represents a federated
response to the needs of the region.
POLAND
For Poland, the immediate postwar question was whether, in light
of Warsaw’s 87 percent physical destruction and the decimation of its
population, to rebuild the capital or not. The decision to rebuild, how
ever, was never really in doubt, given the strategic, historical and
psychological significance of the city. Moreover, it was a national de
cision with the initial plans drafted by the Town Planning Division
of the central government’s Bureau for the Rebuilding of the Capital.
This effort, among other things, focused on rebuilding the historic
city center as well as on providing the economic, social and physical
components of a modern metropolis, a , Greater Warsaw. What
emerged over the past quarter of a century was the Region of Warsaw
covering the Warsaw Voivodship (administrative region) and the
city within it, with a total population of 3,823,000 as of 1969, and
covering 29,851 square kilometers.
Within the region is the Warsaw conurbation— a functional entity
made up of the city and neighboring urban districts and with a popu
lation of nearly two million in 1969. During the sixties, the population
pressures on the city because apparent and the central government in
1965 decided to restrict the growth in employment in the capital’s
industrial district and requested the Praesidium of the People’s Coun
cil of the City of Warsaw (the executive committee which serves simul
taneously as an administrative arm of the central government and a
local executive body) to prepare an urban physical development plan
for both the citv and conurbation of Warsaw. Three years later, the
People’s Councils (elected bodies controlled by the dominant party)
of both the City and the Voivodship joined in sanctioning the plan’s
guidelines for the Region, the Conurbation, and the City of Warsaw.
Subsequently, the Praesidia of the region and City as well as adjacent
town authorities gave their approval. All told, 96 different bodies
representing almost as many local and areawide jurisdictions partic
ipated in this process.
By mid 1969, the actual plan for the Conurbation and City was
accepted by the central government’s Ministry of Building, after being
approved by the two People’s Councils. What has emerged here is a
local-areawide governmental relationship wherein the plan for the
Warsaw Conurbation and the City’s master plan combine to serve as
a basic means of coordinating various developmental efforts in the
region. Under the 1961 Law’ on Physical Planning, such approved
plans become universally binding. In terms of the research and de
signing work on this binding plan, the Warsaw Town Planning Office
in cooperation with the Study and Designing Office for Urban En
gineering, the Urban Transport Study and Designing Office of the
Voivodship Town Planning Office, has had the major responsibility.
A ll this suggests a two level local implementation and research proc
ess, but with the City of Warsaw— not the region— in the ascendant
position.
571
H UN GAR Y
In the case of Hungary, Budapest and its 63 adjacent localities have
achieved some measure of coordination of their joint areawide con
cerns through their overlying county administrative unit. The present
administrative area of the capital city region (the county) was estab
lished in 1950 and includes 525 square kilometers as well as approxi
mately two million people. As one of the focal points of the country’s
development settlement plans, this major urban area has figured prom
inently in national planning efforts for over a dozen years and a policy
of seeking to limit its growth was adopted in the early sixties. Most
of the measures adopted to achieve this goal (incentives for industrial
location elsewhere, resettlement of some of Budapest’s industry, and
limits on outsiders renting or buying apartments) were actions of the
central government. But in the area of its regional physical plan, the
municipalities and especially the county have a role through their
Councils. The controlling party, of course, dominates the member
ship of these councils. But it would seem that intermunicipal conflict
is not absent at the local level and the county is a unit on which the
central government relies for various intermediary administrative,
planning, and political roles.
The brief survey of the capital city areas of the nations visted in
dicates some form of governmental change in all, ranging from a coun
cil of government, to areawide assemblies and councils, to a pair of full
fledged two-tier systems. In some cases, the reform preceded the de
velopment of a coherent national urban growth strategy; in others it
accompanied it ; but in all the instances, it has served to complement it.
General Local Government Reorganization
Three of the nations have confronted the broader issue of archaic
local governmental boundaries and organization— two boldly and one
somewhat gingerly. In all cases, the goal was consolidation of smaller
units and in each instance, the effort required a considerable amount
of accommodation of local and other political interests, suggesting that
strong support for local governments is as much a part of unitary sys
tems as it is of federal ones.
SWEDEN"
In Sweden, the process began in 1952 when the number of primary
municipal units was reduced from 2,500 to a little over 1,000, with a
goal of each new municipality having a population of at least 3,000.
This population level was believed to be the minimum required for
local jurisdictional viability. By the late fifties, a shift in opinion oc
curred and a higher population level was deemed necessary. In the
early sixties, the decision was made to revise even more drastically the
boundaries of Swedish municipal governments (save for those in
Stockholm, Malmo and Gotheberg). The basic assumption here was
that the effective administration of municipal services (social welfare,
education, town planning, water supply, etc.) would necessitate a
population level of 8,000 as a minimum. Another basic difference with
the previous reform was the move to group rural areas around a cen
tral locality, to the extent feasible. Extensive intermunicipal consulta
tions as well as county-communal discussions have accompanied this
572
consolidation effort. Yet, the number was reduced to 464 by 1971 and
the final figure is slated to be 270 by 1974. All of the consolidations
have occurred within existing county boundaries. No fundamental
change in these boundaries is contemplated at present, although a 1967
study called for a reduction in the number of these intermediary units.
Not to be overlooked as basic factors prompting this overhaul were
the steady migration southward during the past two decades and the
growing recognition that effective planning and public administration
requires functionally and geographically adequate and appropriate
decision areas. Above all, perhaps are the traditional Swedish faith
in local government and the contemporary view, used effectively to
counter opposition arguments, that small and eroding communities
in the long run would have fewer and fewer functions to perform,
while larger ones would be strong enough to sustain local activities
and strength.
GREAT BRITAIN
In the United Kingdom, the national government decided in 1966
to modernize and reorganize the local governments. Two Commissions
subsequently were appointed to gather the necessary facts and opinions
on England and Wales and on Scotland. Their reports were issued in
1969 and the Labor Government after consultations with local govern
mental associations advanced proposals for England and part of Wales
in White Papers the following year. The basic approach here was a
single tier, unitary formula for reorganization. With the 1971 Con
servative election victory, the new government, through favorable to
reform, reassessed the situation. In February 1971, it advanced its
own recommendations for revamping local government in England,
Wales, and Scotland with a two-tier strategy being favored (as was
the case with the earlier Commission report on Scotland). In essence,
the proposal for England called for an upper tier of 38-non-metro
politan and six metropolitan countries and a lower tire of approxi
mately 300 county districts.
In the case of Wales, various studies and recommendations had been
advanced, going back as far as 1961 and ranging from a unitary, to
a mixed, to a two-tier approach to restructuring its local governmental
system. The final proposal advanced by the Conservative government
in 1971 envisaged a two-tier system throughout Wales involving eight
revamped counties and 35 district councils. A bill embodying these
recommendations for England and Wales was introduced in Parlia
ment in November 1971. As might be anticipated, much of the con
troversy over this legislation centered on the allocation of govern
mental functions between the two levels and the greatest attention
focused on the responsibilities that would be shared by the levels.
With certain exceptions, newly established counties and districts for
Wales will have functions comparable to their non-metropolitan
county and district counterparts in England. These proposed reforms
for Wales and Eng*!and are scheduled to go into effect in 1974.
Reflecting its different history and structure, Scottish local govern
ment has been treated separately by successive governments and com
missions beginning in 1965. In its 1971 White Paper on the subject,
the Conservative Government adhered to the broad outline of the
earlier Commission report and proposed eight regional governments
573
as the upper tier and 49 district governments for the lower. The
assignment of functions roughly parallels that set forth in the legisla
tion for England and Wales, except that the Scottish regions will be
generally stronger than the upper-tier jurisdictions to the south. Final
discussions between the Government and the local authority associa
tions where held in the summer of 1972 and a bill is slated to be intro
duced in the fall session of Parliament.
FRANCE
The approach to local governmental restructuring in France has
been less dramatic than that in the United Kingdom or Sweden. But
because of the highly centralized administrative structure which
France has had since the days of Napoleon, local government is more
intimately linked to the central government's general policies regard
ing regionalism and urban growth than in any other country visited.
In October, 1971 the Council of Ministers approved a draft region
alization bill based on principles enumerated in earlier speeches by
President Pompidou but differing in major respects from the regional
reforms that President de Gaulle has submitted unsuccessfully to the
electorate in 1969. The proposed legislation envisioned the 21 planning
regions of France organized into “associations of departments.” Each
region would have two assemblies, a council composed of members
elected by the communities within each region and the other com
prised of representatives of various social and professional groups.
The measure also assigned certain powers to these councils and de
tailed some of their relationships with the regional prefects. Favorable
action on this legislation in 1972 means that councils will be established
in all regions next year.
The Parliament enacted the Law of July 28, 1971 which establishes
a complex procedure by which certain smaller urban and rural com
munes might be merged, agglomerations of 50,000 or more could be
consolidated into urban communities, and still other communal types
could be regrouped into districts. Despite these options, fusion— not
regrouping— is the law’s basic goal. The initial phase of the process
involves the drafting of a restructuring plan by the staff of each of
the Departments, with the Prefects and specially created commissions
of local officials playing significant roles. Legally, the Prefect has
the ultimate power of decision here, but in practice the commissions
have assumed far more than merely and advisory role. Once a depart
mental plan has been adopted, its proposals are transmitted to the af
fected municipal councils. In the case of proposed urban communities,
at least two-thirds of the municipal councils involved representing at
least half of the new jurisdiction’s population or half the councils
representing two-thirds of its population may approve the proposed
consolidation, and, in effect, bring it into being. I f they decline, the
Prefect may invite them to form a district whose powers would be
somewhat greater than those of the ordinary districts authorized by
an earlier statute. With proposals for regrouping into districts, ap
proval by the necessary number of communal councils also is neeessarv. I f agreement is lacking, the department’s elected general council
then mav act and give its sanction or nonconcurrence. With fusion
proposals, the affected municipal councils also must agree. I f no agree
574
ment emerges, the departmental general council again assumes the
right of approval or disapproval. In brief outline, these are some of the
basic features of the 1971 law. Its attempt to balance local rights with
national interests and the role of local councils with the rights of
Prefects has yet to be fully tested in practice, given its brief operating
history. This legislation, it should be noted, constitutes only a modest
first step toward the bold communal reorganization goals endorsed by
the Commission on the Cities of the General Directorate of Planning.
Even a cursory analysis of these three efforts at local governmental
reorganization suggests that some accommodations had to be made
with local officials and interests in these strongly unitary systems. The
two-tier approach in the United Kingdom and the evolving two-level
approach in France also suggest the need to keep certain functions
local and to avoid some of the difficulties associated with the unitary,
one-tier approach of the full-fledged consolidationists. In the case
of Sweden, consolidation won out. But the emerging debate over the
future of the counties may well constitute a prelude to the evolution
of a more balanced two-tier system in this Scandinavian country.
Central Government Reorganization of its Field System
While central government efforts to coordinate on a regional basis
their functional responsibilities and to reorganize their field structure
are not strictly intergovernmental matters, they can affect centrallocal governmental relations and of late, they usually have emerged
as part of an overall urban growth strategy.
FRANCE
In France, this effort began in 1965 with the establishment of 21
regions with regional prefects and regional administrative confer
ences. This grouping of the traditional departments into regions with
super prefects at their head constituted the first major overhaul of
the central government’s territorial administrative system since
Napoleon establish it in 1800. The other regionalization reforms cited
above obviously complement this administrative reorganization. Not
to be overlooked here is the establishment of field task forces in the
nation’s eight metropolitan areas by the Delegation for Territorial
Planning and Eegional Action (D A T A R ), the basic mechanism for
monoitoring and coordinating regional programs at the national level.
These efforts are geared to achieving greater decentralization of cer
tain central governmental activities, better planning and budgetary
inputs from the field, improved central-local governmental relation
ships, stronger mechanisms in the field for coordinating interrelated
but separately administered governmental functions, and above all,
a vital means of implementing the government’s equilibrium city ap
proach to France’s future regional development.
GREAT BRITAIN
With the United Kingdom, experiments with regional economic
planning boards composed of senior civil servants representing the
central government’s departments operating within the regions were
launched in 1964 as part of the Labor Government’s effort to cope
575
with interregional disparities. In addition, regional economic planning
councils were set up to afford local governments, universities, industry,
labor, and other major regional interests a forum for advancing their
views on the developmental goals of their region. The initial regional
economic plans emanating from these bodies tended to be diagnostic
and shoppmg-list oriented, save for that of the southeast region where
a strategy was developed. With the 1968 Town and County Planning
Act, these bodies, in effect, were given new direction, since “structure
plans” and “local plans” were substituted for the old-style development
plan. The former represents a regional effort assisted by the recently
established Department of Environment and the latter are prepared
and adopted by local planning authorities. The structure plans are
multijurisdictional endeavors, involving diagrams with such support
ing written statements as may be necessary, and they require the ap
proval of the central Department. The local plans cover specific geo
graphical areas included in the structure plans and are supposed to
dovetail with the latter. But they do not require central government
approval. The reorganization of the local governments ought to exert
considerable influence on this multi-level planning process in the
future, given the broad planning powers assigned to the second-tier
governments under it. Moreover, this fall’s report of the Royal Com
mission on the Constitution, which will deal with decentralization, may
also help shape the future course of administrative devolution in t> ~
United Kingdom.
SWEDEN
In Sweden, 24 counties serve as the central government's regional
administrative areas. Government-appointed County Administrative
Boards implement various central governmental functions while
elected County Councils (with the exception of the county of Gotland)
administer medical and certain social welfare services and have their
own power of taxation. A ll this is fairly traditional at this point. A t
the same time, the vital role the County Boards have in approving
municipal plans has strengthened their role during the past two
decades and new and controversial proposals, soon to take the form
of proposed legislation, that would give the central government the
right to instruct municipalities to develop master plans, to curb scat
tered settlement, and to control the location of polluting industries
could, if enacted, place the county boards in an even more crucial
position. While redistricting the counties has been put aside as too
controversial politically, the power of the boards clearly has been
growing as Sweden’s central government grapples with regional de
velopment, environmental, and urban growth problems. Partly in
reaction to this, advisory planning councils representing various in
terests within the counties have been set up to assist the boards in
their regional developmental planning efforts.
POLAND
In Poland, subnational regions (22) provide the basic territorial
administrative framework for the central government’s efforts to
develop and implement certain economic and urban growth programs.
Since a final growth policy has yet to be agreed upon (1973 is the
576
target date), the number and boundaries of the nation’s proposed
regions of the future vary from strategy to strategy (there are at
least four under consideration). But the role of regional instrumen
talities as implementing arms of the central government is bound to
increase in the years ahead, given the decision of the present Polish
government to correct the heavily vertical and sectoral bias of the
earlier five year economic plans. This bias, it was felt, tended to ignore
regional differences and impacts and the government now is vitally
concerned with developing a more balanced regional strategy.
HUNGARY
In the case of Hungary, the counties, which are essentially adminis
trative units of the national government with elected councils, play a
key role in the nation’s planning and other urban growth processes.
They adopt developmental plans for their own jurisdiction (save in
the case of major cities) and prepare village plans by means of insti
tutes that they set up. Tlie 19 counties also will have the task ultimately
of carrying out the government's basic decision, reached in 1971, to
differentiate between and among urban and rural communities and
not to develop some 2,000 rural hamlets. While various central govern
mental ministries play a leading role in drafting Hungary’s regional
developmental policies and plans, the counties as administrative agents
of the state are a basic vehicle for implementation as well as a source
of some inputs into this process.
This brief review of central government-field unit relationships
suggests that as the national governments move to implement a bal
anced regional development strategy, pressures on the traditional field
patterns mount and the usual central ministry— field unit functional
relationships come under growing criticism for lack of coordination
with one another. Reform efforts, one way or another, appear to be
geared to achieving a horizontal linking of functional activities in the
field, and. in some instances, to developing more adequate geographi
cal boundaries for the central government's territorial operations.
These, in turn, sometimes have generated efforts to establish new and
improved ties between local governments or their constituents and the
central government’s new regional administrative units.
Local Governmental Powers Affecting Urban Growth
Regardless of their differing governmental and social systems, all
of the nations visited assign to their local governments— whether re
formed or unreformed— certain powers that directly or indirectly
affect the course of regional development and urban growth.
FRANCE
In France, the localities approve subdivison plans falling within
their jurisdiction and have land bank, building permit, and planned
unit development powers. Moreover, all localities or agglomerations
of localities over 50,000 in population are required to develop “struc
ture plans”, pursuant to land use planning legislation enacted by
Parliament in 1967. In practice, this sometimes means a collaborative
effort involving the Ministry of Equipment and Housing and affected
577
local officials; in others, autonomous local planning bodies carry out
this responsibility. A ll this, of course, is in addition to the more tradi
tional functions the communes traditionally have performed. More
over, the political practice of holding simultaneously local, regional,
as well as National Assembly positions, should never be ignored when
considering the role of local governments in French national programs
and strategies.
GREAT BRITAIN
Under the United Kingdom’s local government reorganization, the
second-tier county councils in England will have major power in the
development of structure plans, in making strategic and reserved de
cisions regarding development controls, in coordinating transporta
tion and directing highway authorities, and in exercising certain re
serve authority relating to housing. The district councils will have
local planning authority, most of the development controls, the re
sponsibility for public transport undertakings, basic housing (build
ing. management, slum clearance, and house and area improvement),
and building regulations. The county and district councils will share
land acquisition and disposal powers as well as parks and open space
programs. The final decision regarding the administration of water
supply, sewerage and sewage disposal (temporarily assigned to the
district councils) has yet to be worked out. The Welsh County Coun
cils are assigned all of the county functions cited above, save for the
reserve authority in the housing area. In the case of Scotland, the
regional councils are slated to receive a bundle of authority com
parable to that given to the English County Councils, as well as nearly
full road and complete transportation powers. The Scottish regions
also will have a greater role in strategic planning and development
controls than the new English counties.
FINLAND
Finnish communes have major powers affecting urban growth, in
cluding the drafting of basic location plans for housing (all com
munities over 5,000 are required to develop five year plans) and in
some cases serving as the primary promoter of housing projects. In
the absence of central government legislation relating to growth points,
industrial location (save for the regional development fund program)
and new towns, the localities also possess fairly wide discretion re
garding land use and municipal services. At the same time, the criti
cism has been raised that the localities are not adequately empowered
to cope with major industrial and other urban development decisions.
SWEDEN
The Swedish case study contrasts markedly with that of Finland,
since the Riksdag has enacted several measures relating to various as
pects of urban growth. These, in turn, give major direction to munic
ipal efforts and in many instances they have expanded local authority.
Under the Building and Planning Acts of 1947 and 1959, physical
planning is largely a municipal concern with master or comprehen
sive plans and detailed development plans a basic responsibility of
municipal authorities. To be legally binding, however, these must be
approved by the County Boards.
578
The Nature Conservancy Act and the Environment Protection Act
of 1969 give the communities certain powers to protect natural areas
and outdoor recreation and to take action against pollution arising
from the utilization of land or buildings, respectively. The expropri
ation legislation of 1971 gives the communities key powers in develop
ing an effective municipal land policy. As a basic precept, it gives
them the option on all land required for urban development and the
possibility of acquiring land at an early stage in the planning. Equally
significant, a new criteria for expropriation has been established—
expropriation on the basis of a rise in value. Moreover, the regula
tions governing compensation in cases of expropriation have
been overhauled with a view toward curbing the rise in land values
and preventing a municipality from having to award compensation—
in certain expropriation cases— for values that have soared a? a
consequence of the community’s own urban development efforts. In
the area of housing, municipalities are required to produce annually
programs for the ensuing five-year period. These, in turn, serve as
the basis of National Board of Housing’s assessment of needs and
allocation of funds in the field. As was noted earlier, legislative pro
posals soon will be introduced in Parliament that are designed to
bolster significantly municipal comprehensive planning efforts. All
in all, the Swedish pattern is one of strong central government direc
tion and support coupled with an equally strong tendency to use and
to strengthen local governments.
COM M U NIST STATES
In Hungary and Poland, a different set of cirmstances, including
the essentially one party and highly centralized character of the two
systems, places their local governments in a position contrasting with
that of the other four nations visited. At the same time, the “liberaliz
ing” tendency of both central governments in recent years has had
its effect on local governmental initiative and discretion. The basic
formal structure of Polish local government includes 8,800 rural
districts and towns, 322 counties, and 22 regions (including five major
cities designated as regions). Each of these territorial units has an
elected people’s council. These councils, in turn, elect a praesidium
that serves as an administrative arm of the central ministeries and
as the local or regional executive body. Each praesidium is accountable
to that of the next governmental level. Despite this hierarchic, cen
tralized, basically single part-dominated structure, in practice, a fair
amount of discretion now is given to the local juridictions. The bulk of
the countrv’s phvsical planning is done by some 5,000 professionals
and officials working for local and regional governments. Moreover,
some measure of citizen participation in the preparation of these
plans is achieved by involving the local people’s councils in the process.
Before basic planning decisions are made, these councils are supposed
to organize a public discussion and to consider proposals and criticisms
that may be advanced during the course of these open sessions. Re
gional plans generally are implemented by the adoption of non
conflicting local development plans and the regional plans, in turn,
serve as a basic guide in the central government’s actions relating to
the location of major industrial, road, and building investments. Such
579
action, however, only occurs if the regional plan in question has been
examined by the Planning Commission and the Committee on Build
ing, Urbanization, and Architecture of the central Council of Minis
ters and after its basic provisions have been approved by this allpowerful Council.
Since 1968, Hungarian municipal and county councils have been
empowered to prepare their own five year economic plans as well as
physical plans that comply with the economic. These master plans are
exposed to local councils’ discussion and debate. National concepts
must be recognized, but local modifications may be made. The basic
responsibilities for housing are left largely to the municipalities, sub
ject to central government fiscal support and regulations. Moreover,
under a 1970 land use and sale law, local councils were empowered to
require certain developments on privately-leased or cooperative-owned
land with tax hikes the stipulated penalty if there is non-compliance.
Other provisions of the law are geared to curbing land speculation.
All this suggests the vitality of the private sector— about two-thirds
of all housing is privately owned. Finally, municipal governments may
use funds from their own revenues as well as from State subsidies for
their own development programs.
Conclusion
In broad outline, what do these various intergovernmental initia
tives and innovations suggest ?
They indicate that interlevel relationships, though not as critical
as in federal systems, become a basic source of public and political
concern once a nation embarks on a conscious balanced regional devel
opment and urban growth course.
They suggest that the drawing power of the capital city regions
frequently is one of the prime manifestations of regional imbalance
and that a basic restructuring of the local governmental structure
and/or the central government’s regional machinery for the capital
sometimes is a basic corollary of any effort to curb and/or reorder the
capital’s urban development.
They underscore the fact that reorganizing local government gen
erally can be done much more easily m free unitary systems than in
free federal ones, though the task is by no means simple and local
governments and their associations must be courted, consoled, and
accommodated throughout most of this lengthy process.
They show that the two-tier (with some merging) approach to local
governmental reform seems to be somewhat more acceptable than the
one tier-consolidationist formula, reflecting a basic concern for de
veloping adequate and representative regional institutions while re
taining smaller, though sometimes merged units at the local level and,
in most instances, a basic desire for strong public institutions at both
the local and areawide levels to help implement a national regional
development and balanced urban growth strategy.
They suggest that no hard and fast consensus has emerged on what,
functions should be divided between and what functions should be
shared by the local and regional governments.
They indicate a recognition on the part of some of the central
governments that their traditional territorial administrative set-up
580
is inadequate to the needs of their regional and urban growth strat
egy and that the headquarters-field unit relationships of the func
tional ministries must be coordinated at both the regional and national
levels.
In the four constitutional democracies visited, all with the partial
exception of Finland, demonstrated a willingness to experiment boldly
with a cluster of building, licensing, land use, economic incentive, en
vironmental, and other regulatory mechanisms at national, regional,
and local levels in an attempt to guide regional and intrametropolitan
development.
They generally underscore the role of a multilevel planning process
as a priority-setting, program coordinating, urban growth-directing,
and regional development mechanism.
They reveal the pivotal position of the central government in this
process, especially in Eastern Europe, but significant local powers (or
discretion, in the case of Poland and Hungary) are a vital feature of
this effort in all of the nations visited.
IV — T h e
A
p p l ic a b il it y
U
of
E
n it e d
uropean
E
x p e r ie n c e
to t iie
S tates
METROPOLITAN DEVELOPMENT
There are some striking differences as well as similarities between
metropolitan issues in Europe and the U.S.
II ow big is too big?
Only the French have embarked on a growth policy that is premised
on the assumption that their key metropolitan area is “too big”. British
spokesmen asserted that their policies proceed less from an interest in
discouraging °rowth in the south of England than from a need to
halt further decline in the north. Assumptions concerning “optimal”
sizes for cities are, as in the United States, in most cases based on
little more than cursory opinion. One spokesman in Finland argued
that a community of over 100,000 persons was “too big” while the
Swedes believed that 100,000 is the mininmum population required to
sunnort. a reasonably complete hierarchy of urban services.
The British began their new towns program thinking that 60,00080,000 people was an ideal target population. They have since revised
those aspirations upward to as much as 250,000. a size many American
specialists have argued is about right for a balanced set of urban
services. The Poles believe the 2 to 3 million population category
provides the comparative advantages required for their major metro
politan areas.
The answer to “how big is too big?” appears to as unanswered a
question in Europe as in the United States. Since the answer to this
question will have an important bearing on the development of an
urban growth policy for the U.S., more information and understand
ing concerning optimum metropolitan concentrations will be necessary.
Sub urb anization
Suburbanization is a strong trend in all six European metropolitan
areas visited, and some duplication of the U.S. experience can be
expected. Each country has found that, as the standard of living
581
rises, people expect more living space per capita. This has the inevitable
effect of pressing population outward from the crowded urban center
toward the periphery.
The vast majority of housing units built with government funds in
these countries are high rise apartments. Yet pressures are mounting
in all countries, even the poorest, to provide government-assisted
individual family housing, further reinforcing pressures toward
suburbanization.
There are, of course, historical differences in the way cities developed
in Europe and in the United States. In Paris, the more well-to-do
families are apt to live near the city center while the lower income
workers live in the suburbs. The communication between suburb and
city center is thus as great in these cities as in the U.S., but for dif
ferent reasons.
Transportation
Public transportation is still strong in all six of the European metro
politan areas as opposed to the situation in the U.S., but the future is
cloudy despite the fact that new subways and. other forms of public
transport are being developed in all of them.
Each of these European countries has made a major commitment to
increase the availability of automobiles to their population. Poland
and Hungary intend to dramatically increase the number of reason
ably priced cars available to their citizens over the next five years.
Paris and London are already strangled in traffic. Finland spends a
larger percentage of its national budget on highway construction
than any other European country yet Helsinki is choking on auto
commuter traffic because of an inadequate freeway system which the
government plans to improve. Stockholm and Warsaw have major
freeway construction projects underway. In fact, as has already been
noted earlier in this report, only the French government has taken
active steps to discourage auto commuters. Paris has been assigned
sixth priority in grants to metropolitan areas for urban freeway
construction. Although in most of these cities the majority of com
muters still use public transport, the strain of auto competition is
becoming obvious. Swedish authorities admitted that the fare box
does not carry the cost of the system.
The trend toward suburbanization reinforced by widespread use of
the automobile indicates that in many respects the structures of
metropolitan areas in Europe will come to resemble those in the United
States. While Europeans have done a better job on the whole in
maintaining public transportation, they seem to have profited but
slightly from American experience and seem to be headed for trans
portation problems similar to those already experienced in this
country.
The urban core
The majority of jobs in all six European metropolitan areas are in
the central areas. As a result commutation is heavy. The urban core
of each area has remained relatively strong. Indeed, the rapid increase
in need for office space, hotels, and so forth, has threatened to destroy
many of the older historic sections of these cities. Central London
grows increasingly to resemble an American downtown.
582
There has been a conscious attempt to preserve the historic center
of Paris from extensive demolition for construction of high rise office
buildings. Yet on the perimeters of central Paris, the government
has undertaken projects to double the amount of office space in the
city. As the new American-stvle skyscrapers pierce the skyline above
the distinctive monuments of Paris, public opposition mounts. These
development projects appear to duplicate the mistakes of many similar
American undertakings.
Nowhere is the symbolic importance of the old urban core more
dramatically illustrated than in Warsaw, where Poland’s finest crafts
manship and substantial financial resources have been diverted from
the construction of housing for the population of Warsaw to a de
tailed reconstruction of the “Old Town” of historic Warsaw destroyed
by the Nazis in World W ar II. The dedication of people to “place”
is equally well demonstrated by the fact that the Polish government
was deterred from less costly construction of new housing in new areas
for some city residents because the residents preferred to remain where
they were. A more expensive slum renewal program was the result.
Housing
Yet the Europeans have gone to considerable pains to avoid segrega
tion by housing. In Finland, assistance flows to individuals rather
than projects and housing assistance is a private matter between a
family and the government. In Sweden “social housing” projects are
scattered in small blocks throughout the metropolitan area.
While between 60 and 90 percent of all families in the Scandanavian
and Eastern European countries visited receive some form of govern
ment housing assistance, the proportions receiving such aid in France
and the United Kingdom are more comparable to the U.S. The French
are disturbed by patterns of segregation by income and housing begin
ning to emerge as a consequence of their “social” housing programs.
British cities contain slum areas comparable in character to those
in the U.S. and many neighborhoods are concentrations of particular
income and racial groups. Out of 17,000,000 housing units, 2.3 million
lack one or more basic amenity and 600,000 require rehabilitation.
London, as is the case with many North American cities, has been
a world melting pot, a magnet for many immigrants from poorer na
tions. For this reason, the social structure of London is more com
parable to U.S. Metros.
Metropolitan structure— land use and “New Toams”
The task of avoiding divisive segregation by race and income is also
simplified in most of the European capitals by the powers of the
central and local governments in controlling land use. The land banks
of France and Sweden which enable public authorities to acquire land
well in advance of public requirements give those authorities a pro
found ability to control the pattern of metropolitan growth. A careful
study of land banking experience where such instrumentalities exist
should be undertaken since it is quite likely that this country will be
compelled to experiment with more effective means for controlling the
patterns of land use than the obviously inadequate zoning controls
we have traditionally employed. A series of advanced land acquisi
tion demonstrations in several American metropolitan areas would
583
appear to be justified in order to help the nation develop more effective
approaches to land-use control.
Nowhere is the efficacy of strong public land-use controls better
demonstrated than in the use of “new towns” to help provide more
rational land-use patterns in European metropolitan areas. Perhaps
the chief distinction between “new towns” in Europe and those under
taken so far in the United States is that the sites selected for “new
towns” in the European metropolitan areas are in many cases part of
an overall metropolitan development plan. In the United States this
is still largely a decision left up to private developers, and the result
ing pattern of “new town” development inevitably has a haphazard
character which may or ma}^ not usefully contribute to achievement of
a metropolitan growth policy. The ability of European public author
ities to select, assemble and acquire sites for a “new town” develop
ment is a capability well worth studying as we attempt to devise more
effective ways to use new communities in achieving desirable metro
politan development.
I f European experience is any guide, we should avoid any expecta
tion, however, that “new towns” by themselves provide the principal
answer for overcoming the undesirable aspects of metropolitan growth.
British officials interviewed did not believe that the “new towns”
constructed in the London region have had a substantial impact upon
migration streams or settlement patterns in that region. They did,
of course, provide new, relatively attractive housing for many families
seeking it, but authorities expressed concern over the general liomogenization of population which chose to live in the new communities.
The “new towns” were principally attractive to young marrieds in
search of new housing. Consequently most of the services developed
in the “new towns” early in their history catered to young, growing
families. As the population has aged, however, problems have been
experienced in adapting the “new towns” to population structures
different from those around which they originally developed.
A somewhat different social problem was noted in connection with
perhaps the most effective “new town” built anywhere so fa r: Tapiola,
Finland. When Tapiola was constructed, 80 percent of the dwelling
units were for families requiring government housing assistance.
Tapiola has been so attractive as a place to live that well-to-do families
seek housing there. Many lower income families who orignially set
tled in Tapiola have capitalized on this market and realized con
siderable speculative gains. Prices for housing in Tapiola have sky
rocketed and Tapiola is in danger of becoming a well-to-do suburb.
Many of those selling their apartments have clone so despite the fact
that once they have sold on a sj>eculative basis, they lose their future
entitlement to government housing assistance, a considerable penalty
in Finnish life.
Many planned developments are being constructed throughout
European metropolitan areas. In general, those being constructed as
government projects are disappointing. They reflect an architectural
monotony comparable to many high rise apartment complexes con
structed in American metropolitan areas. Even in the neighborhood of
Tapiola in Finland, government sponsored “new towns” have failed
to pay as much attention to the human environment as did the private
S I—745— 72— pt. 2--------3
584
developers of Tapiola. Monumental apartment complexes, such as
Skarholmen outside of Stockholm and Nova Hut outside of Cracow,
Poland, are little more distinguished than the high rise complexes of
outer Bronx or Queens.
It would appear that the chief lessons to be learned from the Euro
pean experience with “new towns” so far is that such planned devel
opments can play a highly useful role in achieving a more satisfactory
pattern of overall metropolitan development if site selection is part
of a public planning process and added tools are provided to facilitate
assembly and acquisition of the required sites.
Financing public services
Some of the worst features of American metropolitan development
are avoided in Europe because of the differences in the way public
facilities and services are financed. Balkanization of the tax base is
primarily avoided because of the dominant role which national taxes
play in financing such services in contrast to the United States where
the local property tax is so important. Ironically, in Finland the local
taxes are income taxes while the national tax is a real estate tax. In
Sweden the primary source of revenue at all levels of government is a
graduated income tax. In France because of the weakness of local juris
dictions under that country’s Napoleonic administrative system, the
national government is a primary source of assistance in developing
local services. Locally prepared regional plans serve in part as the
basis for national budget preparation.
While national funds return to the local communities for categorical
purposes, there is a trend in France away from the old categorical
system toward more broad purpose grants analogous to American
revenue sharing. We run the risk under present revenue sharing poli
cies of seeing national revenues devoted to purposes that will have
negligible influence upon future patterns of national growth and
regional growth. The key distinction between revenue sharing as
currently authorized in the United States and procedures now being
developed in Franee is that the local region, through preparation for
its plan for public investment and public services, put the National
Assembly and the government on notice about how these funds will
be used. Thus, there is an accountability in the French system that
avoids the potential dangers of present revenue sharing procedures in
the United States.
Metropolitan planning and development
Despite a more satisfactory revenue base which can be more easily
employed to support metropolitan-wide services, planning, and devel
opment, the six European countries confront many of the same prob
lems of balkanization of local government as in the United States.
Attemps to encourage metropolitan-wide cooperation through forma
tion of metropolitan-wide confederations of local units have been as
frustrating as the U.S. experience with metropolitan Councils of
Governments.
Perhaps the principal advantage the European approach to such
problems offers is the linkage the new regional bodies have to the
central government and its budgeting and investment decision-making.
Neither COGS nor other metropolitan-wide instrumentalities have
such a linkage in the United States. As noted earlier in this report the
585
unitary structure of European government has made such a link up
much more attainable. In the United States, local governments are
creatures not of the national government, but of the states. The Euro
peans are experimenting with a variety of procedures which confer
the advantages of both centralization and de-centralization on growth
planning. U.S. experiments in this direction so far are timid at best.
ORGANIZATION AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL
Each European country has created some instrumentality, in most
cases associated with, the Prime Minister, for coordinating the formu
lation and implementation of national growth policies.
No such instrument exists in the United States. The President's
Domestic Council was established with this announced purpose, but
has been unable to formulate recommendations for an urban policy.
As a consequence, U.S. policy for national urban growth is as dis
oriented and fragmented today as in 1969. The Council does not
appear to be structured or staffed to be able to carry out the missions
originally laid down for it. Yet the need for an adequate horizontal
policy-making mechanism in the Executive Branch grows increasingly
urgent. With passage of Title IV of the Agricultural Act of 1970,
responsibilities for directing programs affecting national growth ap
pear to be divided between the Secretary of Agriculture (non-metro
politan areas) and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
(metropolitan areas). Yet many programs vital to accomplish effective
planning and development lie scattered throughout seven of the Cabinet
departments and many independent agencies and commissions. The
Europeans have clearly learned the essential interdependence between
metropolitan and non-metropolitan development insofar as the na
tion’s future growth is concerned and they have found mechanisms that
help them formulate coherent plans and programs to deal with that
fact. W e have not yet developed such a device in the United States.
Nor have we begun to assemble the links in our federal system that
will enable us to allocate resources based on locally developed urban
growth strategies while affording the localities and states the ad
vantage of working within a common framework of goals. Yet we
already have some of the organizational mechanisms to provide such
an opportunity providing a proper policy mechanism is established
as an adjunct to the White House. The Federal Regional Councils
provide one opportunity, for example, to achieve more effective re
gional coordination of federal, state, and local programs for regional
growth. A t present, their purpose is to coordinate regional activities
of the Federal agencies. Substantially modified in structure and or
ganized so that state and local agencies might work with them to
develop regional development strategies, the Regional Councils could
provide the forum needed for developing coordinated approaches to
regional growth. I f they were to be used for this purpose, boundaries
of present administrative regions might require some adjustment in
order to avoid splitting major interstate metropolitan areas.
Other devices for linking federal, state, and local agencies in a
framework for growth planning are regional commissions and multi
county districts and regional councils. So far each of these approaches,
in part because of a lack of national growth policy, has demonstrated
inadequacies and would require modification and improvement.
586
XOXMETIIOPOLITAN DEVELOPMENT
As we have already seen, the European strategy for non-metropolitan
regions usually consists of the following components:
(1) Re-organization or confederation of local governments in
non-metropolitan regions to provide a sufficient population base
and economies of scale to plan for and support quality public
services and provide comparative advantages for economic devel
opment.
(2) Establishment of “growth centers” to serve surrounding
rural hinterlands in each major section of the country.
(3) Integrated local, regional, and national planning and im
plementation of major infrastructural improvement programs for
these regions.
(4) Various financial and tax incentives to help make the loca
tion of economic activity in such regions more attractive.
(5) Relocation of certain government activities into the regions.
Amalgamating local, governments— the sub-state district
The closest parallel in the U.S. to the European efforts to develop
mor viable planning and development jurisdictions at a more appro
priate scale in non-metropolitan regions has been the multi-county or
sub-state district programs undertaken during the last seven years
under Federal impetus. In the mid and late 1950’s new multi-countv
regional Councils were required for local areas to qualify for grants
and loans from the Economic Development Administration, various
forms of assistance from the Department of Agriculture, grants for
comprehensive health planning, certain area-wide planning grants
from H U D , etc. The imposition of this requirement by at least five
separate federal programs created local confusion where separate
districts, rarely congruent, were being established for each program.
In recent years, these regional councils or districts have been strength
ened somewhat by federal attempts to reconcile earlier program con
flicts through the establishment of common boundaries for all such
units established with Federal support. Further, many states have
enacted state legislation conferring other authorities upon them. The
sub-state district appears to be well on its way to becoming a perma
nent part of the federal system.
These councils, while still in infancy, offer some promise as basic
building blocks for implementing a national growth policy in the
U.S. The relationship between establishment of such local regional
confederations and a strategy for non-metropolitan development was
perhaps best expressed by the National Advisory Commission on Rural
Poverty in 1967. It implied a strategy for re-structuring non-metro
politan areas that would—■
(1) Help confederate local non-metropolitan jurisdictions into
large enough units to provide a critical mass of population and
revenue;
(2) Attempt to strengthen key towns and cities in the districts
through improvements in their transportation linkages to the rest
of the nation;
(3) Develop highway linkages between these centers of growth
and the surrounding countryside; and
587
(4)
Develop public service delivery systems serving the district
as a whole, uniting towns and countryside in a common fabric of
services.
While many of the non-metropolitan multi-country planning and
development agencies created during the past decade in many states
have successfully demonstrated their ability to plan and help get
Federal grants, relatively few have yet become true operating arms
of their local governments responsible for actually carrying out those
public services which can best be provided at a regional scale.
Growth centers
American attempts to identify development centers have been even
more timid. Only two national programs in the U.S. have attempted
to adopt the European concept of “growth centers” : the Economic
Development Administration and the Appalachian Regional Develop
ment Program. Results so far have been mixed. During the initial
years of its program, the Economic Development Administration pur
sued a strategy termed the “worst, first” policy, i.e. economic devel
opment aid would be extended to those areas most needing help. It has
only been in recent years that a substantial alteration in Economic
Development Administration investment policy lias occurred. The
Appalachian Region Commission has operated under a more specific
legislative directive to “concentrate investments in areas with signif
icant potential for growth.”
The Appalachian Regional Commission originally adopted a strat
egy that assumed that Appalachia consisted of sub-areas or districts,
the population of each of which looked to a common center or cluster
of centers for most of its services. Around the periphery of Appalachia
were numerous areas related to metropolitan areas outside the region
as defined b}^ Congress. The regional boundary, therefore, frequently
militated against a completely effective development strategy. Some
areas were centered on metropolitan or moderately sized urban centers
inside of Appalachia. Other's were isolated by topography, the national
transportation system and the nature of their economics. In these areas
the Commission adopted a concept fathered by Professor Wilbur
Thompson of Wayne State University which suggested developing a
group of small communities that are close together so that they provide
the counterpart to a moderate-sized urban growth center in terms of
the services they provide to their hinterland.
Initially, 60 districts were identified within which a simple hierarchy
of 22 regional center's, 78 primary centers, and a set of secondary service
centers were identified. Hungary has adopted a somewhat similar
system. Necessarily, these early delineations reflected varying degrees
of sophistication in analysis among the states and local areas. Niles
Hansen, of the University of Texas, has been particularly critical of
these decisions arguing that the number should have been far smaller
and the size of many of the centers far larger. It appears, however,
that the Congressional objective of investment concentration was at
least partially achieved. One evaluation found that 30 percent of the
non-highway investment funds were concentrated in only five percent
of the 379 Appalachian counties (20 out of 39). Over half were con
centrated in 15 percent. Sixty-four countries out of 397 received no
investments.
588
Cumulative investm ent by county
Percent of
total ARC
Percent of total number of counties :
investment
5 __________________________________________________________________________
31.5
1 0 __________________________________________________________________________
45.2
1 5 __________________________________________________________________________
55 .0
2 0 __________________________________________________________________________
63.9
2 5 __________________________________________________________________________
70.6
3 0 __________________________________________________________________________
76 .4
4 0 __________________________________________________________________________
85.6
5 0 __________________________________________________________________________
92.1
6 0 __________________________________________________________________________
9 6 .5
7 0 __________________________________________________________________________
9 8 .9
Investments followed a “ bell curve” , a relatively small percentage
going to large metropolitan areas where Appalachian investments
would be o f marginal significance and an equally small percentage
going to areas with little population or apparent potential for growth.
35
POPULATION
30
25
30.7
INVESTMENT
\ m
?8 5
197
_20
'c
15.3 16 2
cu
o
£ !5
no
10
5
12.6
1L
8
92
48
3f
06 01
10-25
25-50
50-100
100-250
250-500
500-750
□
750+
Size Class of Service Areas (In Thousands)
In absolute percentages, the Commission concentrated its funds in
middle-size service areas (100,000-250,000 population). On a per capita
basis concentration has been in the 10,000-25,000 category.
IN V E S T M E N T IN S E R V IC E A R E A S B Y S IZ E C L A S S
Population
1960
In ve s tm e n t
1965-70
In ve s tm e n t
p e r capita
U nd er 10,000____________________________________ ____________________
10 to 24,999_____________________________________ ____________________
25 to 49,999________________________________
____________________
50 to 99,999_____________________________________ ____________________
100 to 249,999________________________________________________________
250 to 499,999________________________________________________________
500 to 749,999___________________________________ ____________________
750,000 p lu s ___________________ _____ ____________ ____________________
85,000
726,300
1, 410, 300
2, 799, 200
4,630, 600
2, 315, 500
1, 233, 700
1,911,000
$2, 388,189
28,185, 063
29,078, 465
50, 509,607
72,751,433
41, 373. 332
23,530, 380
7 842,952
$28.09
38.80
20.62
18.04
15.71
17.87
19.07
4.10
T o ta l______ _______________________________ ____________________
15,111,500
255, 559, 421
16.91
P opulation size class
589
The purpose of the growth center strategy was to provide a dis
cipline, a rationale for the allocation of public investments and to
help create urban centers in Appalachia that would be competitive
with other centers in the U.S. Approximately $250,000,000 has been
approved for growth area appropriate projects. O f this amount ap
proximately 50 percent has been concentrated in “first, level”, or re
gional, or most significant growth areas, as designated by the states.
An additional 11 percent was in smaller primary growth or “second
level” areas and 8 percent was concentrated in the secondary growth
areas. Finally, 11 percent of the funds were approved for non-growth
and 21 percent was approved in the early stages of the program before
growth areas had been defined. The analysis found that first and
second level growth areas received close to 70 percent of the funds in
each category except for water and sewer projects. It is in this category
of investment that the poorest record was compiled. A comparably
poor record was posted by the Economic Development Administration.
The legislative history of the Appalachian Act deliberately assigned
to the participating states rather than the Regional Commission,
responsibility for designating investment areas. Imposing a set of
strict guidelines on the states, it was reasoned by Congress, had three
major shortcomings: It would have strongly inhibited the development
of growth area policies reflecting the unique situations in individual
states; no local expertise would have been developed; and, the im
position of highly specific criteria would have placed the Appalachian
program in the position of being “just another Federal program.”
Such an approach is not without problems to growth area delinea
tion. It opens the door to provincialism in growth area delineation
in the form of a tendency to look no further than state boundaries
in planning. While there have been some cases of interstate cooperation
in Appalachia in defining growth areas and in project placement,
this approach was not as widespread as it could have been— though a
large percent of Appalachian project funds were placed in interstate
growth areas, this was probably due to the fact that these areas are
generally dominant centers in Appalachia rather than a result of
coordinated interstate planning efforts. As might be expected political
pressures to abandon a growth center approach are strong and con
tinuous and such an approach is under attack in Appalachia. This is
not very different from the European experience. Officials in several
countries admitted that there were continuing pressures to increase
the number of growth centers.
Dr. Stephen Fuller, George Washington University, attempted to
assess the impact of investment concentration in some middle-sized
Appalachian growth areas. He looked at Carrollton, Georgia;
Florence, Alabama; Crossville-Cookville, Tennessee; Hornell, New
York; and Altoona, Pennsylvania. He found a “Hawthorne-type”
effect, e.g., once an area was singled out for major attention, it had
an impact on the esprit of the area which tended to reinforce the
process of development quite favorably.
590
Integrated planning
The Appalachian experience also affords the only U.S. attempt so
far at integrated local-state-federal planning of infrastructural and
other development programs comparable to those in existence or being
developed in Europe.
In early drafts of the Appalachian legislation, a “TVA-like” ap
proach was proposed which would have established a public corpora
tion with powers of eminent domain and the ability to raise its own
revenues. Arguments for the “public authority” approach were based
on the presumption that state and local governments were too weak
in Appalachia, and the federal government too disorganized, to carry
out a sustained, well-orchestrated, long-term program. Ultimately
this special authority approach was rejected by Congress and many
of the Appalachian Governors.
Instead, a leaf was borrowed from the Delaware River Basin
Compact of 1961 in which a federal-state commission was established
consisting of the four Governors of the Delaware Basin states and
a representative of the federal government. In the Appalachian
statute as finally passed in March 1965, a Regional Commission was
established consisting of the Appalachian Governors as State Mem
bers represented in their absence by gubernatorially appointed al
ternates. The federal government was represented by a “ Federal
Co-Chairman” at the Assistant Secretary level who was directly
answerable to the White House and not to any single federal cabinet
officer. Affirmative action by the Commission required the vote of a
majority of the states and the Federal Co-Chairman.
The i965 statute provided authorizations for a range of programs
recommended in the report of the President's Appalachian Regional
Commission enabling the Commission to exercise some leverage in
implementing plans, thus enhancing its credibility. It also granted
authority for the establishment of multicounty planning districts.
Procedures were established that required the Regional Commission
to carry out regional analysis and planning, development of a regional
data base, and facilitating preparation of major interstate plans for
highways, water resources, and the like while the states assumed major
responsibility for development planning.
In contradistinction to other regional efforts being carried out by
the U.S. Department of Commerce under Title V of the Economic
Development and Public Works Act of 1965 where the multicounty
district programs and regional development programs have been kept
bureaucratically and programmatically separated, the Appalachian
effort has attempted to integrate them into a regional planning
hierarchy. In several Appalachian states, the districts have yet to
be given opportunity to participate directly in state development
planning other than having the privilege of submitting investment
proposals. In several instances, the states have been quite wary of
creating strong local planning organizations. It was not until 1971
that West Virginia even authorized their establishment. Apparently
some states were unwilling to accord to their local governments the
same partnership in decision-making which the states themselves have
been able to command at the table of the Appalachian Regional Com
mission with the federal government.
591
Paradoxically, however, the planning and development capabilities
in the districts of many states became stronger than those at the state
level. Some districts in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia,
Tennessee, Kentucky, and. Pennsylvania have performed impressively
in the development and execution of planned programs, according to
recent evaluations. A few are beginning to develop additional powers
under state legislation that will enable them to perform services which
can no longer be performed by their constituent population-and-taxdepleted jurisdictions.
According to these same evaluations, the performance of many of
the states is another matter. The Appalachian Act provided an unpar
alleled opportunity for states to not only influence but direct a large
segment of federal investment policy. Few states were able to take
full advantage of that opportunity. Nor was the Appalachian Regional
Commission able to bring any major degree of coordination into
the operation of Federal programs in Appalachia. But this is not sur
prising. Presidential support for the experiment has wavered, eroding
the ability of the Commission to achieve cooperation. But the lack of
consistent national policies on regional and urban growth, compound
ed by the conflicts between statutes authorizing such programs, ap
parently made a fully successful demonstration in Appalachia diffi
cult to accomplish.
A P P E N D IX
T
he
P l a n n i n g a n d H o u s i n g E l e m e n t s of t h e N a t i o n a l
G r o w t h P o l ic ie s or Six E u r o p e a n N a t i o n s
In recent years Congress has adopted two landmark declarations of
national urban growth policy. Title V II of the Housing and Urban
Development Act of 1970 provided for the development of national
policies to plan the orderly development of our urban areas. Two
years before, Congress in the Housing Act of 1968 stated the national
dimensions of housing needs and fixed a ten year timetable for elimi
nating substandard housing and providing sufficient shelter. U.S.
federal planning grant programs, both comprehensive and func
tional. are now several score in number and several hundred million
dollars in amount annually. A similar number of federal housing as
sistance programs are on the statute books. Thus, the intent to sup
port planning and housing in this country is clear. The approaches
available to us to improve our planning methodologies and mecha
nisms and move closed to the ideal of a decent home for every Ameri
can family are still wide ranging and flexible. Therefore it appears
prudent to observe the experiences in European countries so that we
miflrht learn of their successes and errors.
The material that follows covers the following subjects for each of
the six countries visited: (1) national, (2) regional, and (3) local
planning policies and machinery, and (4) national housing policies
and practices. While the approach taken is essentially descriptive, an
effort has been made to identify practices that appear to be especially
innovative or hold promise for further examination in this country.
Each of the countries visited had certain unique and innovative ap
proaches. Among the many examples described below are the fol
lowing :
592
In France— the national leadership for regional planning provided
by the Declaration for Territorial Planning and Regional Action
( D A T A R ); the concept of equilibrium metropolises; the National
Five Year Policy Plans; the use of priority zones for urbanization
(ZTTPS) and Deferred Development Zones (Z A D S ), and finally the
mandatory private industrial investments for construction of low
rent housing.
In Finland—the development of environmental quality areas around
the capital city; the concern for economic integration of neighbor
hoods; and the sensitive relating of housing planning and develop
ment to the national economy.
In Sweden— the tradition of municipal purchase and leasing of land
needed for expansion; use of satellite communities linked by mass
transit; and an affirmative national role in both identifying housing
demand and in housing technology.
In Poland— the commitment to restoring the national heritage
contained in its capital city and the concessions to consumer needs
which are then reflected in long term national plans.
In Hungary— the development of an overall national settlement
policy and the commitment to decentralization of industry and popu
lation to growth centers in various parts of the country.
In England— the increasing linkage of affirmative national, regional
and local planning; acceptance of the concept of public acquisition
of land to carry out general planning objectives; and a cooperative
“town development program” governing orderly expansion of large
communities.
Information for this report was derived from the meeting with
government officials in the six countries involved and the written
materials provided by their departments and agencies. A number of
other sources proved to be valuable in documenting these countries
planning and housing policies and practices. Extremely useful were
the following:
Strong, Ann Louise. Planned Urban Environments: Sweden,
Finland, Israel, The Netherlands, France. Baltimore, John Hop
kins Press, 1971.406 pp.
Merlin, Pierre. New Towns: Regional Planning and Develop
ment. London, Methuen, 1971.276 pp.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Urban
Land Policy: Selected Aspects of European Experience. Wash
ington, 1969.219 pp.
It is not difficult to identify differences between the United States
and those of the countries visited that would make adoption of their
policies impractical in this country. Many of the countries visited have
a greater consensus on goals with respect to regional development,
density, etc. Citizens of our country enjoy a greater freedom of choice
in employment, location, housing quality, and lifestyle. The federal
system and the vast size of our nation both set us apart. Most of the
countries had metropolitan-wide machinery, there was an accepted
central government role that provides a ready-made infrastructure
593
for planning, implementation and the meshing of housing with other
domestic developments.
Nevertheless, the countries visited offer many lessons if we have the
will and insight to learn from their successes and failures. Hopefully
this comparative description of European planning and housing ac
tivities will make a modest contribution to the consideration and re
consideration of our own priorities and practices.
P l a n n in g
and
H
o u s in g
in
F
rance
Planning is new in France, largely initiated after World W ar II.
Since that time however, it has been adopted with a vengeance. In
addition to the fifth (Economic) Plan, there is a national land-use
plan. Economic and land-use plans have been regionalized. Local
governments were the last to enter into planning, but pressure from
the national government may well serve as the catalyst for local gov
ernment planning and land-use reforms.
By the end of the 1950’s there was recognition of the need for
regional planning to complement national sector planning and of the
need to reshape the administrative system of the government to serve
these ends. The growth of Paris was to be restrained. An elaborate
incentive system was devised to induce industrial development in
other regions. The less prosperous areas were to be favored. Premiums
depended on the zone, the number of jobs created, and whether a new
or expanding firm was involved. Eligible zones were defined by the
lack of industrialization, by inadequate industrialization, and by the
role of the region in relation to the effort to decongest Paris.
French planning is described as indicative planning, as contrasted
with imperative or directive planning. Thus no specific targets for
individual plants or firms exist; the targets are broad and simply
point out the directions desired. Guidance of the economy and develop
ment along desired lines is promoted by exhortation, by the usual
budgeting and fiscal influences available to governments, by the public
enterprises (responsible for approximately 11 percent of net national
product and 80-35 percent of annual gross investment), and by the
large savings flow that goes through government hands as a result of
the previous nationalization of major commercial banks and insurance
companies.
In France, there is an unusually close relationship between plan
ning, development programs, and development financing. Local
projects receive no national funds unless the local plans have been ap
proved. While the system is inordinately complex, it is an operative
national program for stating goals and priorities, refining goals into
action programs, and channeling funds to programs.
While each ministry has funds for implementing those aspects of
plans which fall within its scope, there are, in addition, four national
funding agencies of paramount significance in financing development.
They are: the Depository and Consignment Bank and its subsidiaries,
Central Territorial Equipment Company (SCET) and Central Build
ing Company (S C I C ); the Economic and Social Development Fund
(F I )E S ); the National Fund for Land Management and Urban Plan
ning (F N A F U ); and the Action Fund for Environmental Planning
(F IA T ).
594
NATIONAL PL AN N IN G I N FRANCE
The administrative organization for national planning is exceeding
ly complex and has undergone frequent modification. The General
Planning Commission has approximately forty members, including
representatives of all concerned ministries. Its staff numbers about
150, augmented by the services of thousands of persons who belong to
committees and subcommittees for the preparation and revision of
commission plans. The Commissioner General by law, is “. . . the
permanent delegate of the prime minister to the ministerial depart
ments for all aspects of the preparation of the plan.”
The commission serves as the chief conceptual agency for economic
and environmental planning. With its earlier history of economic
planning, it has great strength in the economic sphere and remains
responsible for preparation of the five-year plans for submission to the
Interministerial Committee and then to the National Assembly.
There are three principal subagencies of the General Planning Com
mission: the Committee on Regional Planning (described below), the
Committee to Update the Plan, and the CNAT. The Committee on
Regional Planning consists of the commissioner-general as chairman,
the director of environmental planning (C N A T ), representatives of
concerned ministries and of the Economic and Social Development
Fund (F D E S ), and others. Its responsibility is the proposal and co
ordination of economic and environmental plans at the regional level.
The Committee to Update the Plan is actually a group of ad hoc
committees, appointed anew for the preparation of each five-year plan.
The committee’s members are representatives of government, manage
ment, and labor, and are named by the prime minister on the advice
of the commissioner-general; theoretically, they serve as qualified in
dividuals rather than as representatives of particular organizations or
interest groups.
The third agency of the General Planning Commission, the Na
tional Commission for Environmental Planning (C N A T ), is France’s
principal body for environmental planning. CNAT provides detailed
and long-term (twenty-year) environmental planning and is respon
sible for integrating this planning into regional economic plans. It
has seventy-seven members, twenty-seven of whom are ex officio repre
sentatives of the ministries and financial agencies, and fifty of whom
are drawn from all socioeconomic sectors, including union members,
industrialists, and professors. The director of D A T A R , described
below, is a vice-chairman of CNAT. C N A T’s staff consists of about
170 persons.
REGIONAL P L A N N IN G I N FRANCE
During the past two decades the French have developed perhaps
the most comprehensive system of regional planning in Europe, at
least in theory. The regional planning process is designed so that the
regions and the state each evolve development objectives, re-evaluate
these objectives in light of the others’ objectives, and then agree on
long-term and five-year national plans which incorporate regional
goals and allocations.
These planning goals lead directly to the creation of a number of
new organizational and conceptual devices for linking national and
regional development.
The Interministerial Committee for Regional Planning was created
at the national level in I960. It is chaired by the Prime Minister
and includes all ministers responsible for some aspect of regional plan
ning and development, including, the ministers of finance, public works
and housing, interior, and agriculture. Its chief executive under the
present structure is also the chairman of D ATAR . The role of the
Interministerial Committee is to review all general problems of re
gional planning and development in order to prepare statements of
the government’s position on these problems. It is therefore the high
est policy-making body 011 regional planning matters.
DATAR
To help monitor and coordinate regional programs of the various
ministries at the national level and to serve as a gadfly to stimulate
action along desired geographic lines, the government created the
Delegation for Territorial Planning and Regional Action (D A T A R )
in 1968. As described by Lloyd Rod win in the 1970 volume, Toward
a National Urban Policy, -both D A TAR and the General Directorate
of Planning have been responsible to the Prime Minister since 1967
through the authority of a special Minister.
The functions of the Delegation touch all aspects of regional de
velopment. It maintains liaison with the regional agencies. It par
ticipates in the preparation of regional portions of the national plan,
regional public investment budgets, and in evaluating possible modi
fications of the regional development policies which the regional and
national advisory councils have proposed. It presides over and pro
vides secretariat services for the Interministerial Committee for
Territorial Planning and Regional Action which formulates basic
government policy on geographic issues. It does the same for the
Central Urban Planning Group, which brings together representa
tives of different ministries to deal with the problems of the principal
metropolitan regions and reports to the Interministerial Committee
for Territorial Planning and Regional Action.
The Delegation is also responsible for the management of the In
tervention Fund for Territorial Planning. This fund, amounting to
iy 2 percent of the public investment budget (equivalent now to about
$100 million annually), is essentially a “sweetener,” to foot part of the
bill for regional activities, programs, and studies, promoting projects
in high priority development areas which might otherwise be
neglected.
D A T A R is intended to be a small, responsive, and multi-faceted
agency, able to take the initiative for new programs and offer creative
leadership. It advises the government on where development should
occur, and when. I 11 effect, D A T A R is the home of national capital
programming for the regions.
Some twenty-one programming regions have been created. Each re
gion has a Regional Prefect and a Regional Administrative Confer
ence (C A R ). These organizations prepared the regional portions of
the national plan, recommendd public investment budgets for each
region, and provided annual progress reports on the implementation
of the plans. Still another development was the creation of the Com
missions 011 Regional Economic Development. These commissions at
596
tempted to represent the views of groups outside the government (for
example, local councils, commercial, agricultural, trade union and
other civic interest groups).
EQUILIBRIUM METROPOLISES
But, Rodwin observes, all of this machinery would be of little value
unless there were significant ideas to promote, coordinate, and imple
ment. The main question raised was how to identify t'he principal
metropolitan areas which could serve to develop the regions and offset
the dominance of Paris. This was a refreshing change from the essen
tially fruitless inquiries in the past concerning the optimum size of a
city. It was taken for granted that a large city offered numerous ad
vantages and that it would be useful to devise a pragmatic measure
of the most significant French cities and their potential areas of in
fluence.
Four basic criteria were used for the selection of cities: their size;
the services they had evolved for economic activities; the special serv
ices or functions they performed: and their zones of influence.
Twenty or more indicators were employed to identify and weigh these
factors.
Eight leading cities, in addition to Paris, passed this screening. As
a result, in order to provide a balance to the pull of the Paris region—
which nearly all Frenchmen acknowledge as overcrowded— and to
provide a stimulus to economic activity in provincial areas, eight
metropoles d’equilibre have been chosen for special development aid.
A concentration of projects around relatively few spatial develop
ment centers permits firms to take maximum advantage of the techni
cal and financial external economies generated bv interaction of mu
tually interdependent activities. The number of metropoles is rela
tively small because major projects, such as large hospitals and air
ports, are economically justified only if they are assured a sufficient
number of users. Nevertheless, the metropoles have been more broadly
defined than single cities because larger urban areas are beginning
to form as automobile use increases.
The concept of equilibrium metropolises was picked up by the na
tional planning agencies and ministries and, with minor adjustments,
adopted as the basic urban and regional strategy endorsed bv the
Fifth Plan.
THE SIXTH T L A X , 1 9 7 1 - 7 5
The Sixth Plan was debated and passed by the National Assembly
in June, 197O'.
The Sixth Plan's primary objective is the increased industrializa
tion of France, to be accompanied by increased employment at the
target rate of from 50,000 to 70,000 jobs per year. A growth rate of
almost 6 percent is proposed. Housing construction would receive even
greater emphasis, with an annual target rate of ten dwelling units per
1,000 persons. Budget allocations to education, agriculture, and social
services would be restricted in order to increase funding toward in
dustrialization, and herein lay the principal source of objection to
the plan.
597
The Prime Minister's articulation o f the role o f the plan is as appli
cable to the United States as it is to Franee:
Tlie plan is a rendezvous with ourselves; it permits us periodically to interro
gate ourselves about our essential problems, while comparing the desirable to
tlie possible. Furthermore, it obliges us to express our priorities clearly and to
order our actions to carry out that which we have expressed. In this sense, more
than ever, the plan constitutes the indicator of our economic and social devel
opment.
LOCAL PL AN N IN G IN PRANCE
The current- government structure in ,ranee is more proliferated
than in the United States. There are 38,000 local governments which
vie for power with one another, two intermediate levels o f govern
ment, and with the national government. On the average, there is one
municipality per 5.6 square miles. Ten thousand o f the municipalities
have fewer than 200 residents, while 25,000 have a population o f 2,000
or more.
Anna Louise Strong, in her comprehensive and up-to-date book on
Planning Urban Environments describes the local planning process
in F ranee:
While each local government is locally elected and nominally independent
under the constitution, in fact much local autonomy is illusory. Each municipal
ity is financially dependent on the national government and so is firmly tied
to a rigid structure of bureaucratic regulations and requirements. Being small,
most of the municipalities are unable to afford competent, paid administrators
and, again, the national government steps in, by way of its departmental ap
pointee, the prefect, and his staff . . .
While local planning can be traced back to postwar reconstruction in 1919,
it is a recent plienonmenon for most French municipalities. Under the Planning
Law of 1967, all municipalities of more than 10,000 people must draw up com
prehensive plans and district plans by 1972. Planning may be carried out by a
single city or by the urban communities created in 1967 for some of the larger
metropolitan areas. Bordeaux, Lille, Strasbourg, and Lyon all have been ordered
to plan as urban communities.
The comprehensive plans usually are prepared by Groupes d’Etudes et de
Programmation (G E P s), located in the departmental prefect’s office. Only
a few of the larger cities have their own planning staffs.
After being available for inspection for three months, the plan is subjected
to a public hearing. It then is either approved or disapproved by the municipal
council. I f the council rejects the plan and the prefect wishes it approved, or if
25 percent of the population disapproves it, the plan is submitted to the Council
of State for its decision.
The district plan, a detailed land-use plan specifying zoning districts and
densities, undergoes similar procedures except that an appeal may not be taken
to the Council of State unless the municipality has a population of 50,000. Once
approved, the district plan is binding. Its provisions, such as those fixing per
mitted uses or building density, are applicable without payment of any compen
sation. Building permits may be issued only for proposals that accord with the
plan.
PRIORITY ZONES FOR URBANIZATION
ZONES
( ZUPS) AND DEFERRED DEVELOPMENT
( ZADS)
The French government, despite its strongly national form, pro
motes its urbanization policy by stimulating local authorities, not by
assuming their roles. The national government provides the financial
assistance and increased legal powers necessary for planned urban
development. The most important French vehicle for structuring
such development is the ZX T.P. technique.
598
Z U P ’s, which date from 1058, are locally-initiated areas designated
in the plan for priority development. Once a ZU P has been approved
by the Ministry o f Public W orks and Housing, and its financing has
been approved by the appropriate national agencies, national funding
fo r land acquisition and for the national government’s contribution
to streets (30-50 percent), sewerage (40 percent), and water supply
(25 percent) is directed there, and is refused to non-designated areas.
Intensive development occurs only in the ZU Ps, which must be large
enough to accommodate 500 dwelling units but which may be largo
enough fo r several hundred thousand dwelling units. Development
occurs under the ageis o f a single agency. A Z.U.P. can be thought o f as
a “ semi-satellite,” but not a “ new town.” In January 1967. there
were 173 such Z.U.P.s in France, covering 59,000 acres, with a capacity
fo r 740,000 dwelling units.
Local authorities are given strong development tools by the Z.U.P.
legislation. A s soon as the decree delimiting the Z.IT.P. is published
in the Journal Officiel, all new State-financed construction (more than
100 dwelling units per commune) must be built within the delimited
zone. A developer o f housing outside the Z.U.P. may be refused a build
ing permit if his intended site is not sufficiently equipped with public
services, and if an equally suitable site is offered to him within the
Z.U.P. The existence o f a Z.U.P. concentrates housing construction in
one sector o f a commune so that a comprehensive plan, with reasonable
costs fo r necessary public services, can be prepared, financed, and
implemented.
Local authorities are given the right of preemption, similar to
eminent domain, and may purchase any ground put up for sale in
the Z.U .P. within a period o f four years— this may be extended fo r
two years— from the date o f the original decree delimiting the Z.U.P.
I f there is no agreement between the landowner and the commune
which wishes to exercise its right o f preemption, the purchase price is
fixed by regular expropriation procedures. These land acquisition
powers limit the land speculation that accompanies any housing project
and permit a commune to purchase the laud necessary for planned
urban devel opment.
ZA D s, which date from 1962, are designed to forestall immediate
development and halt speculation on land which is intended for
middle-range development. Once designated, the municipality may
preempt an eight-year option on all land within the Z A D at the
lond value one year prior to the time o f preemption. Later, if the
Z A D becomes a ZLTP, the preemption period can be extended four
more years, fo r a total o f twelve years. An owner may sell the land
at this fixed price, subject to the option, or he may demand that
the municipality exericse its preemption right within two years of
designation. I f the municipality exercises its option, it pays the
fixed price, corrected for any inflation but without interest. About
250 square miles o f land around Paris have been designated ZADs.
HOUSING I X
FRANCE
Because o f war damage, and increased population, at least twelve
million new dwelling units are needed in France in the next twenty
years. This is the basic French national housing policy goal. There is a
wide gap between housing standards in the United States and France.
599
Both urban and rural housing stock 111 France is old. In 1967, 26
percent o f all French dwelling units had no running water and 89
percent lacked central heat. Conditions were notably better in Paris,
where electricity, gas, and running water were virtually universal.
Even there, however, 66 percent o f the homes lacked central heat.
W hile many o f the new units are being built in Z.U.P. sectors,
there are still three kinds o f housing in F ran ce: social, private, and
cooperative. Social housing, known as “ ILL.M ." (moderate rental
housing), is either publicly or semi-publicly organized and seeks 310
profits. Private housing, built for profits, may be for rent or fo r sale
as private property, joint property or condominium. Cooperatives,
organized to eliminate the profit motive, generally build housing that
is superior to most social housing.
The national government implements its housing policy by making
several means o f financial support available for construction.
There are four main sources o f housing construction funds in Franee.
The first is the Caisse des Prets aux Organismes
a public
credit institution owned, funded, and operated by the Caisses des
Depots et Consignations. It grants up to 95 percent o f the cost of
social housing in forty-year loans at 2.6 percent interest. The chief
source for private housing loans is the Credit Foncier, a semi-public
bank that lends funds o f the Caisse des Depots et Consignations for
the national government. Their terms are roughly 4.25 to 5 percent
interest fo r from ten to thirty years. These loans may cover only 30
to 50 percent o f construction costs.
A third source o f construction money is private banks which make
loans at an expensive interest rate (7.5 to 10 percent) for twelve to
fifteen years.
A final source o f funds is the cotisation patronale, an especially
innovative device, requiring all employers o f more than ten employees
to annually invest in housing the equivalent o f 1 percent o f the salaries
they have paid during the preceding fiscal year. In 1969, French
companies contributed $370 million toward construction of low-rent
housing for employees. This accounted for 20% o f all new housing
units starts in 1969. This assessment o f wages and salaries to a private
national housing fund, is passed on to construction companies to build
low-rent housing.
A s in the United States, there is almost 110 direct national govern
ment housing construction in France. About one-third o f all housing
is built by housing associations and cooperatives, mostly under the
moderate rent housing program, H LM . But in 1967, only 22 percent
o f all dwelling units built did not reecive some form o f government
financial aid. In recent years, less than 10 percent o f all housing
was built without aid.
These subsidies are granted to the family, rather than to the
dwelling unit. Young couples and large families meeting specified
conditions for income and housing are eligible for subsidies ranging
from 45 to 85 percent o f their rent, to cover the difference between
the rent charged and the “ correct” rent for their status. The verv
poor and the elderly are eligible fo r subsidies covering 75 percent
o f their ren t: two-thirds o f this type o f subsidy is paid by the state,
one-third by the local government.
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HOUSING TECHNOLOGY
The volume o f construction is high, and French housing construc
tion technology is now considered among the most advanced in the
world. U pgrading o f the size and equipment o f housing continues.
In 1971, “ Plan Constructionv (equivalent to Operation Breakthrough)
was launched and approximately $70 million set aside for research
on housing construction. The Board o f Directors includes representa
tives o f 3 ministries and the private sector.
P l a n n in g
and
H o u s in g
in
F in l a n d
Finland shares many o f the urban development problems common
to most other European countries: migration from rural areas to
the fringes o f the largest cities, only occasional success in persuading
industry to locate in smaller urban areas, and the failure to even
begin to meet consumer demand for single-family housing. It has
additional problems due to its geography and climate and to the
consequences o f W orld W ar I I ( which have impeded development of
an urban growth policy.
N a t io n a l P l a n n in g in
F in l a n d
A ccording to a recent government report, The Financing o f Planned
Communities in Finland, the urbanization process in Finland still
occurs without a fixed national policy. It is generally agreed that
existing cities and certain growth centers need to be strengthened.
Because o f this and to the small overall population, there have been
no real plans for independent new towns. There is curerntly no
specific legislation providing fo r a new towns program, despite the
success o f Tapiola. However, many new satellite towns (dependent
on existing cities) have been developed, particularly in the Helsinki
area.
As envisaged by the National Planning Office, the broad role for
national planners is to advise on the location o f production, the de
velopment o f existing population centers, and the establishment of
new centers. T o a lesser extent, administrative organization and the
role o f cultural institutions are included in national planning.
The Ministry o f the Interior lias final responsibility for planning
and building decisions at the national, regional, and local levels. The
National Planning Office, which is subordinate to the National Plan
ning Council whose members include representatives of the ministries
and state boards related to national planning, submits advice and
recommendations to the Ministry and to other agencies, as appro
priate. The Ministry o f the Interior is responsible for policy. It also
is responsible for a pp rovin g municipal plans including town plans,
and master plans, and municipal building regulations.
Most o f the country is described as a “ developing area."' The gov
ernment has vet to favor the creation o f functionally efficient urban
centers. Criticism has been raised that there is insufficient coordina
tion between various special brandies o f government at the national
and regional levels.
The government is currently engaged in a full-scale reform of
existing planning legislation. It hopes to develop national planning
601
policies which will promote the development o f growth centers other
than Helsinki, through the location o f new public facilities. Although
it is generally recognized that the Uusimaa administrative district,
which includes Helsinki, will probably continue to attract most o f
the projected population increase between now and the year 2000,
there is also general concensus that the capital city is already large
enough.
REGIONAL PLAN N IN G IN FIN LAN D
A ccording to the Planning and Building Act Amendment o f 1968,
the Ministry o f the Interior has defined areas within which groups
o f municipalities for regional planning are responsible for regional
planning. Regional planning is directed and supervised by the M inis
try o f the Interior, the Provincial Administrations and by the Na
tional Planning Office. A regional planning authority does not have
any implementation power. The legal effects o f a regional plan are
fairly limited. However, it does provide instructions for more detailed
planning.
Voluntary regional planning has been underway since the early
1940s, and virtually all parts o f the country are now included in either
voluntary or government-mandated regional planning areas. The con
tent and complexity o f the plan depends upon the stage o f develop
ment o f the region. The Ministry o f the Interior provides financial
aid to voluntary regional planning agencies and pays half the cost
o f compulsory regional planning, with local governments in the region
contributing the remainder.
Finland lias made a good start in regional planning. A “ structural
plan'' is completed for all fourteen regional planning districts, as a
result o f a planning directive from the Ministry o f Internal Affairs.
The structural plan includes the systematization o f different types
o f centers as well as major communications elements. Urgent tasks
include the determination o f natural areas to be preserved untouched
in each region, and the reservation o f land for recreation and tourism
near urbanized areas.
B y 1970, preliminary regional plans, drawn up by associations of
communities, had been completed for southern Finland and for part
o f central Finland. Efforts to combine these plans have been handi
capped by the lack o f uniform demographic and economic prognoses
and development objectives. They have also been complicated by the
sometimes conflicting aims o f Finnish national planning, which are
to : mobilize the country's scarce resources; promote national economic
growth; and, at the same time, assure the same level o f welfare to the
inhabi tants o f all regions.
To date, the dominance o f rural interests in Parliament has resulted
in a lack o f emphasis on clean urbanization policies. Regional plans
are also needed for areas o f population out-migration and for those o f
in-mi .o’rat ion.
Reform efforts in planning legislation now underway provide for the
present regional plan to be more than a mere land use plan. It is
expected to be a statement o f the regional policy measures i.e. a
regional strategic plan for long term development.
602
LOCAL P LAN N IN G IN FINLAN D
There are three types o f municipality in Finland : the city, the town,
and the rural municipality. As o f 1065. there were 46 cities, 24 towns,
and 476 rural municipalities, half o f which have fewer than 4000
inhabitants. Planning at this level, as provided for by the 1959 B uild
ing Act, includes the building plan, town plan, and master plan. The
building plan is for rural areas only, and is prepared by the municipal
ity and approved by the provincial administration, acting as an arm
o f the Ministry o f Interior, subject to advice and coordination from
the National Planning Office.
Characteristic o f the Finnish administrative system is the strong
position o f local self government. The municipality lias the right to
form its own general policy under the general supervision o f state
authorities, determine the rate o f taxation, and regulate land use in
densely populated areas.
The use o f a master plan, which consists o f a plan in general fea
tures for the present and future uses of the land o f the municipality,
has not yet become common. Rural municipalities are not obliged
to a plan drawup. In order to become legally effective, a master plan
must be submitted to the Ministry o f the Interior for approval. Plans
similar to a master plan, which are not meant to be submitted for
approval, are drawn up in many municipalities. In most o f them, the
general outline for land use is considered inadequate by national
officials.
Town plans are made for dense population areas and are the
responsibility o f cities and towns. A detailed town plan must be ap
proved by the Ministry o f the Interior. The same applies to bylaws.
A lthough many plans o f both types are in the process o f being drawn
up, and have been required since 1959, few have yet been completed
and approved.
At the local level, there are increasing tendencies to combine all
local planning under one local authority and to establish better links
between local public planning authorities and private developers.
Many urban communities are establishing building registers. These
registers will serve as local data banks in cooperation with the develop
ment o f national demographic, building, and other registers.
T o date, planning has been mainly concerned with the expansion
o f existing areas and with the development o f new housing areas
around old towns. Problems o f urban renewal are few because there
are reportedly no slums.
It has not been possible to develop new towns, as a general policy,
because the expropriation laws are not sufficient for these purposes.
At the time that Tapiola was started, raw land was acquired through
voluntary purchase.
Legislation is now being prepared for a new planning instrument
for the municipal area level. It is suggested that for each local author
ity's area a so-called implementation plan will be prepared. This short
term plan would control all development and essential changes o f
environment within one municipal area. The plan would indicate
priorities, timing and costs o f the planned changes. The local authority
would also have increased possibilities to control the environmental
quality o f its area.
603
The formulation o f this new plan is the major proposed change
in the land-use planning machinery. The new plan will designate for
each five-year period the areas where development can take place. The
plan is to be rene wed annually and new areas are added when necessary.
This is a reverse o f the present situation where all development is
allowed unless it is not specifically prohibited or restricted. W ith the
proposed system, the power o f the authorities to control changes in
the environment should increase considerably.
I f these propositions are approved, the new machinery will be tested
011 a small scale, within certain municipal areas, before their wider
application.
HOUSING IN FINLAN D
The proportion o f owner-occupied dwellings in Finland is relatively
proportionally high by European standards, accounting for some 60%
o f tlie total housing stock. In 1970, 93% o f dwellings produced were
equipped with hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing and a
water-closet; this may be compared with a level o f only 63% in 1950.
An effort has been made to intensify the production o f rental hous
ing, since fo r the most part industrial manpower consists o f workers
newly released from agricultural production, who may not have the
resources to acquire their own dwellings.
HOUSING SUBSIDIES AND ASSISTANCE
In order to reduce the costs o f housing, families with children living
in rented dwellings are entitled to state housing allowances. The ob
jective is to bring tlie cost o f housing down to about 20% o f the
family's income. Since the beginning o f A pril o f this year, single-child
families, in addition to families with at least two children, are entitled
to this allowance.
The need to place an increasing number of elderly persons with low
incomes in new and modern dwellings has been made easier by the
new system o f housing allowances for the aged, which came into force
in i 970 and which is being refined.
In addition to these social welfare programs, the most important
form o f State support for housing production consists o f law interest
loans, given as secondary credit. These loans may be granted, according
to the Housing Act, either for specific building or on a personal basis.
The Xational Housing Board was established in March 1966, as
successor to the State Housing Board. It has the follow ing purposes:
(1) T o achieve steady growth for housing.
(2) T o prepare a national program for housing.
(3) T o regulate community housing programs.
(1) T o give loans and guarantees, subsidize interest, award re
search grants, and give housing allowances.
(5) T o make proposals for annual h ousing appropriations.
To centralize administration, the Housing Board is placed under the
AI in ist rv o f Internal Affai rs.
The Xational Housing Board, A R A V A , is the chief source o f gov
ernment financial aid to private urban development, supporting about
25 percent o f current housing production.
604
A R A Y A is used to promote the government's policies o f relieving
the housing shortage, ameliorating housing conditions, and providing
wintertime employment.
I f A R A V A decides that land costs are too high, loans may be re
fused; however, no one figure has been established above which land
will be classed as too expensive, because land costs vary considerably
throughout the country.
W hen A R A V A loans are used to subsidize the building rental hous
ing, A R V A controls the rents charged, permitting the owner a retuijn
o f 6.5 percent on his investment. In addition, A R A V A oversees tenant
selection to assure that preference is given to those in greatest need
o f housing, and control housing standards.
H ousing credit, granted by the state, has increased constantly. At
the same time, there has been an intensified effort to substitute per
sonal housing loans for loans granted for a particular building; in
other words, the loan is granted directly to the person in need o f the
dwelling, so that the real need for a state loan o f the family in a
particular dwelling can be taken jn to account. As long as a loan is
granted fo r a particular building as a whole, each apartment in the
building receives the same benefit from the loan. The shift toward
personal credit makes it possible to scale the amount o f the loan to the
income and property o f each individual family. In this way, two ob
jectives can be achieved: the more effective distribution o f state loans
among different families, and the intermingling o f families at d if
ferent socio-economic levels in the same housing areas.
The Finnish money market is primarily operated through the pri
vate banking system. The central bank and sole bank o f issue. The
Bank o f Finland, is an autonomous public institution opera tins; with
the support and supervision o f Parliament. Both building mortgages
and personal housing loans have belonged to the lowest interest rate
categories, which in practice has meant an interest rate o f about
T.5-8.5%.
rL A X X IX G
FOR H O TSIXG
In 1967, a new H ousin g Act took effect which among other things,
charges all the communities o f more than 10,000 inhabitants with
drawing up five-year housing programs. This amendment has a posi
tive impact on the drawing up o f master plans. The primary objective
o f the housing production program is to guide housing construction in
such a way that the people amount and type o f housing is built in the
right place at the right time.
The second objective is to avoid large periodic fluctuations in con
struction. The programs help to indicate bottleneck situations affecting
housing production so that steps can be taken to eliminate them. O f
the factors holding back housing production in Finland, the most im
portant ones are the problems connected with financing and the lack
o f land suitable for construction (long-term land policy, planning and
public utilities construction").
O f the undeveloped laud in cities and towns which lias been al
lotted fo f housing and related purposes, or is suitable for them, the
cities and towns own 29%, the state and the congregations own about
1% each, and other communities and private owners own 70%. The
situation varies considerably in different cities.
605
The programming o f housing production at the national level will
begin during 1972. The principles and organization o f the programs
have now been worked out.
M unicipal housing production programs for five-year intervals, to
be drawn up annually, have now been prepared for the period 197276 in 182 municipalities, representing some 36% o f all Finnish muni
cipalities. Many rural municipalities, which are not legally required to
draw up housing production programs, have done so voluntarily.
About 85% o f all housing production currently takes place in munici
palities in which such programs exist.
During the past year, a study was made o f the financing o f housing
production in Finland. A ccording to the study 51.1% o f all housing
production is financed by banks and insurance firms. The state’s
share was 19.1%, and that o f private dwelling purchasers 23.4%.
W hile a preponderant share o f the financing o f housing production
comes from private sources, state housing appropriations have in
creased five-fold from 1966 to 1972 (or four-fold in terms o f the 1966
value o f the m ark).
To cope with the pressure o f rapid population growth in the muni
cipalities o f the Helsinki metropolitan area, arrangements were made
to transfer normally public construction tasks connected with the
urban development to private developers, and today this procedure
is quite common. Arrangments o f this kind are usually considered to
be necessary when the annual population growth exceeds 2-3% .
Experiences gained from this arrangement are in many wavs posi
tive. Some 15,000 dwellings are constructed annually quickly and
flexibly. One o f the consequences has been the growth o f bigger com
panies which are able to make more effective use o f new construction
technology. The environment created is usually considered to be quite
satisfactory, or even good, as in Tapiola.
N E W DIRECTIONS IN HOUSING POLICY AND TECHNOLOGY
In order to stimulate the investment o f private capital in housing,
production tax exemptions have been granted at various times, but
this has been gradually withdrawn because o f speculation and reduced
public tax funds. Only owner occupied dwellings are presently ex
empted from taxes.
A governmental committee recently published its recommendations
for the future policy o f the financing o f housing. A ccording to these,
government subsidies for housing should be increased only on social
grounds. No general tax reliefs were considered appropriate. A suit
able form to promote individual saving schemes bv rewards should
be introduced. The share o f individual financing should be reduced
particularly during the first years after the completion o f housing
projects. The committee also emphasized the necessit}^ o f middle- and
long-term planning o f housing production and proposed that the allo
cation o f state grants be fixed rather firmly for 3-5 years in advance.
Smallness continues to be characteristic o f Finnish building enter
prises, The share o f the ten largest building firms o f the total market,
toward the end o f the 1960’s, was about 26%. Recently, however, some
concentration has been taking place.
606
As early as 1966, over half o f the m ultifamily government-subsi
dized housing was prefabricated, and over a third o f the detached
houses were standard models. Finland exports prefab wooden houses.
The process o f unification o f the building standards in the Nordic
countries continues. The purpose o f this work is to devise a set o f uni
form building norms for all the Nordic countries by the year 1975.
P l a x x i x g a x d H o u s ix g i x S w e d e x
The Swedish Government's national urban growth objective is to
provide an equal level o f urban services throughout the country. Cur
rent national planning is aimed at bulding up communities other then
Stockholm, which is approximately twice as large as Sweden’s next
largest city. The government is even willing to move large govern
ment offices out o f the city to help accomplish this. It also provides
direct financial assistance to improve economic, social, and cultural
conditions in the depressed and sparsely-settled north. It has already
reduced the number o f municipalities from 2,000 to 1,000. It hopes
eventually to reduce these to *200, each with a population o f 120,000.
The Ministry o f Labor and Housing is currently preparing an “ action
program*' for urban growth which it hopes to present to Parliament
in late 1972. This program is based on municipal development priori
ties and goals, recently established by the county administrations in
cooperation with the municipalities under their jurisdiction.
Commenting this year on the Plan to American officials, the Minister
o f Labor and Housing summed up the linkage between housing and
urban growth objectives:
In Sweden, the discussion concerning old and new buildings, high-rise or low
structures constitutes an integral part of the public debate on the environment
which is becoming increasingly intensive. One of the major issues in this debate
is the use o f land resources.
A national plan outlininf/ hoir our a rail able land resou rces should be utilized
is being pr ep ared and is e x p ected to be pr esented by th e end o f this yea r. The
problem concerns the important question of how to economize with our limited
land resources and to balance the different interests that are competing with
one another for the available land. An essential task for our planning work is
to insure adequate protection of valuable environments against pollution and
unsuitab!e exploitation.
This section was heavily dependent for information on (in addition
to the material information gained in interviews with Swedish offi
cials) the Swedish government report “ Physical Planning in S w ed en ”
the National Board o f Urban Planning, information in English, No.
2, 1972. and a still-draft R eport on Housing and Urban Developm ent
in Sired cn dated March 8.1972, prepared by the Office o f International
Affairs o f the U.S. Department o f Housing and Urban Development.
Anna Louise Strong's Planned Urban Environments, cited above was
also very helpful.
X A T IO X A L P L A X X IX G I X SWEDEX
Swedish national interest in planning dates back to the 1500's, when
proposals for new town development had to be approved by the K ing
before building could start.
National planning consists o f the work o f various national boards,
in the development o f standards and, in a few instances, in the prepa
607
ration o f national plans covering the board's particular area o f re
sponsibility. Concern over the secondary effects o f a relatively affluent
society — increasing urbanization and the concomitant depopulation
o f the countryside, rapidly rising car ownership, greater leisure time,
and the expanding conflict between demands for coastal land for
summer houses, fo r industry, and for public open space— underlies the
grow ing interest in national growth planning.
In local areas where 110 detailed plan exists or is in preparation, the
national and provincial governments have a number o f means of con
trolling land use, including, at the provincial level, categorization o f
a proposed use as dense development, issuance o f prohibitions, shore
line regulations, and, at the national level, designation o f nature monu
ments. Many o f these controls have aesthetic objectives.
ACTIVITIES OF THE NATIONAL P L AN N IN G BOARD
The National Board o f Urban Planning was established in 1967.
It is the central administrative agency for planning settlements and
building construction.
Building legislation contains regulations for both the planning of
settlements and residential building. Provisions governing planning
mainly regulate the preparation o f settlement plans, whereas building
regulations are primarily concerned with the construction o f buildings
from a technical point o f view. Building regulations are often only
general rules, which to a great extent need to be augmented with more
detailed stipulations. It is the duty o f the Board o f Urban Planning
to issue such stipulations.
Moreover, the Board has to issue advice and instructions for plan
ning and for construction. Such advice and instructions have, in con
trast to stipulations for construction, no legal force.
The Planning Division deals with matters of planning which arjs
referred to the Board for consideration and pronouncement. Planning
matters against which an appeal has been lodged with the Government
are, as a rule, referred to the Board for opinion. Furthermore, the
Board has to make reports 011 a great number o f matters regarding
permits pursuant to the Environmental Protection Act.
The task o f working out recommendations for advice and instruc
tions for planning devolves 011 the Development Division. As it is
the munipalities and countries who are responsible for the planning o f
settlements, advice and instructions are mainly issued to them.
The Technical Division is responsible for the preparation of regula*
tions, advice and instructions for residental building. The Board at
tempts to promote the trend in the building industry toward mecha
nized building methods by issuing information on approved types of
prefabricated buildings and building elements. Types o f building
materials approved by the Board o f Urban Planning many not be re
jected by the municipalities when they examine applications for build
ing permits.
N E W DIRECTIONS
In 1968 a government committee was appointed to draw up recom
mendations for new national planning legislation. The committee was
instructed to assume that there is a national physical plan, which will
608
serve as a key plan for regional and local physical planning. A special
memorandum has also been prepared recommending the changes neces
sary in current legislation to enable physical planning on a nation
wide scale. It is recommended that the Government be given the power
to instruct municipalities to prepare master plans and get them rati
fied, where this is necessary to ensure the attainment of objectives
indicated in the national plan. Moreover, proposals have been made
for changes designated to give the State greater power to control the
establishment of scattered settlements and the location of polluting
industries. These proposals are now before the Swedish Parliament.
REGIONAL P L AN N IN G IN SWEDEN
In Sweden, regional planning has been partly voluntary and partly
obligatory. Contiguous or neighboring municipalities may decide to
establish a common regional plan and, in so doing, utilize available
central government assistance. Alternatively, the central govern
ment may order the formation of a regional planning federation,
whether or not all communities are agreed. The regional federation
for the Stockholm area was formed by central government statute.
There is no comprehensive national plan but national sectoral plans
exist for highways, hospitals, electric power, and agriculture.
In 1965 new regional legislation was enacted, broadening the scope
of regional policy and applying it nation-wide. The goals of this new
policy are to “maximize the national product bv promoting a location
of industry and commerce in different areas which will make efficient
use of the available factors of production.” equate social and cultural
services throughout the country, reduce difficulties encountered in eco
nomic expansion or structural change, increase employment oppor
tunities, and facilitate national defense.
REGIONAL INCENTIVES
The regional development policy is pursued through three means:
regional planning: information and guidance; and financial support.
The financial support, in the form of both investment subsidies and
loans, is directed principally to the Northern Development Area of
Sweden, which has % of the country's area but only 17 percent of its
population. The subsidies provided do not. in general, exceed 35 per
cent of total investment costs. In implementing regional development
policy, the legislation requires that “stimulative” measures only be
utilized, that coercive means may not be applied, and that “market
forces are to be interfered with as little as possible”.
LOCAL PL AN N IN G IN SWEDEN
Urban planning in Sweden is metropolitan-wide, and is the function
of the municipalities who are responsible by law for land-use planning,
housing production, and the rehabilitation or demolition of substand
ard structures.
Municipalities with appreciable residential construction are legally
required to prepare five-year housing production programs, which
form the basis of annual two-year housing production programs for
the entire country. They must also draw up long-term, intermediate,
609
and one- or two-year land-use plans, which cover, respectively, the
whole municipality, a single section, or a specific site. According to
a recent U.S. Mission, headed by the Under Secretary of the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development, these plans are im
plemented more effectively in Sweden than in the U.S. because:
The municipal practice of leasing rather than selling land
enables Swedish cities to control its use.
Private developers must conform to municipal plans.
Legal restrictions on the individuaFs use of his land force him
to comply with the municipal plans or to sell his land to the
municipality, which then leases it to someone who will.
LOCAL P L AN N IN G LEGISLATION
Sweden has no legislation dealing solely with planning; the 1947
Building Act and the Building Statutes of 1959 contain the basic
planning authority.
Settlements supplying the needs of agriculture and forestry are, in
the main, uncontrolled. In the case of other types of settlement, the
building legislation makes a rigid distinction between urban settle
ments and rural settlements. Urban building is subject to strict control,
and the local public authorities have the sole right to plan where and
when construction may occur.
All Swedish municipalities are required by law to prepare five-year
housing production programs. They must also draw up the following
three types of plans, although all have not yet done so.
A ten-year or longer “master” plan which covers the whole
municipal area and which includes projections of population,
economic development, physical, economic and social resources
and limitations, and estimates of the needed construction and
open space.
A five-year “disposal*’ plan which includes similar projections
and which covers a single neighborhood or geographic section of
the municipal area in greater detail.
A detailed physical “town” plan which is implemented in one
or two years and which specifies every detail of land use for a
specific site.
The master plan is regularly amended from time to time and is fol
lowed religously as a guide for more detailed planning of future devel
opment and land-use. The disposal plan is considered an intermediate
tool and is used primarily to supplement the master plan and to inter
relate the master and town plans. The latter must be approved by the
Municipal Council which has political responsibility for planning.
These plans are drawn up by the National Board of Urban Plan
ning's “Local Building and Planning Committees,” which are respon
sible for municipal building and planning decisions and which are
required by national law in each municipality. They are prepared ac
cording to the framework established by the Board, which issues
regulations for the construction and design of buildings and other
works, approves plans submitted to it by the national and local gov
ernments, and provides technical standards and advisory services on
construction.
610
The Local Building: and Planning Committee is staffed by the
Municipal Building and Planning Office. This office is subordinate to
the Municipal Council. It consists primarily of architects, planners,
land surveyors, and engineers, and does not appear to include social
scientists or specialists in education, health, etc.
P LAN APPROVAL
Plans are developed in what is deemed the public interest but are
drawn up in virtual secrecy. Comment is received only after they are
published and is provided by experts or by large institutions, such as
builders’ associations, and labor and tenants' unions.
Detailed plans are a prerequisite to intensive development. They
need cover only those areas where dense development is anticipated.
Once officially adopted, the town plan places on the municipality the
responsibility for land acquisition, development of community facili
ties, and amenities such as streets, parks, and market places. Condem
nation may be applied, if needed.
All types of plans obtain legal effect after being approved by the
municipal authority and ratified bv the county administration or* the
government agency. Caution has been observed in ratifying master
plans, as ratification has extensive legal implications, such as obliga
tion on the part of the municipality to arrange for infrastructure
and the release of land. Thus far, only six regional plans and ten
master plans have been ratified. But several master plans have boon
approved by the municipalities only, and these provide ex officio
guidelines for the expansion of municipalities.
M U N ICIPA L PURCHASE OF LAND
Stockholm and other Swedish cities have been purchasing land for
half a century, both within and outside their borders, to provide for fu
ture development and control the land's market value. They frequently
retain control of this land by leasing rather than selling it. In all cases,
developers are required to conform to official plans. This makes landuse planning easier and more effective, and gives the municipalities
some of the “unearned” increment resulting from higher land prices
due to urbanization, though at the cost of purchase and loss of taxes.
The usual practice is to lease it for farm use until development is
imminent, then lease it for development under a sixty-year term. There
is a tradition of extraterritorial land purchase in surrounding munici
palities, primarily for housing sites. Currently municipalities are buy
ing little land for future development, and have developed or leased
most of what the}’ own. Although there are a few administrative and
legal barriers, the main impediment to municipal land acquisition is
lack of funds.
THE CASE OF STOCKHOLM
A Washington Star reporter investigating European new towns in
1969 was obviously impressed with Stockholm's satellite communities.
Imagine that the District of Columbia had begun buying land in the suburbs
at the turn of the century, and was building planned communities a few minutes’
walk from large shopping and cultural centers and from a subway reaching any
part of the metropolitan area.
611
These city-owned planned suburbs ot about 50,000 people apiece might be
located in Wheaton and Greenbelt in suburban Marylnd, in Vienna and Annandale in suburban Virginia.
No American city has done anything like this.
But Stockholm has.
Stockholm’s land acquisition program was aggressively pursued,
beginning in the early 1900*s. by a conservative municipal government
which began buying large holdings well outside the citys boundaries
and the developed areas.
All municipally-owned land is leased. Stockholm develops land in
accordance with its plans rather than as a reflection of the market
value of a given site. Land acquisition costs are aggregated so that the
rents from a particular site need not return its acquisition cost to the
city.
Three-quarters of the housing built since World War II is on mu
nicipally-owned land. The present satellite communities— Vallingby,
Farsta, and Bredang— were built on city land. Each of the satellite
centers is designed, not only to provide easy subway access to the cen
tral city, but also to create a sense of place and neighborhood. This is
accomplished by providing quick pedestrian access to schools, shops,
and community facilities, separating the centers from one another, and
by giving each center unique physical characteristics.
H OUSING I N SWEDEN
Sweden's current housing situation is surprising. The country did
not participate in World War I I and suffered no war damage ; it has
a steadily growing national product and the highest per capita income
in Europe; its housing 'production in units per thousand per capita is
the highest in Europe, currently almost twice that of the United States,
and yet it has serious housing shortages and feels required to maintain
rent controls.
Housing production comprises a larger proportion of the GXP in
Sweden than it does in the United States. The proportion of national
savings channeled into housing is also considerably higher in Sweden.
This is due to the high priority the government currently places on:
Assuring an adequate volume of housing production to meet
the requirements of new households to reduce present serious
overcrowding, to provide a vacancy rate sufficient to accommodate
population mobility and to issue stable employment in the con
struction industry :
Assuring an adequate flow of mortgage credit to support the
desired volume of construction.
At the present time, national housing policies are more clearly articu
lated and more closely adhered to than planning policies.
The H U D mission found that the Swedish government plays a large
and affirmative role indetermining the quantity and type of housing
that is built, where it is built, and by whom. Although private enter
prise participates significantly in both housing construction and
financing, the private sector appears content to respond to government
leadership and initiative.
The government annually determines how many housing units are
to receive state mortgage aid in the ensuing year, how much money
is to be provided for such aid, and how construction is to be divided
612
between single- and multi-family housing. Following this determina
tion, the National Housing Board is responsible for allocating the total
number of authorized housing units among the provincial housing
boards, each of which, in turn, allocates its housing units to the muni
cipalities within its territory. I f a municipality is not prepared to
accept its quota of housing, the units must be reallocated to municipal
ities able to build them.
Given that up to 90 percent of all housing construction is dependent
on receipt of government mortgage assistance, these housing unit allo
cations effectively limit the volume and location of housing construc
tion which a given community may undertake.
SUBSIDY AND HOUSING ALLOWANCE PROGRAMS
The government’s fiscal and monetary policy, as well as its housing
finance policy, are aimed at assuring an adequate flow of funds into
housing production. Government housing credits (subsidies) are
designed to cover the top part of needed housing credits, those which
cannot be secured in the capital market. About 70 percent of dwelling
production costs come from the investor, or capital market sources,
and most of the remainder comes from the government. Although the
government estimates its involvement at just over 20 percent of all
housing credits, this is so icidespread that perhaps as much as 90 per
cent of all dwellings being built receive some government aid. The
government also holds periodic discussions with private lenders who
supply mortgage funds for housing construction. As a result, housing
construction has been stable in recent years.
Sweden is replacing its extensive interest rate subsidy program with
a housing allowance program. This change was due to the high cost
of the former which, although not as deep as current TT.<S. interest
rate subsidies, was far broader. The interest rate program also benefited
many middle-income families whose need for the subsidy w^as not great.
Swedish experience in shifting from interest rate subsidies to hous
ing allowances has indicated that:
It is difficult both politically and economically for a government
which has been involved in a large housing production subsidy
program to withdraw from it.
The Swedish government has not relinquished its leverage on
the rate, location and character of new construction.
Housing allowances are not necessarily less costly than produc
tion subsidies.
The Swedes have developed a system of parity loans to ease the
impact of the change from one program to the other on the housing
market and rents. The housing allowance program is aimed at provid
ing economic support for low-income families with children, and to
improve their standard of housing. The cost of administering (5 per
cent) is considerably lower than the current estimated cost of adminis
tering a housing allowance program in the United States.
Eligibility is determined from tax returns, and eligible families are
sent applications and instructions on filling them out. Payments are
in cash. There are no inspections to determine if recipients are ade
quately housed.
613
LOCAL HOUSING PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT
Parallel with comprehensive physical planning, practically all muni
cipalities carry out continuity planning of residential building. Every
year, the municipalities prepare a residential building program for
the next five years. These programs contain details not only regarding
housing increment size and its breakdown by type of house and
dwelling unit area, but also particulars on the location of housing
and ownership of land. These programs provide the basis for the plan
ning of social services, building of roads, mains and, not least, develop
ment agreements with landowners on land acquisition.
Non-profit public groups and cooperatively-owned private groups
manage more than 50 percent of all multi-family units in Sweden. They
are large, powerful, well-capitalized, and leaders in residential
development.
HOUSING TECHNOLOGY
The Swedish building industry, like that in the United States, has
a very low level of concentration. But Swedish firms appear more will
ing to invest large sums in industrialized building factories, and in
long-range research in industrialized building products and procedures
than are most American firms. Sweden, unlike the United States, has
a national building code permitting the industrialized housing indus
try to operate nation-wide, and a National Board which approves
system components. Since 1966, the Government has allocated 10,000
units a year, or 10 percent of Sweden’s annual housing production, to
industrialized housing producers in the form of advance notification
of loans. This enables producers to plan future production with the
knowledge that their output will be saleable.
BUILDING SYSTEM
The backbone of the industrialized building industry is the con
crete housing unit for multi-family housing, although production of
prefabricated wooden housing is significant. Many Swedes, including
some in the industrialized housing industry, wish to return to lowTrise construction. There is increasing public pressure for reintroduc
tion of the single-family house.
P l a n n i n g a n d H o u s in g i n P o l a n d
Postwar development policies in Poland have given first priority
to national economic growth. In Poland, unlike most other European
countries, there is no large capital city playing a dominant role. The
city of Warsaw has a population of only 1,800,000 in a country of 82
million. War damage and later exchanges of population with neigh
boring countries slowed down the rate of growth of most of the Polish
towms, some of which have not yet reached their pre-war population
level, so that they have ample scope for natural development.
The guidelines for a policy of national growth policy have a differ
ent emphasis than in most other countries. The main aim is to ensure
the balanced economic development of the whole country, since at
the end of the war 69 per cent of the population was rural.
614
Two principles— a balanced economic development benefiting all
regions alike, and economic plans— have guided the authorities in
their choice of sites for development, particularly of industry. The
general principles were established early:
The avoidance of establishing industries not directly linked to
the extraction of raw materials in existing industrial regions
(particularly Upper Silesia).
The installation near, but outside, these regions of industries
using these raw materials (coal), but not essential to the coalfields,
to create new industrial complexes (Cracow, Czestochowa, Opole).
The establishment of new industrial centres in the rural areas
of the country (the area in the angle of the San and Vistula, the
TTizna region and the area around Pila).
The siting of industries not dependent on coal in existing or
planned urban centers.
NATIO N AL P L A N N IN G I N POLAND
A Department of Land Development was set up in 1966, under the
National Economic Planning Committee deriving its powers from
the Council of Ministers, entrusted with the detailed study of a co
herent national planning policy and long-term economic plans.
This development reflects a move toward integration of physical
planning within the already established pattern of economic planning,
which is characteristic of communist countries.
At present, the responsibility for planning is shared at four admin
istrative levels: the government (for the national policy of land use) :
the seventeen regions, each with its economic planning committee
possessing a department for regional planning and a department of
town planning, entrusted with local plans: 235 districts (out of 356),
each with its town planning section; and finally the local authorities.
TYPES OF PLANS
Poland has three principal types of general economic plans: annual,
short-term (five-year), and long-term (perspective) plans. The oneyear and the five-year plans operate on a national scale and on a local
scale. Recently annual and short-term planning has been supplemented
by perspective planning. A perspective plan is elaborated to cover n
period of fifteen to twenty years and to cover the entire economy of
the country. Perspective plans are also being drafted for the economic
regions of the country as well as for certain sectors. There is, however,
no one general system of perspective planning to be applied to all
economic units.
The predominance of annual plans, with the drafting of annual
objectives for enterprises, has been a characteristic feature of the
Polish planning system. It is justified by the economic situation of
the country and the accepted objectives of Polish economic policy.
Proof that national planning is not mere theory or paperwork but
rather deals with the realities of life for the man in the street is
documented by recent Polish developments.
615
FIVE-YEAR PLANS
The National Economic Plan for 1966-70 followed the pattern of
the first and second five-year plans. It called for further industrializa
tion, mechanization in agriculture and some modest expansion of the
service sector.
Demonstrations and strikes in various Polish cities began at the
end of 1970 and early in 1971, when Polish workers protested against
increased living costs, lack of housing, and other economic problems.
The new Polish leadership moved in the direction of bringing about
a substantial improvement in living standards, including a downward
adjustment of food prices, modest increases in planned production of
housing, and the development of a “people’s” car. Private agricultural
production was stimulated.
The Gierek government ordered a revision of the National Economic
Plan for 1971-75, originally drafted by the previous leadership. In
December 1971, the Sixth Party Congress adopted a resolution which
sets forth the primary objectives and development goals for the econ
omy in the current five-year plan. According to the resolution, the
principal aim of the Party's revised socio-economic policy is to sys
tematically improve the living conditions of the average citizen
through higher wages, a better supply of consumer goods, and accel
erated housing construction. National income is to increase 40 percent
in the five-year plan period, while real wages are to rise 18 percent,
double the rate achieved in 1966-70. The revised plan also calls for
high growth rates in consumer consumption, investment and agricul
tural production.
REGIONAL P L A N N IN G I N
POLAND
The basic goal of land policy in Poland is to achieve industrial
development for the entire country. Further growth of high density
areas is discouraged and little-developed regions are being gradually
prepared with social and physical infrastructure for more advanced
industrialization. Definition of the most appropriate functions for
each region and area is a direct objective of current Polish planning
studies.
According to Part I I of the Act of 1961, regional plans must define
the directions of general economic and social development of the area,
the methods and steps in implementation, the principles of distribution
of productive forces and service investments, the configuration of set
tlement network, and the distribution of population, as well as general
land use. Plans are prepared for periods equal to those of the National
Economic Plan. They take the form of both general plans and detailed
implementation plans.
A general regional plan is prepared for each state within the
country. This plan in principle covers the area defined by adminis
trative limits. With consent of the Chairman of the Planning Com
mission of the Council of Ministers and related State Councils, a
regional plan for areas other than a state can be prepared. Detailed
regional plans are prepared for those parts of the state or of neighbor
ing states where large economic investments or activities are expected.
81-745— 72— pt. 2--------5
616
TH E REVIEW AND APPROVED PROCESS
Regional plans are prepared by the Department of Economic Plan
ning of each state, in cooperation with advisory committees composed
of government officials, scientific institute representatives, and individ
ual scientists appointed by state and national authorities. After coordi
nation with related administrative departments, plans are approved
by state and independent municipal councils and presented as proposals
to the Council of Ministers. They are examined by the Planning
Commission of the Council of Ministers and by its Committee on
Building, Urbanism and Architecture. The Council of Ministers then
must approve the basic elements of each regional plan.
Regional plans are generally implemented through adoption of
consistent local land development plans. Regional plans are also used
as a basis for decision by the national government on the location of
major industrial, building, and road investments. The Chairman of
the Planning Commission of the Council of Ministers, in consultation
with the Chairman of the Committee on Building, Urbanism and
Architecture, has authority under the Act of 1961 to publish develop
ment orders for implementation of regional plans.
TH E W ARSAW REGION AS A CASE
The Planning process in the Warsaw region may be indicative of
other regional planning efforts in the country. In July 1969, the plan
for the Conurbation and city of Warsaw was accepted by the Minister
of Building, and on July 10,1969 it was approved by the joint session
of the People's Councils of the City and Voivodship of Warsaw.
The following general principles have been adopted for the devel
opment of the city of Warsaw and its Conurbation until 1985:
Curbing the rapid population growth by planned restriction
of the number of new places of work;
Increasing the standards of satisfaction of needs and services for
the inhabitants, in all spheres of life;
Diminishing the disproportions in the standards of satisfy
ing the needs of the inhabitants of the towns of Warsaw Conurba
tion and of the city of Warsaw, leveling the standards of the
respective districts of Warsaw;
Expansion of the city’s service functions and enhancement of
the amount of leisure time of the inhabitants.
Providing for correct ecological and climatic conditions in the
city by setting up an air-penetration system of open spaces.
In order to relieve the region, and especially the city of Warsaw,
from excessive migration of population— at present it is curbed by ad
ministrative regulations, the regional plan provides for the establish
ment of major centers of industry and services in chosen towns of the
region. These are situated some 20 miles from Warsaw, namely in
Plock, Ciechanow, Ostroleka, and Siedlce. The intent is to raise them
to the rank of centers of industry, cultural life and services.
LOCAL P L A N N IN G IN POLAND
There are, in theory, three types of plans at the community level,
distinguished by their different targets: the master plans, latecomers
617
in Poland, are very long-term plans aimed at directing development
for twenty years or more, and are in preparation experimentally at
Cracow and Gdansk; medium-term plans (twenty years) to carry out
the dictates of the economic plan (which itself has a target of more
than twenty years) ; short term (five-year) plans, which carry out the
different parts of the medium-term plans and are in close conjunction
with the five-year economic plans.
This task of town planning was fairly well advanced by 1964, when
867 towns out of 891 had medium-term plans, accompanied by detailed
studies of the proposed level of services and the development neces
sary to achieve it. The short-term plans contain details of the financial
needs of the next five-year period. Due to the work done in the Polish
departments of town planning and land development, not only a large
range of studies and plans but a profession of town planning and
land use has gradually been developed over the last two decades.
General plans for cities and groups of settlements are prepared by
the planning departments of the various states. General and detailed
plans for towns and villages are prepared by district planning depart
ments. There is provision for coordination of local plans which affect
more than one locality, higher authorities having the filial control.
Citizen participation in preparation of local plans is achieved by
involving local councils in the planning process. Before making plan
ning decisions, these councils must organize a public discussion and
consider criticism and proposals.
SOME DIFFERENCES
A British observer commenting on local planning in Poland (MacMurray, Town and Country Planning, February 1971) wTas struck by
three basic differences from English planning practice. First, Polish
planning seeks to create cities without social or economic divisions.
There is a commitment to the socially integrative value of housing and
a wide range of social services. Second, city planning is greatly influ
enced by economic plans which provide specific instructions on indus
trial location and limits on high rates of urbanization in already devel
oped areas. Tlie city planning process is thus given a strong physicalengineering-architectural bias. Third, policy calls for high-density
urban areas with new residential development slab and tower block
apartments.
H OUSING IN POLAND
A trend from state housing to cooperative housing and, most re
cently, to a larger role for privately-produced construction is now
underway in Poland. A recent observer (Drover, Canadian 'Welfare*
Nov./Dec. 1971) has summarized the basic facts and developments.
Starting after World War II with one of the most severe housing
problems in Europe, today the depleted stock has been replaced and
housing conditions have improved to the extent that overcrowding,
while still serious, has fallen from 2.7 persons per room to 1.37 persons
per room in 1970. This has been achieved by a rate of production that
has annually increased by 11,500 units over the past decade and has
resulted in 197,000 dwellings, mostly apartments, completed in 1969.
The rate of investment in housing during this period averaged 17
percent of total investment outlay.
61S
To reduce the density of occupation even further and to achieve a
public-sponsored objective of 1.0 persons per room by 1985, the gov
ernment will almost certainly have to double the present production
of housing and foster a large share of private and public expenditure
in housing.
ALTERNATIVES TO STATE HOUSING
Since 1963, the ratio between state and cooperative housing has
almost been reversed; at the present time up to 80 percent of all new
housing units in cities and towns are estimated to be sponsored by
cooperatives. This trend to increase the population’s contributions to
funds for housing building stems in part from the necessity of placing
less of the total burden of building on the government, and reflects
a, change seen in several countries in Eastern Europe during the late
60’s. The expansion of the role of cooperatives was further intensified in
1965 and the emphasis on more housing is likely to be even greater as
a result of the riots in 1970.
In urban areas most residential dwelling construction has been in
the form of apartment blocks. Until 1955 residential developments
were generally of blocks and bricks, with five stories. Subsequently
new types of prefabrication were developed and a major emphasis
was placed on reinforced concrete frames with block infilling. Big
panel construction is expected to take up 50 percent of all new construc
tion by 1975; 90 percent of the housing is in the form of apartment
developments ranging from 5-17 stories. Housing toward the center
of cities is being built, on the average, at a density of 400 persons per
acre and on the periphery at a density of 250 persons per acre. This
tendency to produce housing at such high densities on the edge of cities
does not stem, as it does in western countries, from high costs of land.
It is instead encouraged by a major reliance on public transit and
central city heating plants, both of which require high concentrations
of population to be economical.
T H E IDEOLOGY OF HOUSING STYLE
Most recently, as reported in the New York Times of May 27,1972
Poland’s reform-oriented leaders have endorsed:
. . . one of the more blatantly bourgeois symbols of Western life— the private
house— as a means of easing a chronic housing shortage.
The new emphasis on the one-family dwelling, outlined by the Communist
party leader, Edward Gierek, may eventually alter the spending and leisure
time habits of many Poles while changing the structure of some cities.
Mr. Gierek told party leaders the other day that there was no sense hiding
the fact that one of the aims of the new housing program, a product of more
than a year's study, was to encourage wage earners to spend some of their
savings.
But the main idea, he said, was to establish a “second housing construction
front.” Poland, he indicated, would never solve her housing problem with vast
apartment developments.
To encourage the purchase of private homes, he said, zoning laws were being
changed, credit facilities were being established, mortgages would be made
available and new building material industries were being set up.
The form of housing is also a matter of high ideological debate.
The article goes on:
Jerzy Urban, writing in the weekly Polityka last month, warned that “private
houses will become the goal of life, rather than the means of making life easier.”
619
The author acknowledged, 011 the other hand, that the present alternative,
apartments, “tended to destroy a person if he had no chance to get out.”
The author’s solution is bigger and better apartment houses. In fact, pres
ent plans are to increase apartment size by 10 percent. Regulations now allow
about 22 square feet of space per person.
But Poland apparently cannot keep up with the demands for even those cramped
quarters. Mr. Gierek told the party Central Committee that “if we want to
secure a separate apartment for every Polish family, we shall have to build
at least 7,300,000 flats by the end of 1990,” or two and a half times the construc
tion rate of the last 20 years.
Many Own Apartments
In the meantime, he said, apartment-house construction would be accelerated
and private ownership of these flats would be encouraged . . . Mr. Gierek laid
his greatest emphasis on the need for one-family houses, however, as the key
to solving the housing shortage. Their construction, he said, would utilize dif
ferent building materials than those in short supply for apartment-house
construction.
P l a n n i n g a n d H o u s in g i n H u n g a r y
Two aims have shaped Hungary’s planning for urban growth: de
velopment of the country’s natural resources and promotion of na
tional economic growth; and offsetting the predominance of Budapest,
whose preeminence has been accentuated by its location as the hub
of Hungary’s transportation network. Current objectives include de
creasing the existing imbalance in the living standards of the popula
tion in different regions, and improving living standards in general.
Physical planning is closely connected with, and subordinate to,
economic planning. Economic efforts in the period between the late
1940s to the late 1960s were aimed at reconstructing the war-torn
economy along orthodox Communist lines, including the collectiviza
tion of agriculture.
NATIONAL P L A N N IN G I N
H UN GARY
After the war economic considerations led to the establishment of
industries without regard to their site, with new towns growing up as
an afterthought. It was then seen to be necessary to formulate an
overall policy as a framework for regional economic planning, with
the result that a national plan for land development was drawn up
in 1963, serving as a framework for regional planning and for the out
lines of town planning.
TH E NATIO N AL SETTLEMENT DEVELOPMENT PLAN
The National Settlement Development Plan, which was submitted
to the government in 1969, is a coordinated statement of the main devel
opment objectives and proportions of Hungary’s towns and villages.
It delineates the regions which are considered most important for in
dustrialization and consequently need to be comprehensively developed.
This plan, which has now been formally adopted, is described else
where in this volume. Essentially it provides for five major centers,
122 minor centers and 800 villages. Most drastic is the strategy of
allowing some 2,000 remaining rural hamlets to stagnate.
Current inventive and disincentive programs are aimed at checking
the growth of the Budapest area. Its share of both industrial popula
620
tion and immigration are down. The implications of such a policy are
somewhat woefully expressed, even in this 1968 official pronouncement
on town planning:
We are fully aware of the fact that the establishment of industrial working
places in the regions of labour redundancy is not sufficient to restrain the influx
of population to the capital, the most urbanized, most multi-coloured and, at
the same time, most attractive settlement. The counterpoles to be created must
be equipped with cultural and civilization establishments in such a way so as
to ensure an attractive fullness of urban life, perhaps different in its character
but similar to the capital by its intensity.
More recently, these fundamental national growth strategies are
being publicly challenged. A Washington Post article (June 22, 1972)
reports some current scholarly research findings:
Contrary to general opinion. Eastern Europe suffers not from too rapid urbani
sation "but from under-urbanization caused by arbitrary closing of cities to rural
“ immigrants” and insufficient spending on infrastructure particularly housing
in comparison to heavy outlays for urban industrialization.
The rate of urban growth is actually somewhat slower than in the last three
decades of the 19th century.
The slow rate of urbanization has created a new and disadvantaged, class of
rural commuters, perhaps as many as a million in Hungary alone. These people
live in villages or farms, or on the outskirts of big cities because of the internal
immigration restrictions.
,
,
,
GOVERNMENTAL M A C H IN E R Y
Hungary possesses two high authorities in the field of physical
planning: the National Planning Bureau, concerned with land-use
policy, and the Ministry- of Building and Urban Development for re
gional and town planning.
The government examines and approves the regional plans, those
of Budapest, and the fiive largest provincial cities, while less important
matters are the responsibility of the National Planning Bureau and
the Ministry. The master plans for other towns arc submitted to the
department council for approval, plans for country towns to their
district council, while other overall or detailed plans are approved by
the town council through its executive council. Before approval, the
plans can be desputed by a third party; once approved, they have the
force of law. For several years Hungary has had a complete set of
plans at all levels.
REGIONAL AND LOCAL PL AN N IN G I N H U N G A R Y
The National Settlement Development plan sets forth the network
of public facilities serving the settlements and, on this basis, divides
the towns and villages into nine development land functional cate
gories. It also determines the trends and scale of urbanization in order
to diminish migration and commuting problems and enhance develop
ment possibilities. In addition, the plan requires that each county to
prepare regional plans and development programs. It calls for the
separate development of programs for the development of holiday
resorts and tourist areas, laying the groundwork for a national pro
gram of recreation and foreign tourism.
Economic and physical planning were tightly controlled by the
central government prior to 1968. Since then, both county and muni
cipal councils have been entrusted with preparing their own five-year
economic plans. They must also prepare complex regional plans which
621
comply with their economic plans. Together, the two types of plans
form the basis of the national five-year development programs which
thus include urban development as well as economic development.
DECENTRALIZATION OF P L AN N IN G
The Ministry finances regional planning and also determines which
regional plans should be prepared. Urban science research is equally
centralized and is entrusted to the Hungarian Institute for Town and
Regional Planning, which, in practice, prepares most of the needed
regional plans. However, six regional planning institutes and 19
county planning institutes are now appointed to prepare town de
velopment plans. Although these plans are financed by the county
councils, the institutes are controlled by the Ministry of Building
and Urban Development through the regional town development
councils.
Master plans have been completed for eight towns, including
Miskolc, Debrecen, Szeged, and Pecs. Master plans for 77 smaller
settlements have also been completed, as have detailed development
plans for more than 200 towns. A 1970-75 development program for
the recreational area at Lake Balaton has been drawn up on the
basis of a regional plan. A regional plan for tourist establishments
along the Budapest-Vienna road, an important international tourist
route, has been approved, and a similar plan is being developed for
other international routes such as the Budapest-Lake Balaton and
Vienna-Lake Balaton roads.
County and municipal councils are directly responsible for local
urban development policy and its implementation, although they use
the directives, regulations, and national comprehensive plans issued
by the State. The councils may now use money from their own revenues,
as well as State subsidies, for their development programs.
HOUSING I N H U N G A R Y
The housing shortage is now recognized as the number one social
problem in Hungary— as it is in most East European countries.
The fourth five-year plan (1971-75) calls for a destruction of
170,000 obsolete flats and the construction of 400,000 new flats, ap
proximately half to be built by the State.
Housing objectives of the fifteen-year plan (1971-85) include:
ending the housing shortage, increasing the percentage of flats built
by the State, and demolishing or improving obsolete flats.
In Hungary, housing is financed by two systems. The majority of
dwellings have been constructed by State investments in the Capital
and in such towns where development was in the national economic
interest. Construction from state investments tends to create large
housing projects. The renewal and replacement of the apartment
stock of smaller settlements, particularly in villages, and the familvhouse construction in towns are undertaken by private resources with
government credit subsidies.
In 1970, the housing construction undertaken was 36% State-built,
34% 1-familv houses with a state loan, 18% 1-family houses without
a state loan, and 12% other private construction.
(522
PROBLEMS OF A MIXED ECONOMY
Although State investment in the construction of apartments and
housing estates will double under the present five-year plan (1971-75),
the need for additional stimuli to building was indicated by a recent
Central Party Committee proposal: that higher bank credits be given
to private construction. More recently, the concern over private in
vestment in housing has induced new controls. The Washing ton Post
of December 16, 1971 reported that:
Hungary’s Communist regime, which is facing an enormous shortage of
adequate housing, has blown the whistle on private real estate speculation and
profiteering.
A large private real estate market exists side by side with the state-subsidized
housing system in Hungary. The meaning of new legislation here is to institute
some kind of controls over it, after years in which the government had looked
the other way at speculative practices.
Within the next year, people who have been building up holdings will have
to divest themselves of all except what they need for themselves. This means
that ownership will normally be limited to a flat in town and a weekend villa
outside.
The problem of housing built by private resources is that its regu
lation is more complex than the regulation of government housing
investments. A greater proportion of privately-financed dwellings
than desired has been built in the villages. A recent government report
on town development indicates other problems created by private
decision-making in a planned economy.
H OUSING M AIN TE N A N CE
Finally, some problems stemming from state ownership of housing,
or state housing management and maintenance, are described in The
Economist of June 12,1971:
The tenate living in state-owned accommodation has no incentive to pay for
repairs out of his own pocket. And the state is finding the maintenance of
the existing stock of houses more and more of a crushing financial burden.
The Hungarians have calculated that between 1966 and 1970 income from rents
ibrought the state some $100 million, while in the same period the state spent
no less than $288 million on maintenance and repairs.
Hungary's new rent regulations, which come into force on July ls tf attempt
to make the tenant pay not only for the maintenance of existing housing but
also for the construction of new units. Rents are going up— in many cases by
as much as 800 percent. Even so, it is expected that by the time everybody is
paying the new rents in full (which will be in 1973) they will represent only
10 percent of an average family's income. Many exemptions will be made for
low-paid workers, large families and other needy cases.
P l a n n in g
and
H
o u s in g i n
E
ngland
From its inception, English national growth policy has been con
cerned with both economic and physical development. A t the core
of this policy were three basic aims. One was to curb the rate of growth
of population and employment in London and the southern counties.
A second was to increase the scale of economic activity in the hinter
land, here referred to as the North of Great Britain. The third was to
change the form of growth of the largest metropolitan regions, partic
ularly of London and the southern counties.
The Town and Country Planning Act of 1971 (which amends and
consolidates previous legislation) provides the basis of the modern
623
system of land planning in Great Britain. This Act establishes a
centralized planning structure and imposes compulsory planning du
ties on local authorities; who in turn make the implementation of
most forms of development subject to local government consent. The
work of the local authorities involves a fairly detailed control over the
location, size and character of towns and villages. It also involves the
protection of agriculture and forestry, and the conservation of the
countryside and coast as sources of pleasure to the community no less
than as sources of national wealth.
NATIONAL P L A N N IN G I N ENGLAND
The Department of the Environment has responsibility for the
whole range of functions affecting the physical environment in which
people live and work. Its range of national responsibilities is com
parable to that proposed in the United States for a Department of
Community Development. The Secretary of State for the Environment
is assisted by three ministers: The Minister of Housing and Construc
tion, who is responsible for housing programs and finance, bulding
regulations, and new towns; the Minister for Transport Industries;
and the Minister for Local Government and Development, who is
responsible for local government, regional land use and transport
planning, the countryside and conservation (roads, water, and sewerage
and refuse disposal).
There are many tools to carry out the national policy. One set, de
signed largely by urban planners, aimed to limit the size of metropoli
tan areas, especially London. This was to be achieved by reducing the
densities of inner London, surrounding its edges with an inviolate
greenbelt, and building self-contained new towns in areas beyond the
greenbelt and in the more distant hinterland regions.
Another set, designed largely by economists, restricted the building
of industrial plants in the London region, while providing subsidies
and other forms of assistance to firms willing to locate their plants in
the outer areas of the South and the more distant development districts.
A comprehensive revision in policies, to stimulate industrial develop
ment, was made in the spring of 1972. The program provides for a re
form of regional policy embracing new investment incentives, special
aid for the retraining and mobility of labor, and an acceleration of the
strategic road network. Basic investment incentives will be in two
forms— national and regional. The measures will include free depreci
ation in the form of a 100 percent first-year allowance on all invest
ment in machinery and plant other than cars. New industrial buildings
and structures will receive an initial allowance of 40 percent. This
means that tax allowances on investment, previously reserved for
assisted areas, will be available to the whole country. To recompense
the development areas, the Government will reinforce national in
centives with a system of cash grants in the regions only. These grants
will supersede the building and operational grants which are presently
available only for projects providing employment.
REGIONAL P L A N N IN G I N ENGLAND
In 1964 and 1965 the government established a system of regional
economic planning councils and boards as the basic machinery for
624
regional economic planning. The following description of regional
and local planning is principally based on the just updated Toivn and
Country Planning in Britain. The councils, comprising about 30 parttime members appointed for their wide knowledge and experience of
their regions, are advisory bodies with no executive powers, their main
tasks being to study and advise 011 the needs and potentialities of their
regions and advise the government 011 long-term regional planning
strategy.
The boards consist of senior civil servants representing the major
government departments concerned with aspects of regional planning
in their respective areas; tlier function are to coordinate the regional
economic planning work of the government departments and to co
operate with the regional economic planning councils. For the pur
poses of regional planning, England has been divided into eight
regions.
T H E SOUTH-EAST REGION— A CASE
The first full-scale strategy. Strategic Plan for the South-East, was
published in June 1970 by the South-East Joint Planning Team. The
plan proposes a flexible strategy designed to accommodate population
growth in the region— perhaps of the order of 4 million or 5 million
people by the end of the century— by concentrating future develop
ment in selected growth areas at varying distances from London,
conserving extensive areas of countryside, safeguarding greenbelt
lands, relieving further the housing and social problems of inner
London, and providing a regional communications network for traffic
between the more important population centers within the south-east,
and between the south-east and the rest of Britain.
The govenment has approved the plan in principle, and local plan
ning authorities are preparing their development plans within its
broad tenets. Strategies for other regions are being prepared as quickly
as is practicable ; precise arrangements depend on the circumstances
of each region.
LOCAL P L A N N IN G I N ENGLAND
At a local level, town and country planning is one of the local govern
ment functions exercised by elected authorities acting in accordance
with duties and powers conferred upon them by Parliament; local
authorities whose services include responsibilities for planning are
known as “local planning authorities.” In England and Wales there
are some 177 local plannng authorities, including the Greater London
Council.
Proposals for a new structure of local government throughout
Great Britain (excluding Greater London) were announced by the
government in February 1971. They envisage the division of the
country into 59 large administrative areas (“counties” in England
and Wales and “regions” in Scotland) which would have responsi
bility for broad planning policies and for the preparation of develop
ment plans.
Under the towrn. and country planning legislation, local authorities
are required to survey their areas and prepare and submit “develop
ment” plans to the appropriate Secretary of State for approval. The
whole of the country is now covered by approved development plans.
625
Some large authorities are able to establish separate planning depart
ments to draw up the plans and supervise their implementation. Small
authorities often exercise their planning functions through depart
ments concerned with roads, engineering or architecture.
The preparation of land-use development plans over a 20-year pe
riod was first required of local planning authorities in Great Britain
by the legislation of 1947. The plans proved effective for controlling
undesirable development, but had less success as instruments for crea
tive planning and did not coalese the related problems arising from
the use of land and the demands of traffic. Recognizing the shortcom
ings of the old procedure, the 1971 Act provides for a new type of
development plan to be introduced gradually, designed to reduce ad
ministrative delays, to emphasize positive planning for the creation
of a pleasant environment rather than the negative control of unde
sirable development; and to enable the public to play a greater part
in the planning process.
COMPULSORY PURCHASE AND COMPENSATION
Since the Town and Country Planning Acts of 1947, local planning
authorities have had general planning powers (subject to ministerial
approval) to buy land compulsorily in order to secure the comprehen
sive development or redevelopment of land in their areas (other powers
are used to provide specific public services such as housing, roads and
public open spaces). The 1971 Act extended the planning purposes for
which land in England and Wales can be compulsorily purchased. This
reflects the wider scope of “action areas” (compared with “compre
hensive development areas” under the previous legislation) which may
be selected for comprehensive treatment under the Act. The Act also
gave compulsory purchase powers greater flexibility by removing
formal links with development plans.
TO W N DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES
Allied to the new towns program, which was aimed as a remedy for
both overcrowded industrial cities and for preventing depopulation
of rural districts, is a “town development program”, initiated five years
after the new’ towns program. The principal differences between the
two programs are the structure and scale of operations, and financing.
This is an alternative approach to relieving urban congestion which
involves the provision of homes for a rapidly expanding population
and providing incentives for industrial growth. Voluntary agreements
are made between local authorities in big cities, with “overspill” prob
lems, and those in smaller towns willing to accept people and industry
in order to strengthen their economic base. Unlike the arrangement
for developing towns under the New Towns Acts, the initiative for
schemes under the Town Development Acts must be taken by the local
authorities concerned, not by the national government. The movement
of population is entirely voluntary; the “exporting” authority pub
licizes its schemes to attract firms and people. Over 60 town expansion
schemes have been agreed upon, of which about half involve relocation
from London.
626
GREATER LONDON DEVELOPMENT PLAN---- A CASE
The new Greater London Development Plan (which covers an area
of 610 square miles containing some 7.38 million people) has been
prepared by the Greater London Council (the planning authority for
London as a whole) to establish policies dealing with, for example,
population, housing, employment, transport, areas of special char
acter, open spaces, town centers, central areas, and social facilities such
as hospitals. The contents of the plan and related public comment are
presently being reviewed at a public inquiry; when the plan has re
ceived ministerial approval it is submitted to the Secretary of State
for the Environment, it will be treated as the structure plan for the
Greater London area. It will contain strategic planning policies for
the City of London and will be supported bv a range of local plans
prepared for the 32 London boroughs.
The following excerpts from the Plan indicate some of the problems,
objectives and solutions proposed:
For thirty years planning policy in London has been primarily concerned
with restraining the outward physical growth of the built up area with the
reduction of overcorwding in the inner parts. This policy has been largely suc
cessful— the Green Belt has been held, many thousands of people have taken
the opportunitities provided to move out to new or expanded towns beyond
the Green Belt, and many more have departed of their own accord in search of
better and cheaper living conditions. The residential population of the area which
is now Greater London was 8.5 millions in 1039; by 1961 it was 8.0 millions; and
in 1971 it is estimated to be about 7.4 millions. In addition to this decline in
population there has been a more recent decline in economic activity compared
with the rest of the region, measured by such indicators as investment and
level of employment. Despite the benefits from rising productivity the decline
in employment from 4.5 millions in 1962 to 4.1 millions in 1971 must neverthe
less represent a loss to London.
Whilst this reduction of population and employment has had many good
results, there must come a point when a continued high rate of decline would
begin to bring about harmful effects for the economy of London as a whole, and
for the welfare of Londoners. The decline in population is greatest in the more
mobile higher income groups but their jobs remain; the decline in jobs is greatest
in manufacturing industry, but its work force comprises the less mobile lower
income groups who stay behind.
The essential purpose of the Greater London Development Plan is to create
a physical environment and a social and economic framework which will con
serve and improve the standards of life in London. It is the Council's intention
to do everything within its power to maintain London’s position as the capital of
the nation and one of tlie world’s great cities. It intends to foster the commercial
and industrial prosperity of London and its cultural status, especially in respect
of those functions for which a London location may be regarded as essential.
The social conditions which the people of London are to enjoy will depend
upon this prosperity and the flourishing economy and culture which it should
produce.
The Plan offers no compromise in these matters. There are no proposals for
moving the seat of Government or the main financial centre. The Council holds
that any attempt to interfere drastically with the main functions of London as
developed over he centuries would bring incalculable and possibly disastrous
consequences for the country. London as a capital city and centre for interna
tional trade must make its full contribution to national objectives and in order
to do so it must provide the necessary space, skills, communications and other
services.
These then are the Council’s main aims:
To plan for the living standards of the people of London to
rise, by improving their prospects of having (a) Housing ade
quate in quantity, quality and location, obtainable within their
means; (b) Satisfactory environment; (c) Suitable employment;
627
(d) A good public transport and road system; and (e) A high
standard of educational and other public services, leisure facilities
and other amenities;
To liberate and develop, so far as planning can, the enterprise
and activities of London, promoting efficiency in economic life
and vitality in its society and culture;
To treasure and develop London’s character— capital of the na
tion, home and workplace of millions, focus of the British tradi
tion;
To conserve and develop London’s fabric, of buildings, spaces
and communications ; protecting the best while modernizing what
is out of date or inferior;
To promote a balance between homes, work and movement as
principal elements upon whose relationship London’s overall pros
pects depend;
To participate in necessary measures of decentralization and
help forward the part that London plays in national and regional
development (including retention of the Green B e lt); and
To unite the efforts of all who can help to realize these aims and
to give new inspiration to the onward development of London’s
genius.
HOUSING I N ENGLAND
The Ministry of Housing in the Department of the Environment has
responsibility for advising guiding and guide local government, non
profit organizations, and private enterprise in their housing efforts.
It may regulate the numbers of houses built by each local authority
in a particular year, and use its power to steer new subsidized building
into areas where the housing shortage is greatest.
The Department, which approves the plans, layouts and costs of all
subsidized housing schemes, uses its power to maintain good standards
and check extravagances. It has virtually no powers insofar as main
tenance and management are concerned, and no power over rent poli
cies at the present time.
The central government, through the Treasury, operates a Public
Works Loans Board from whom local authorities, especially the small
er ones, may borrow a high proportion of their capital requirements.
The authorities over larger areas are not allowed to borrow as large
a percentage, but are instead expected to go on the money market
and/or insure stocks secured on all their assets for capital programs.
Reflecting long term trends, private rental housing had fallen to
about 20 percent in 1969, owner-occupancy had risen to nearly 50
percent, and public rental housing constituted roughly 30 percent o f
the English housing market.
TH E HOLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
The town or city council is the primary authority for housing in
England. The local authority has a statutory duty to periodically
review the housing needs of its area and provide housing to meet
those needs when they are not being met by private enterprise. It has
a statutory duty to clear its slums and to rehouse displaced persons.
Further duties in value evaluation of the need to rehabilitate other
parts of the city, and ensuring that all houses in declared areas will be
628
brought up to minimum standards whether they are owner-occupied,
owned by a nonprofit association, or privately-owned and tenanted.
National government grants are available to meet the cost of improve
ments when these are not covered by increased rents. The local author
ity makes a financial contribution as well.
ENGLISH SUBSIDY PROGRAMS
Housing subsidy systems have existed for a long time in the United
Kingdom, for a variety of purposes:
Provide shelter for low-income families who cannot afford the
costs of decent housing.
Promote home ownership.
Facilitate mobility of industry and manpower.
Encourage urban decentralization.
Stimulate innovation in building materials and building
systems.
Help offset the extra burden of high land cost and high-rise
construction costs in inner city areas.
The principal subsidy program of the national government has
been annual subsidies to local housing authorities, mainly County
Councils, which affect a 4 percent interest rate ceiling on the capital
costs of new construction.
Another major subsidy program is the rent rebate which local
authorities extend to low-income tenants of public housing. This sys
tem takes into account differences in tenants’ rent-paving ability. With
the encouragement of the national government, local authorities may
remit some, or all, of the rent due to the tenant in the form of rent
rebates. In 1969, roughly 70 percent of all County Council tenants
received a rent rebate.
A third subsidy is extended to owner-occupants and allows mortgage
interest payments as income tax deductions.
A fourth major subsidy program aims to conserve and improve
sound housing structures.
Government grants (which usually provide half the cost) are avail
able for the modernization of individual houses, whether they are
owner-occupied or rented, public or private. The local authority has a
statutory duty to study its district and to prepare schemes for the
compulsory improvement of all houses in those areas which it defines
and designates as improvement areas. In such cases, additional grants
are available for environmental improvements.
629
N E W DIRECTIONS
The British Government is currently considering revamping its
housing subsidy policy in order to subsidize only the needy. The pro
posed changes are said to be the most far-reaching in the program’s
50-year history. The proposed changes, now being debated, are based
on the following principles:
Subsidies should no longer be paid on houses but instead should
be paid for subsidizing the poor people.
Subsidies, instead of being paid to Local Authorities to build
cheaper houses, should be paid through them directly to needy
tenants, in both the public and private sectors.
Public housing rents should rise in stages to “ fair rents’’, as
defined in the 1965 Rent Acts; and
•Government subsidies in the form of rent rebates should be
available everywhere, not only in public housing, on a meanstested basis.
Special subsidies for land acquisition and building should be
provided to Local Authorities in order to cope with the worst slum
clearance and building problems.
This emphasis on need, and its application to tenants in private
houses, has received favorable press comment.
BALANCED AND ORDERLY NATIONAL GROWTH:
ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK
(By Brian J. L. Berry, Irving B. Harris Professor of Urban
Geography, The University of Chicago)
Congressman Ashley has posed two questions: What do I think of
the President’s Report on National Growth 1972? What do I think a
national growth policy should be, and how should it be implemented?
My response to the first question makes a response to the second largely
irrelevant in the short run, for I believe that in the absence of a
fundamental ideological change in American society, the idea of a
national growth policy that embodies anything other than mild standard-setting and modest regulation to smooth the course of present
trends, and a willingness to firelight when new developments bring
unexpected side-effects, is largely dreaming. I sat down to respond to
Congressman Ashley’s questions immediately after I had listened to
President Nixon’s Miami acceptance speech. I jotted down one of his
statements, because it is very relevant to my evaluation of the growth
report and my assessment of the prospects for a national growth pol
icy. “Theirs,” he said, “is the politics of paternalism, where Master
Planners in Washington make decisions about what is best for the
people; ours is the politics of the people, where the people make the
decisions for themselves.”
TH E 1 9 7 2
GROWTH REPORT
This set of attitudes pervades the growth report. To make the point
“perfectly clear,” let me try to diagram the key elements in the argu
ment presented in that report.
The report, according to page xi “marks the beginning of a sys
tematic effort to :
1. Understand the forces that are shaping the communities in
which we live and work.
2. Articulate some of the challenges that must be confronted
as the Nation responds to the challenges of growth.
3. Identify recent developments at the State and local level for
coping more effectively with growth.
4. Identify major actions of the Federal Government under
taken to deal with the problems of growth.
5. Advance recommendations for Federal action to strengthen
the Nation’s ability to deal with the challenges of growth more
effectively.”
A t the outset, the document disavows the charge contained in Title
V II of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1970; namely,
that “to assist in the development of a national urban growth policy,
the President . . . shall transmit to the Congress . . . in every even-
(6 3 1 )
632
numbered year beginning with 1972, a Report on Urban Growth.” It
begins by asserting that “the term national urban growth policy is too
narrow. Instead, this report will use the term “national growth pol
icy," recognizing that rural and urban community development are
inseparably linked.” Further, “the central purpose of this report . . .
is to assist in the development of a national policy— not to enunciate
such a policy.”
What assistance is provided ? By page 25 we read that—
In the last decade . . . we have begun to recognize that a number of problems
are associated with the process and patterns of growth. Policies are needed to
deal with these problems and to insure that future growth is both orderly and
balanced. As President Nixon has said, “the growth which this Nation will in
evitably experience in the coming decades will be healthy growth only if it is
balanced growth— this means growth which is distributed among both urban and
rural areas.
The key words are growth, order and balance. What influences
growth, and might there be a national policy to achieve order and
balance? On pages 30 and 31 we find the answer:
Patterns of growth are influenced by countless decisions made by individuals,
families and businesses . . . aimed at achieving the personal goals of those who
make them . . . (such) decisions cannot be dictated.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
In many nations, the central government has undertaken forceful, comprehen
sive policies to control the process of growth. Similar policies have not been
adopted in the United States for several reasons. Among the most important
is the distinctive form of government which we value so highly . . . it is not
feasible for the highest level of government to design policies for development
that can operate successfully in all parts of the Nation.
To many this will be a surprising answer, for it represents the ulti
mate negation of the purpose of the report: to assist in the develop
ment of a national policy. The assistance is that given the chicken by
the fox.
DEMOCRATIC PLURALISM AND THE FATE OF THE NATIONAL GOALS RESEARCH
STAFF
W hy ? The reason is the very democratic pluralism that Americans
hold so dear. With an interest-group political process made up of
bargaining, log-rolling and coalition building, policy development
is at best incremental. Consider the fate of the President’s National
Goals Research Staff (what did happen to that group after publica
tion of Toivard Balanced Growth. Quantity with Quality?) With
much fanfare, the group was assembled to assist the White House b y :
1. Forecasting future developments, and assessing longer-range
consequences of present social trends.
2. Measuring the probable future impact of alternative courses
of action.
3. Estimating the actual range of social choice indicating what
alternative sets of goals might be attainable in terms of available
resources and possible rates of progress.
Who could quarrel with such an effort ? After all, there are four ingre
dients that all reasonable men will agree are needed to ensure that
changing societies make wise decisions:
First, information. Information is needed to tell us what our
society is like now, how rapidly and in what ways it is changing,
633
and what scientific and technological alternatives to present prac
tices exist or can be found.
Second, social analysis. Analysis is needed to determine what
relations exist between current actions and future effects, to weigh
the merits of alternative priority systems, to derive practical,
achievable goals for society, and to determine how best to allocate
our finite resources to attain those goals.
Third, well-informed decision makers. Society requires mecha
nisms to ensure that decision makers, including the public have
access to the information they need, have available the results
of the analysis carried out, and have alternative courses of ac
tion formulated for their consideration.
Fourth, appropriate institutions. Institutions are needed to en
sure that decisions can be put into practice. They take many
forms— political institutions, financial institutions, legal institu
tions. and educational institutions.
The brief life-span of the Staff should be a lesson to us all, however,
for it indicates that in this Nation today there exists neither the ideo
logical base, nor the desire, nor the will to develop affirmative na
tional growth policies to enhance the adaptability of American so
ciety under conditions of increasing complexity and accelerating
change.
Social Accounting: An Example of the Sources of O f position to
National Goals
Should we blame the present Administration, or is there some more
fundamental reason? Let us explore this question by considering the
issue of whether there is a related will to develop a national system of
social accounts. After all. who can quarrel with the development of
measurement devices that enable us to assess where we stand and are
going with respect to our values and goals, and to evaluate specific
programs and determine their impact? Who indeed! There is a strong
cybernetic ingredient implied in social accounting, for an active in
formation system demands sensors to determine the consequences of
actions and provision for feeding this information back to decision
centers, and readiness to change behavior in response to signals of
deviations from the sought-after goals that may be occurring.
Shouldn’t all of us welcome such a system? Each day public officials
and elected representatives make major decisions in the attempt to
change the future states of our social environment. What variables
are taken into account ? No behavioral scientist will disagree with the
basic role that is played by cognition. We have all been trained to be
lieve that the structure of the system operates on behavior through
the mediation of cognition and that structure in its turn is composed
of aggregations of behavior called “processes.” In other words, deci
sions rest on beliefs about- fads. To the extent that beliefs are erroneous
or distorted, errors are made in social strategies that waste resources
and create future problems by the cascading first and second-round
consequences— the change processes:— they set in motion.
Surely, then, better statistics of direct normative interest should
help us make balanced, comprehensive and concise judgments about the
condition of society. Surely we can benefit if, as many have said, we
“apply real science to social affairs,” thus eliminating the corruptions
of the principle of rationality that arise when decisions about social
634
affairs are made on the basis of beliefs about facts, rather than “true
knowledge/’
Surely, Soviet cyberneticists have said, and a massive experiment
has been set in motion to test the applicability of cybernetics to total
social system transition in the U.S.S.R. This experiment shows where
the idea of social accounts can lead and perhaps, through its implica
tions, indicates some of the reasons why we have made so little progress
on social accounts and on affirmative development of national goals
statements and growth policies in the United States. For purposes of
contrast, then, I will spend some time with the Soviets’ plans.
First, effort has been addressed to the automation of many dimen
sions of social reality, based upon the belief that such automation is
required to achieve the increased organizational complexity neces
sary for social progress. Second, this effort is to serve the perceived
need for highly perfected systems of automatic control. Cybernetics
has been tied to the goal-seeking activity of a centrally-directed state,
linked as a science and technology to the concept of controlled social
progress, and linked ideologically by means of a theory of develop
ment to the fundamental tenets of communism.
Figure 1 depicts in a very abbreviated form the essential elements
in purposeful systems which are objects of research for the Soviet
cybernetics program. The real world is made up of people, nations,
factories, transportation systems, mines, and so on. Obviously, sensors
are needed which are appropriate to detect changes in each system in
the real world; eyes, radar, nerve endings, and pattern-recognition
devices are examples. The information processors also differ depending
on the type of information processed. Comparators receive processed
information about some aspect of the behaving world and compare it
with the kind of behavior called for by the reference model.
T h e Rea! W orld
F. f l ec i or s
Sensors
Command
Reference
M odel
C e n a a to r
Information
Processing
Logico clec ision |
' E h - ----------
‘
Com parator
Function
Simplified
D ia g ra m of a C y b e r n e ti c System.
“ Fig. 1.
635
The results of the comparison are transmitted to the command
element, which then decides whether to leave the “real world” as it is
or whether commands should be transmitted to the effectors to change
the behavior of the real world. I f the latter course is elected, informa
tion about the ensuing change is sensed, processed, compared with
the reference model and so on around the feedback loop. Obviously
an indefinitely large number of interconnected loops would be neces
sary to describe fully the organization of a system for the purposeful
control of a total social system in the real world. But Figure 1 does
convey the essential notion that information about the real world is
a necessary input to the effectors if the resulting control of the rate
and direction of change is to be optimal in relation to the purpose
dictated by the reference model of what “ought” to be.
The system will be made operational in the Unified Information
Network of the USSR, scheduled for completion in 1970-75. This is
to be a “nervous system” tying together the systems “sensors” of in
ternal and external environments at all organizational levels with the
highest decision centers. These can then determine optimal courses
of action and transmit information to the effector organs of the social
system-ministries, production complexes, schools, defense installations,
and so on. The new behavior of the system is transmitted to the deci
sion-makers and new actions undertaken in a continuous process anal
ogous to that by which a helmsman steers a ship toward its destination.
Now maybe all of the above is a pious Soviet hope. Maybe cyber
netics is just a straw at which the Soviets have grasped in the absence
of any other concept on the intellectual horizon that would tie together
the notions of stability, change, and goal-seeking necessary to the
development of social systems. Maybe, but nevertheless, the issues
raised by Soviet cybernetics are exactly the issues that confront Amer
ican decision-makers faced by increasing complexity and dynamisin of
our social system, while the implicit specter of control ancl direction
lies, I submit, at the roots of the lack of public will in the design of
social accounts and national growth policies in ivhich goals arre clearly
specified.
TH E INEVITABILITY OF INCREM ENTALISM
The American policy maker must contend every day with the differ
ing and changing goals of competing interest groups in a society that
values democratic pluralism as an end in itself. There are not, I would
submit, the necessary preconditions in the United States today for the
development of effective goal-oriented growth policies and attendant
systems of social accounts. A ll national debates notwithstanding, there
can be no nationwide agreement either on goals or on societal relation
ships that link program inputs to sought-after outputs. In brief,
American society is inherently incapable of being goal-oriented for
deep-seated ideological reasons, Beyond ideology, there are other
aspects of will that severely restrict progress towards national goals
and rational systems of social accounts. As one commentator remarked
recently “no computer-based simulation model jazzed-up analysis
scheme is really going to get very far in terms of adoption if the policy
maker has the feeling that he can’t control it.” The modus operandi of
our governmental agencies is that the accountable officials should have
the decisive role in determining what programs are developed and how
636
money is spent, and they are the officials who must respond to interestgroup and political pressures.
Under such pressures, goals statements and applied rationality
present fundamental challenges to the traditional American decision
making style. The party politician whose control is based on a hierar
chic structure of authority and communication and who remains in
power by manipulating interest-group politics and dispensing patron
age feels severely challenged because the very utility of goals state
ments and accounting systems is to provide a basis for decision-making
more rational than interest-group politics. Rather than rationality,
deliberate fuzziness and clouding of the perception of reality seems
ends in themselves in the American system, alternative techniques for
survival under conditions of increasing complexity in the absence of an
agreed-upon direction for society, and contributing to the antipathy to
development of such a singular direction. Application of cybernetic
techniques serves, in American society, to intensify such individuals’
feelings of anxiety and uncertainty, even though they can help them
cope with the barriers to understanding and provide some sense of pur
posive direction rather than aimless drift. Indeed, the vast majority are
not receptive to cybernetic techniques, actively opposing them or hav
ing a fixed and limited Bunkeresque view of the extent to which they
are legitimate and useful, compounded by the deep personal frustra
tions resulting from the contrast between (1) the policy-maker's sense
of potential power to generate and implement better policies based on
more information, and (2) his sense of vulnerability to exposure of
personal and organizational insufficiencies. As one of my colleagues,
Jack Meltzer said recently, “I often feel that politicians don't want
issues crystallized. There’s a certain kind of defense mechanism that
operates in avoiding the crystallization of issues that would conflict
and sharpen when they get crystallized,’’ because crystallized issues
would only be used by other groups to challenge the policy-maker’s
policies and programs.
It behooves us all to ask whether the current mixture of interestgroup politics, muddling through and incrementalism will continue
to serve us as it has in the past, or whether our lack of will in this re
gard leads irrevocably toward progressive polarization, as an alter
637
nate technique by individuals within our society to cope with the un
certainties of increasing complexity and more assertive pluralism. I f
we agree with the President’s position, it forces us to accept the inevitability of a continuation of the processes inherent in the present. Be
cause the processes—the sum of individual decisions— are abstract and
powerful, and have served the needs of those who have benefitted most,
there is obviously, and equally-obviously will continue to be, great
pressure not to tamper with them. I f the consequences are sometimes
unfortunate, we can always firefight, do some mild regulation and
standard-setting, and patch up the worst excesses through incremen
tal public policy.
The inescapable conclusion is that of all of our problems, the one
most likely to deter any major improvement in policy making is our
growth policy problem. Our first priority must be not what growth
policy to follow, but agreement that a gratcth policy is needed. The
point is obvious, but there has not been any widespread public recog
nition of this elementary fact. We have substituted rhetoric for
achievement in this regard.
What should a national growth policy be in the United States, and
how should it be implemented in such circumstances? W e must first
demonstrate more clearly than we have yet (if we can) that the com
plexity and intractability of society’s current problems derive their
basis from the central processes of economic development and urban
ization, and that the interaction of size and rapid growth will lead to
an acceleration of costs that will only be countered by forthright na
tional policies promoting both an orderly pace and pattern of growth
in the years to come. Whether these policies will embody new and
better forms of regulation and the setting of newer superior standards,
consistent with the American tradition, or whether they should incor
porate dramatic new public ventures that exert significant developmen
tal leadership (as has been the case in Western Europe) should itself
be a matter of wide public debate. The alternatives and their conse
quences need wide discussion and debate. And once there is some sense
of the Nation stemming from that debate, one can begin to design a
national growth policy. In saying this, I am urging realism rather
than a cop-out— realism in recognizing the values contained within
mainstream America.
R U RAL PO VERTY— FOUR YE A R S LATER
(By C. E. Bishop and Lynn D a ft*)
On September 27, 1966, President Johnson signed Executive Order
11306 creating the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty.
This Commission was charged with the following responsibilities:
1. to make a comprehensive study and appraisal of the current
economic situations and trends affecting rural people,
2. to evaluate existing policies and programs in terms of their
effects upon community welfare and the well-being of the rural
people,
3. to develop recommendations for action by local, state and
federal governments or private enterprise for providing oppor
tunities for the rural population.
This, of course, was not the first commission charged with studying
conditions in rural America and offering suggestions for improving
them. Notable among the earlier efforts was that of the American
Country Life Commission created in 1908. The American Country
Life Commission made a comprehensive study and offered recom
mendations which eventually led to substantial improvements in rural
America. It is especially remembered for the role it played in strength
ening rural sociology, the creation of the extension service, and
improvements in financial institutions serving rural America. Without
a doubt, these institutions contributed greatly to the productive effi
ciency of American agriculture.
As the Rural Poverty Commission began its work, it was also clear
beyond a doubt that the great surge of efficiency that took place from
1946 to 1966 had been accompanied by unprecedented migration
from the rural areas, heavy concentration of rural migrants in the
central cities of America, and continued poverty for millions of Amer
icans living on the farms and in rural communities.
The burden of poverty was particularly evident in low income,
limited assets, unemployment, underemployment, malnutrition, dis
ease, inferior social institutions and depressed, poverty-stricken com
munities. These conditions persisted in spite of the fact that American
agriculture was making unprecedented strides in increasing produc
tion. Indeed, the Commission soon concluded that the technological
changes that made possible the increased production also#contributed
to the perpetuation of poverty in rural America. In brief, much of
the poverty in rural America was structural in nature.
Faced with a growing backlog of research indicating a) that tech
nological changes in agriculture were continuing to have structural
impacts, reflecting a pronounced increase in use of capital and a
decreased use of labor in farming, b) greatly expanded size of farm
1 Formerly Executive Director and Staff Associate, respectively. National Advisory
Commission on Rural Poverty. The views expressed in this paper reflect that experience
and observations of the authors during the ensuing four years.
(63 9 )
640
operations per unit, c) tlie relocation of economic functions from
scattered rural locations to rural service centers, and d) the presence
of large numbers of people living in rural America who possessed
little or no wealth and had limited investment capacity, it became
obvious that the types of measures recommended by the American
Country Life Commission in the early part of the 20th century wrere
not appropriate to cope with the problems of poverty during the re
mainder of the century. The Commission concluded that if the nation
were serious about solving the problems of rural poverty, it must look
largely beyond agricultural employment for means of doing so.
TH E RECOMMENDATIONS OF TH E RURAL POVERTY COMMISSION
It was apparent that the residents in much of rural America did
not have equality of opportunity with respect to education, housing,
access to jobs, welfare, and other public services as compared with
metropolitan residents. The Commission recognized that many of the
public programs that have been developed for the rural population
are based upon the assumption that the people who are reared in rural
areas will remain there and work in farm-oriented occupations. Rural
residents have been provided with education programs oriented in this
direction and have not had ready access to many of the programs
designed for human resource development in urban areas. In addition,
much of the rural population suffered from racial as well as residential
discrimination.
Against this background, the Commission made recommendations
that may be grouped under four major headings. First, the Commis
sion placed emphasis upon creating an economic and social environ
ment that will enable all people to have opportunities consistent with
their economic potential. The Commission emphasized the removal of
the barriers that had been constructed by government, as well as those
that had developed within the private sector, that discriminated
against rural residents by limiting their access to economic oppor
tunity.
The second major category of recommendations concerned income
support and maintenance. The Commission noted the high incidence
of unemployment and underemployment in rural areas. Since many
of the rural poor owned no assets other than their labor, improved
conditions of employment provided the only means of escape from
poverty other than income grants.
The Commission recognized that national minimum wage policy
had probably worked to keep the returns from labor at a relatively
low level in rural areas which are largely exempt from the policy.
As the principal means of increasing the return for labor, the Com
mission placed emphasis upon expansion of employment. Although
it advocated measures to expand employment in the private sector, the
Commission argued that the Federal Government should stand ready
to provide jobs at the national minimum wage to every person willing
and able to work, thereby insuring employment for all who seek it.
The Commission called attention to the growing dependence upon
public sources for income. It argued in favor of benefits in cash rather
than in kind, but warned that the current public assistance programs,
•especially O A S D Iil and the A FD C programs, must be modified sharp-
641
]y if the spiraling costs of welfare programs were to be controlled.
It argued strongly for the removal of discrimination against the rural
population in the application of these programs and recommended
modifications in the programs that would reduce penalties involved
in labor force participation.
As a third area of concern, the Commission was struck by the effects
of heavy migration from the rural areas. The nation has endeavored
to adjust its economic structure to changes in the technology of pro
duction, but comparable attention has not been given to the social and
governmental structure.
It is obvious that much of the governmental structure remaining
in rural America lacks viability. It is also clear that the problems of
air and water pollution, urban congestion and the decay of rural
institutions are associated with the distribution of population and
employment opportunities and are not likely to be solved without a
coordinated plan for development. The Commission emphasized that
the nation is without a policy with respect to the geographic distribu
tion of its population and employment opportunities. It sought to
restore a sense of nation-building to the nation, emphasizing the need
for an internal development program. The essential elements in na
tional development planning include the creation of development re
gions throughout the United States, the designation of growth centers,
and governmental support of public services emanating from these
centers.
In any attack on poverty, the importance of human resource devel
opment can hardly be overemphasized. When the well-being of people
is determined largely by the earnings of their labor, occupational
preparation, vocational education, on-the-job training, relocation as
sistance. and health related programs assume major importance. Those
kinds of services were very limited in most of rural America at the
time of the Commission report. As a fourth principal element in its
program the Commission called for a major national commitment
to human resource reclamation. It envisioned a program comparable
in scope to the soil reclamation programs established in the 1930*s.
W IIA T HAS HAPPENED SINCE?
jSTow let- us examine the record of the past 4 years in terms of the
four major elements of the program described above.
From the standpoint of removing the discriminatory effects of
public policies upon rural citizens one would have to conclude that
our recent performance has been less than satisfactory. Although im
provements have been made, rural residents still do not enjoy equal
access to publicly supported programs for health, housing, water and
sewage facilities, employment and welfare.
One is struck by the large and ever growing number of experimental
or pilot efforts designed to alleviate this inequality. The}' include
projects in the fields of mobility assistance, industrial incentives,
labor market surveys, health care, and education and training, to men
tion only a few. Few of the Commission’s recommendations have not,
at one time or another been tried on a limited basis. And, some of these
“ pilot” projects have been operating for several years. Yet, the results
of these trials seldom become the basis for replication on a broader
scale. Instead, resources and energies become dissipated among an
ever growing number of disjointed trial runs.
One can be a little more optimistic concerning the recommendations
relating to income support and maintenance. The reform of our wel
fare system, though not yet an accomplished fact, has moved higher
on the National agenda and, hopefully, nearer realization. The in
creased emphasis upon cash assistance (vis-a-vis assistance in-kinds
the standardization of eligibility criteria and basic payment levels,
and the strengthening of work incentives are all Commission recom
mendations that are embodied in principle in the welfare reform bill
now pending in Congress.
One significant difference between the pending bill and the Com
mission recommendations concerns the level of income support. The
Commission called for Federal payments based on a national minimum
needs standard. Obviously, the $2,400 familv-of-four base payment
contained in the welfare reform bill does not meet a minimum needs
standard. Apparently, we are not yet ready to go the full measure.
Many of the Commission's recommendations concerning food pro
grams— adoption of uniform eligibility criteria, expansion of the
food stamp program, elimination of the minimum purchase require
ment for the destitute, and gradual phase-out of commodity distribu
tion have either been achieved or are in the process of implementation.
Existing social legislation— such as the Fair Labor Standards Act.
the National Labor and Management Relations Act, the Social Se
curity Act, and unemployment insurance— has not yet been extended
uniformly to all rural workers, as the Commission recommended. The
best that can be said is that support for the extension of some of these
measures appears to have increased. The current Administration has,
for example, developed a proposal for extending benefits of the Na
tional Labor and Management Relations Act to farm workers that, if
enacted, would represent a significant improvement.
Though it has bren recommended repeatedly by many groups, in
cluding the Rural Poverty Commission, the Federal government con
tinues to shirk rsponsibilitv for fulfilling literally the goals of the
Employment Act of 1946. True, there have been scattered pilot pro
grams. Within recent weeks a new public service employment pro
gram has been launched. Still, 150,000 jobs (as provided under the
new program) will scarcely scratch the surfac of our present needs.
We are far from providing every American with a reasonable oppor
tunity for employment.
The third category of Commission recommendations sought to chart
a course for the modernization of governmental structures and the
encouragement of regional and area-wide economic development in
rural America. Overall, it seems fair to say that a start has been made
toward the realization of these objectives . . . but only a start.
The Commission called for establishment of a common system of
multicounty development districts throughout the nation as a founda
tion for the modernization of local government and the more effective
mobilization of resources for development. Though it remains fragile,
this approach has gained strength since 1967. Through implementa
tion of the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, the Federal govern
ment encouraged the partnership of State governments in this effort.
It sought better coordination of the wide variety of functional pro
643
grams. Nevertheless, the proliferation of competing districting efforts
remains a serious problem.
Far less progress has been made in providing program support for
these newly developed districts. The Public Works and Economic
Development Act has spread too few dollars over too many com
munities. The emphasis placed by its eligibility criteria upon the
areas with the worst problems has made it most difficult to conceive
of productive programs. The Title V Regional Commissions have
scarcely moved beyond the initial planning phase. Though several
legislative proposals for modifying the geographic pattern of in
dustrial growth have been introduced, few have received serious at
tention and none have been passed.
On the other hand, several of the Commission’s recommendations
concerning the sharing of Federal revenues with states, the establish
ment of a consistent set of regional administrative boundaries, the
consolidation of grant-in-aid programs, and the creation of a Statelocal application clearinghouse system are either high on the agenda
of pending actions or are in the midst of implementation.
During the last few years there has been growing interest in and
support for the development of a national growth policy, a policy
that would chart a course for the future development of this nation.
Through establishment of a Cabinet-level Domestic Affairs Council,
the President created a mechanism that could help bring this about.
In addition, the White House organized a staff capability— the
National Goals Research Staff— to provide the kind of continuing
technical input that has heretofore been absent. Unfortunately, upon
submission of its first annual report the staff was disbanded and the
effort aborted.
It seems to us that the category of programs for human resource
-development continues to be very much in need of additional resources
and most promising in terms of future payoff. Several important
advances have been made since the Commission made its study. New
area vocational training centers, in combination with improved road
systems, have significantly improved the accessibility of expanded
educational opportunities for many rural youth. Important forward
strides have been made in the field of family planning—both from
the standpoint of acceptability among public policymakers and fund
ing. Many advances are also being made in the manpower field— e.g.,
in laying the groundwork for a comprehensive manpower policy,
separation of the Employment Service and Unemployment Compensa
tion programs, the development of annual labor market plans, and
establishment of computerized job banks. While these are all im
portant steps in the right direction, the challenge now is to see that
they yield tangible benefits to the rural poor.
POVERTY TRENDS
The number of persons falling below the official poverty level
dropped rather significantly during the 1960’s. While over one in five
Americans were poor in 1960, by 1970 the ratio had declined to one in
eight.
Statistically, the situation in rural areas has improved even more—
though they are still worse off relative to urban areas. In 1959, one in
644
three nonmetropolitan residents was poor. In 1969, the ratio was
about one in six.
These trends can and should give us cause for hope, but not for re
joicing. There are still 25 million Americans living on the margin of
existence. And, in the midst of general affluence, this reflects a basic
inhumanity as well as a gross under-utilization of our human re
sources.
The growth in employment opportunities was much better distrib
uted in relation to growth in the labor force in the 1960?s than in
the 1950?s. Even so, large areas of the nation contained to lose popu
lation. About half of the counties lost population during the decade of
the 1960-s; another quarter grew so slowly that they experienced net
outmigration. Many of the regions most severely affected by popu
lation loss— particularly those in Appalachia and the Southeast— are
areas of high concentrated rural poverty.
Although there are more poor Whites than nonwhites there is
evidence that the racial minorites continue to account for a dispropor
tionately large share of the nation's rural poverty. About half of all
Blacks living outside metropolitan areas are poor. The incidence of
poverty among Blacks living on farms is even higher— 58% in
1970. It is instructive, therefore, to note the continued heavy net out
migration of minority population from low income, relatively rural
States. Arkansas* South Carolina, and Mississippi— though experienc
ing net outmigration in total— had a slight net m-migration of White
population during the 1960’s. The rate of new outmigration of Negroes
exceeded 20% for each of these States and was nearly 30% in Missis
sippi. In contrast, urban industrialized states such as New York, Ohio,
Indiana, and Wisconsin, experienced significant inmigration of
Negroes (35% in the case of New York) and slight net outmigration
of the White population.
These trends suggest that the ties between rural and urban poverty
persist. Clearly a decrease in the number of rural poor does not always
represent a decrease in the number of poor people.
A COORDINATED PROGRAM TS ESSENTIAL
I f a nation is serious about abolishing poverv over* the long run,,
a coordinated program is essential. In the short run, the appropriate
policy is one of income transfers to meet the needs of the indigent.
Short run programs, however, must be consistent with the long run
programs for abolition of poverty and must not serve as means of
perpetuating poverty. I f our short run policies are to be consistent
with the long run objective of abolishing poverty, welfare reform in
the United States is essential. The elements of the required changes
have been spelled out in detail during the last few years and most
of them have been incorporated into legislation now pending in Con
gress. The major elements include the adoption of a national needs
standard, the underwriting of a minimal level of support by the
Federal Government, a payments schedule that minimizes the con
flicts with labor force participation, special educational and training
programs to improve earning capacity of members of low income
families, and the establishment of an adequate system of child day-
645
care centers in order to enable mothers to participate in education,
training, and work programs.
The element of a comprehensive program to cope with poverty
that has received least national support is the establishment of an
effective national employment policy. The national government lias
steadfastly refused to accept responsibility for providing employ
ment. Escape from poverty is impossible if people cannot obtain
employment. During the last few years we have witnessed some of
the limitations of limiting the role of government in providing em
ployment in indirect measures such as those embodied in altering
monetary policies. Because of the low birth rate in the 1930\s and
the high birth rates following World War II, the number of people
in the prime work force is relatively small. Unemployment among this
group has and continues to be low. On the other hand, unemployment
has and continues to be extremely high for teenagers and those who
are less than 25 years of age. Effective programs for human resource
development and programs that facilitate entry of youth into occupa
tions experiencing a tight labor market clearly are in the interest of
the nation.
We have a strong bias against employment in the public sector.
Our preference for private employment reflects our national orienta
tion! toward production of goods rather than services. It is generally
recognized, however, that the United States has for several decades
been in a stage of economic development emphasizing the production
of services. Is it not time that we gave adequate recognition to the
production of public services, thereby enhancing the employment by
government? The Commission’s emphasis upon providing a job for
all who are able and willing to work is even more important in com
batting poverty today than it was four years ago because of the
higher unemployment.
Many of the impoverished today were reared in rural areas where
social services were unavailable or where accessibility was difficult.
In order to minimize the number of people in poverty, accessibility
to social services should be, improved throughout the United States.
Especially important is the recently developed trend for state-wide
standards for education systems, the growing acceptability of group
practice by physicians to enable them to operate in sparsely populated
areas, state-wide family planning services, and other health-related
programs. Although the costs of many of these programs are higher
in rural areas than in the metropolitan centers, the costs must be
also gauged in terms of the quality of human resources. Inferior
human resource development programs in an area will be reflected
in intensification of social problems at a later time.
Part of the problem of providing adequate social services in rural
areas has it roots in the pattern of growth and development that has
occurred within the nation during this century. During the 19th Cen
tury the nation had an explicit policy for internal development. It
subsidized the location of people throughout the West. When this was
accomplished it was assumed that the natural forces of the market
place would bring about the most desirable distribution of employ
ment opportunities and population in the nation. Instead, economic
growth had distinctly different impacts upon different areas of the
646
country. During the 1940's and 1950's, especially, employment growth
was concentrated in the major metropolitan centers. In many nonmetropolitan areas it became increasingly difficult to maintain ade
quate social services. The nation has given too little attention to the
problems of nation building. We have not yet evolved a coordinated
national policy for internal growth and development. Instead, we seem
to be moving in the opposite direction by shunting national responsi
bilities and asking the states to provide guidance. The revenue sharing
proposals, the unwillingness to provide program support for the Title
V Commissions, and the demise of the National Goals Research Staff,
all seem to point in the direction of depending more heavily upon the
states to determine internal growth policy.
Four years after the publication of the report of the Rural Poverty
Commission, millions of Americans are still left behind. In the inter
vening years significant improvements in policies and programs have
been made. But the thrust has not been sufficient to overcome the
problems of poverty. W e remain convinced that poverty will not be
overcome without extensive reform of welfare programs, a coordinated
program of human resource development and public service employ
ment that provides a job for all who are able and willing to work,
and a national development program that coordinates the location of
population, employment and the delivery of public services.
THE PRESIDENT'S “REPORT ON NATIONAL GROWTH
m 2 ": A CRITIQUE AND AN ALTERNATIVE FORMULA
TION
(By Richard P. Burton and Harvey A . Garn, The Urban Institute,
Washington, D.C.)
I . I n t r o d u c t io n *
The preamble to the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1970
calls for:
An Act to provide for the establishment of a national urban growth policy,
to encourage and support the proper growth and development of our States,
metropolitan areas, cities, counties, and towns with emphasis upon new com
munity and inner city development, to extend and amend the laws relating to
housing and urban development and for other purposes.
The passage of the Act represents a more explicit identification of
the Federal role in developing national urban growth policy than is
implied in past programmatic responses. The specific definition of
this Federal role was to be spelled out over time by congressional and
executive interaction. The President was to submit to the Congress a
report on national urban growth policy in 1972 and on even-numbered
years thereafter. W e have been asked to comment on the first report1
and to present our views on metropolitan growth policy. Before doing
this, however, some general comments are needed.
The requirements of the Act parallel in many ways the requirements
of the Employment Act of 1946. That Act identified explicitly a
Federal requirement to develop policies with respect to “full employ
ment.” It established the Joint Economic Committee to assist in the
development of policy and to respond to executive decisions relating
to employment problems. Further, it established a Council of Eco
nomic Advisers to assist the President in the specific definition of
policy and required the President to transmit an annual economic
report to Congress discussing policy issues.
Similarly, the Housing and Urban Development Act identifies a
specific problem area requiring the development of urban growth
policy, requires the President to identify a unit of the Domestic
Council to be responsible for this policy, and requires a bi-annual
report from the President on national urban growth policy.
The parallel is interesting because, in the case of the Employment
Act of 1946, the legislative initiative provided for the initial develop
ment of national employment and related policies and their continued,
more sophisticated, evolution. In the case of the Housing and Urban
Development Act of 1970, however, progress along both these lines
♦We wish to acknowledge the helpful suggestions of John W. Dyckman in earlier drafts
of this paper.
1 Report on National Growth 1972. Hereafter, this will be cited in the text as the
Report.
(6 4 7 )
648
has been disappointing to date. We, therefore, offer this critique of the
President’s initial report on national growth and an alternative for
mulation in the hope that a more specific identification of possible
policy initiatives will lead to constructive debate, and, possibly, even
to an improved response to our metropolitan problems.
Such an improvement requires an awareness of the importance of
the spatial dimension in developing national policy. Urban growth
policy relates not only to how our people live and work, but where
they live and work. Furthermore, concern with the spatial dimensions
of national policy calls attention to the importance of institutional
(particularly public) adaptations to settlement patterns.
Much of our critique and alternative formulation of metropolitan
growth policies springs from our conviction that:
(1) the United States is and will continue to be increasingly
a metropolitan society;
(2) neither metropolitan America nor nonmetropolitan America
will wither way; and
(3) both our public policies and our governmental institutions
have failed to respond to the challenges and problems associated
with (1) and (2) above.
The President’s Report focuses attention on the interaction between
rural and urban problems in its call for the development of a national
growth policy. There is clearly a need for such a comprehensive policy.
W e would argue, however, that the development of such an overarch
ing policy might best be realized by first developing policies to deal
with many of the specific and separable problems of metropolitan and
nonmetropolitan areas. Therefore, while we recognize that nonmetro
politan America has pressing problems which deserve attention in
national policy, we have restricted our attention here to policies for
metropolitan areas.2
At this time, the United States does not have a coherent nonmetropolitan, metropolitan or national growth policy that deals with the
spatial dimension noted above.3 Our implicit policies, however, have
created state coalitions of rural and suburban interests vis-a-vis central
cities, and have spurred attempts by the Federal level to pursue direct
approaches to central city communities and governments, thus under
mining the states. The net effects of these implicit policies have been
to increase metropolitan concentration of the population, spur intra
metropolitan residential moves to independent suburban jurisdictions
of the white middle class, increase concentration of the poor and
minorities in the central city, and create a jumble of governmental
responses at local, State, and Federal levels. One of our major points,
therefore, is that this dichotomy between rural/suburban and central
city populations implicit in current domestic “policy” be replaced by
a metropolitan and nonmetropolitan division. Our recommendations
below, therefore, are intended as a contribution to the development of
viable policies for metropolitan America as called for in the Housing
2 Although the Report seems to place particular emphasis on the importance of non
metropolitan problems, their explicit treatment of the issue is restricted to a few super*
ficial paragraphs on pp. 26-27.
8 There are policies and programs, of course, which have differential spatial impacts
and even some programs, such as those of the Economic Development Administration,
and the Regional Commissions which deal with spatially defined problem areas. These
policies and programs are not now coordinated, however, in coherent policy directions.
649
and Urban Development Act of 1970. A t a later date we plan to
formulate a companion set of nonmetropolitan policies and to clarify
the spatial implications of national growth policies.
II. A
C r itiq u e o f t h e
R ep o rt on N a tio n a l G r o w th
1972
As indicated, we have been requested to comment on the Report
on National Growth 197'2, and to present our views on the subject of
national urban growth policy. The Report was prepared by the Presi
dent’s staff in response to the specific requirement in the Housing and
Urban Development Act of 1970 “to assist in the development of a na
tional urban growth policy” by utilizing the capabilities of the execu
tive branch to develop and present, on even-numbered years starting
in 1972, a report on urban growth.
The Report, even as an initial step, does not seem to us to go very'
far in the direction of the development of a national urban growth
policy. While we grant that the development of such a policy is not
“the work of a day” 4 and that there are, indeed, difficulties in “the
task of formulating a growth policy which is more than mere rhetoric,
a policy that really makes a difference in our national life,” 5 we feel
that a stronger policy statement could have been prepared. The limita
tions of the Report are the result of three major weaknesses:
(1) Although there is an extended section of the Report devoted to population
growth and shift, there is no explicit recognition of the increasingly metropolitan
(not merely urban) character of our society, and the consequent need to adapt
our governmental structure to this change.
(2) As a policy statement it serves to blur, rather than clarify, a number of
critical distinctions— national vs. urban growth policy, national problems vs.
Federal problems, national vs. local problems, public vs. private responsibilities;
and allocation of functional responsibilities among governmental jurisdictions.
(3) Wljile the Report does contain some specific recommendations, it does not
attempt to isolate key urban problem sets, state goals for the resolution of these
problems, propose a coordinated set of strategies for achieving the goals, or
emphasize the respective roles of each of the levels of government— all of which
are crucial elements in a well-articulated metropolitan growth policy.
The discussions and hearings which preceded the passage of this Act,
as well as the mounting severity of urban problems in the United
States, make clear the need for a national recognition of these problems
and a Federal lead in their resolution. It is true, as the Report notes-,,
that our urban problems are related to our past history and our rural
problems. It is true, also, that they are complicated, difficult of solu
tion, and arise from the decisions of a large number of actors, both
private citizens and governmental officials. Indeed, a major reason
for requiring such an official report is a recognition of these facts. I f
their recognition required no further analysis; their acknowledgment
required no changes in our perceptions; and their resolution did not
require facing up to critical distinctions; there would have been little
point to the requirement. Unfortunately, the Report seems to us to
fall short in all of these respects and, therefore, contributes little to
constructive policy formulation.
Perhaps the problem is that, in the context of national urban growth,
policy is an elusive concept. However, a policy statement based on an
analytic framework would attempt to isolate problems, state objec
4 Report, p. xi.
5 Report, p. x.
650
tives, define alternative strategies, and identify public responsibilities.
The Report seems to simultaneously recognize and not recognize such
a view of policy definition.
Recognition is shown by such statements as:
(1) “All of these considerations should not be seen as precluding a new gen
eral strategy for national development. We need such a strategy; we must de
velop a clear and coherent approach.” 6
(2) “It (the Report) is concerned primarily with the twin objectives of bal
anced and orderly growth.” 7
(3) “Policies are needed to deal with these problems and to insure that future
growth is both orderly and balanced. As President Nixon has said, ‘the growth
which this Nation will inevitably experience in the coming decades will be
healthy growth only if it is balanced growth— and this means growth which
is distributed among both urban and rural areas.’ Orderly growth requires over
coming the problems associated with past growth and preventing their repeti
tion in the future. This wiU necessitate action by all parts of our society—:
individuals and families, private enterprise, and government at the local, State,
and Federal levels.” 8
(4) “Government should address itself to alleviating these problems, and, at
the same time, adopting policies toward growth that will prevent their recurrence
in the future.” 9
On the other hand, lack of recognition (or at least an unwilling
ness to move from general statements toward policy definition) is in
dicated b y :
(1) “The hard, unavoidable fact of the matter, however, is that no single policy,
nor even a single coordinated set of policies can remedy or even significantly
ameliorate all of our ills. As our problems are many and varied and changing
so our solutions must be multiple and diversified and flexible.” 10
(2) “As the findings of this report make clear, the Nation’s growth is shaped
by countless decisions made by individuals and firms seeking to fulfill their own
objectives. Few of these decisions, individually, take on national importance. The
vast majority of them, in fact, have significance only within a single local juris
diction, or at most, within a single State. Thus, it is all hut certain that future
problems of growth will be met at these levels, regardless of any attempts to
control the growth process by the Federal Government.” 1L
It is hard to see how clear and coherent national urban growth poli
cies can be developed unless the Federal Government takes the lead
in developing them. It is not inconsistent for the Federal Government,
within our federated structure of government which recognizes multi
ple values and pluralism in our society, to enunciate its view of the
problems, objectives and strategies. Nor is it inconsistent for the Fed
eral Government to attempt to identify direct and indirect responsi
bilities at all levels of government for influencing patterns of growth.12
It is doubly important, therefore, for the development of national
urban growth policy, to make critical distinctions. There is a distinc
tion between national growth policy and urban growth policy al
though the distinction is blurred in the Report on page i x 13 and tnere6 Report, p. xi.
7 Report, p. xi.
8 Report, p. 25-26. Further definition of the meaning of balanced and orderly growth
are not forthcoming in the Report. This is unfortunate since “defining the objectives of a
national growth policy requires a searching consideration of our national objectives and
priorities. This task becomes increasingly difficult as we move closer to specific goals. ”
(Report, p. 29.)
9 Report, p. 28.
10 Report, p. x (our italics).
11 Report, p. 65 (our italics).
12 Note that in an institutionally efficient federal system, it probably would not be
necessary for the Federal Government to take such a leading role. However, it is a central
theme of this paper that nontrivial institutional change at the State and local levels is
necessary if they are once again to participate fully in this responsibility.
13 “ . . . the term ‘national urban growth policy’ is too narrow. Instead this report will
use the term ‘national growth policy,’ recognizing that rural and urban community de
651
after. There is a distinction between problems which should be solved
by a public assumption of responsibility and those which can be re
solved privately, although that distinction is blurred throughout the
Report.1* There are distinctions among problems which are best re
solved locally, at State level, and at the Federal level which are
blurred throughout the Report,15 In failing to make such distinctions,
coupled with the absence of an analytic framework, the Report leaves
us virtually without a national urban growth policy in 1972.
Indeed, the Report reflects this “omission” in terms of the balance
of its contents. In a seventy-four page document only Chapter II,
“The Challenge of Balanced and Orderly Growth,” attempts to deal
with the policy issues we stress here. Its seven pages are devoted to:
problems associated with growth (three pages), obstacles and issues
in the formulation of a comprehensive national growth policy (two
and one-half pages),16 and meeting the challenges of growth (onehalf page).
The initial chapter, “Population Growth and Distribution,” uses
twenty-four pages to recount readily available demographic statistics
with little attempt to relate them to the discussion which follows. W e
should especially note the absence of two major sets of statistics in this
chapter. There are no projections in the Report of future magnitudes
or patterns (see Figure 5) of the metropolitan population. Such pro
jections, any of which show major expansions of the metropolitan
population, are crucial to the development of national urban growth
policy.
Metropolitan Growth 1960-2000
Source of Projection:
Millions
55. 0
Anthony Downs_______________________________________________________
Commission on Population Growth___________________________________
66.0
80. 5
Census D______________________________________________________________
H U D __________________________________________________________________ 96.4
Census A ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------144. 6
Chapter III, “Recent State and Local Actions to Influence Growth,”
consists of thirty-one pages describing an array of state and local
activities which may impinge on growth. There is no attempt made
to assess the relative significance of these activities or to draw out
lessons from this experience which could further the development of a
“clear and coherent approach” to national growth issues or policy.
Chapter IV describes some of the actions of the Administration (nine
pages) relating to growth. The result of the various staff and program
efforts related to the growth issue, according to the Report, “has been
a set of forceful policies designed to :
velopment are inseparably linked. It is important to realize that urban growth problems
cannot be discussed in a useful and intelligent manner without discussing rural growth as
well.” (Our italics.)
14 See especially, the introduction which first broadens the area of concern from “urban”
to “national growth policy” since the former is too narrow and then notices that “the
term ‘national growth policy’— and even the term ‘urban growth policy’— has come to
embrace virtually everything we do— privately and publicly— that shapes the future of
our society.” (Report, p. x.>
15 This is especially unsettling given the following comment in the Report: “If we are
to meet the challenges of national growth, we must begin by determining where in our
governmental system we can best deal with the problems and opportunities of growth.”
(Report, p. 31.)
16 The conclusion of which is, “Accordingly, it is not feasible for the highest level of
government to design policies for development that can operate successfully in all parts
of the Nation.” (Report, p. 31.)
652
(1) Strengthen the capacity of State and local governments,
to solve the problems that past growth has brought, and to take
advantage of the opportunities that future growth will bring;
(2) Recast the structure of the Federal Government to make it
more effective in assisting State and local governments to carry
out their responsibilities; and
(3) Improve Federal approaches to growth problems where
national interests are at stake.17
The Report then went on to describe a variety of Federal administra
tive and program activities— which, as such, are no different than those
which have characterized our past programmatic response to urban
problems.
The final chapter, “Administration Recommendations to the Con
gress” (nine pages), includes reference to government (Federal) reor
ganization, revenue sharing, expanded rural credit, planning and man
agement assistance, national land use policy to encourage States to
assume responsibility for land use, power plant citing, protection of
coastal wetlands by subsidies to developers, and welfare reform. Again,
no attempt is made in the Report to tie these recommendations together
as a clear and coherent response to the problems or issues surrounding
metropolitan growth policy or to assess their relative importance.
Hence, our view is that the result is not a very useful policy state
ment, and helps relatively little in developing one. Therefore, in con
sidering our assignment for today, we felt that a critique of the Report
would be especially incomplete without also supplying a constructive
alternative.
The remainder of this opening section will be devoted to identifying
what our alternative takes to be the key problem areas and a brief
description of the degree to which they are recognized in the Report.
We will comment, also, on the degree to which the Report states objec
tives for their solution. The second section of this paper will suggest
both alternative and recommended strategies for their resolution and
will identify the respective roles of Federal, State, and local
governments.
There is considerable concensus among urban analysts about the
definition of key problem areas. In our viewT, the major problems which
should be addressed by a metropolitan growth policy are those asso
ciated with:
(1)
Externalities (spill-ins and spill-outs), e.g., in waste dis
posal, pollution, transportation, and the inability of fragmented
local governments to internalize these externalities; 18
17 Report, pp. 56-57.
18 Externalities arise when the actions of one individual or group in pursuit of their
own goals result in the imposition of costs or benefits to other individuals or grqups in
such a way that the actor is not required to include the costs in his own decisions or can
not capture the value of the benefits for himself. Concentrations of population tend to
increase the possibility of such situations, e.g., pollution and travel congestion costs which
are frequently the result of actions by individuals or groups who do not incur the costs
they impose on others.
There is another class of problems which is related to externalities but is not identical
with them. These are problems in horizontal equity which result, in part, from the
existence of independent political jurisdictions in an interdependent setting, such as a
metropolitan area. Because individual actions impose differential requirements for pro
ducing and maintaining public services within a metropolitan area, but individuals are
taxed only in their own jurisdiction, like individuals in different jurisdictions may pay dif
ferential rates for services available to and used by all. This is the problem of horizontal
equity. It deserves separate treatment elsewhere. For our present purposes, problems of
horizontal equity will usually not be distinguished from externalities.
653
(2) Increasing ghettoization and apartheid between poverty
area residents (predominantly black) and the rest of the metro
politan population;
(3) Lack of citizen involvement in the resolution of municipal
affairs;
(4) Urban sprawl and decay within the urban area;
(5) Inadequate and uneven local financial resources.
The Report does not ignore this problem set completely, but it does
not isolate them in such a way that the goals with respect to their
resolution, strategies to deal with them or assignment of governmental
responsibilities among Federal, State and local governments are clear.
Externalities and Governmental Fragmentation
The Report contains some references to externalities. It is noted that:
The influx of low-income families and individuals has placed a heavy burden
on municipal services and facilities. At the same time, the revenue sources avail
able to pay for them have been shrinking, as middle and upper income families,
together with commercial and industrial enterprises, move to the suburbs. These
families may continue to place demands on central city facilities and services,
intensifying the problems cities face in providing them.19
Environmental and transportation externalities are also specifically
mentioned. These brief descriptions do not convey an adequate appre
ciation of the great range and variety of external effects (or problems
of horizontal equity) in areas of population concentration. Nor are
these descriptions linked effectively to the major institutional failures
which make it virtually impossible to internalize the externalities (or
produce horizontal equity) within the metropolitan region. There is
a reference to the reduced ability of the central cities to annex sur
rounding territories due to their incorporation as independent local
governments, but this observation occurs in the section on population
growth and the implications of the resulting fragmentation on the
ability of any given jurisdiction to deal with the externalities are not
discussed.
The Report verges on such a discussion in describing the prolifera
tion of special districts:
One of the reasons for the growth of special districts in American government
has been the spilling over of governmental functions across the boundaries of
individual municipalities, coupled with the unwillingness or inability of coun
ties to assume responsibility for these functions. Preliminary information from
the 1972 census of governments indicates that special districts grew in number
just as rapidly between 1967 and 1972 as in the preceding 5-year period.
The formation of a special district can add to the proliferation of local govern
ment units in metropolitan areas and make the formulation of land use, trans
portation, and other urban growth policies more difficult. However, the number
of special districts is likely to increase until general purpose units of government
begin to meet these needs more consistently or other institutional arrangements
are devised.20
After properly rejecting this approach, their recommendations on
this score include the reorganization of local government through
such vehicles as multipurpose authorities, two-level systems, urban
counties, and voluntary councils of government. These structures may
help resolve problems of fragmentation and externalities in small ur
ban areas; but, as the analysis below suggests, they are inadequate to
the institutional requirements of major metropolitan areas.
w Report, p. 27.
20 Report, p. 49.
654
Ghettoization and Apartheid
The problem is raised several times in the Report—the movement of
the black population from rural to urban areas, especially to the cen
tral city; the outmigration of the white middle- and upper-class to in
dependent suburban jurisdictions; the consequent strain on central
city financial resources; and the difficulty blacks have in finding suita
ble housing and employment. Unfortunately, there is no statement in
the Report about either Federal goals with respect to this problem or
any suggested strategy that deals with it— with the possible exception
of welfare reform.21
The Report's sketchy statement of the problem alone, however, in
dicates a need for further initiatives. For example, given the difficul
ties which central city blacks have in making use of the full range
of employment and housing options in metropolitan areas, cited in the
Report, is it reasonable to suppose that private markets will suddenly
become more responsive or that the predominantly white middle-class
suburbs will voluntarily assume the responsibility for resolving the
ghetto’s problems ? The silence of the Report with regard to strategies
for reducing problems associated with ghetto concentration is par
ticularly striking since the problems have been so well documented and
alternative strategies have been so extensively discussed, at least since
the Kerner Commission Report.22
Lack of Citizen Involvement in Municipal Affairs
This problem is largely overlooked in the Report. Insofar as it is
alluded to, it is in the context of decentralization of the operation
of Federal programs to regional, State and local levels and bolstering
governments in such a way that they are “closer to the people.” There
is no discussion of the difficulties which citizens are increasingly ex
pressing about the lack of responsiveness of local governments to com
munity needs within the city. This problem is not just confined to the
black community or other minority neighborhoods. Many groups and
neighborhoods have strongly expressed their concern that their par
ticular collective interests and needs lack effective expressions in cur
rent big city government. Administrative decentralization of the Fed
eral Government is not a response to these group and neighborhood
home-rule concerns. In fact, it could result in strengthening the abil
ity of the extant State and local governments to ignore appeals for
more citizen involvement.
TJrban Growth (Spraivl) and Decay
The Report makes little mention of the massive problems of decay
in our central cities and older suburbs, and indicates that sprawl is the
“price” that the American people have been willing to pay for low den
sity life styles. There is no discussion about whether the “price” being
paid is a necessary consequence of lower density living. Indeed, the im
pression is conveyed that the appropriate policy is to allow the market
mechanism to continue to determine metropolitan land use patterns
fo1lowed by ex post governmental attempts to bring order out of the
21 In this connection, it should be noted that the HUD strategy for ghetto dispersal
and economic integration of the suburbs, through the use of the threat of withholding
Federal funds, is mentioned nowhere in the Report— even though such a strategy represents
one of the few explicit current policies relating to ghettoization and racial apartheid.
This problem and our recommended alternative are discussed further below in Section III.
22 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Washington, D.C., 196S.
655
chaos of sprawl. Our own view is that other options which would
reverse this process are at the heart of urban development policy and
should have been explored,
Inadequate and Uneven Local Financial Resources
The Report does not discuss local revenue and tax problems exten
sively, but does reflect awareness that metropolitan concentration has
placed significant strains on financial resources available for the de
livery of local public services. Items discussed include the exodus of
upper- and middle-income people to the suburbs, problems associated
with the reliance on property taxation for financing local services, and
the increased requirements for social services of the lower-income
residents of the central city. Two strategies are proposed for dealing
with these problems— welfare reform, with the assumption of an in
creasing Federal role, and general and special revenue sharing. How
ever, there is no discussion of a strategy for reducing the numbers of
metropolitan area residents on welfare other than the work incentive
provisions of the Administration’s proposals. No mention is made
of what could be done in those cases where the problem is not one of
incentives but access to and availability of suitable job opportunities.
The Report notes that the racial apartheid of our cities and the increas
ing concentration of blacks in central cities “is due in large part to
economic and social forces which have limited the availability of
housing for blacks and minorities outside the central city area.” 23
I f the problem is lack of equal opportunity and free mobility, work
incentives, while relevant, are clearly not the whole answer.
There is yet another problem which relates to special and general
revenue sharing. The central focus of the revenue sharing proposals
is to provide funds directly to existing State and local governments
as an alternative to current categorical programs. Revenue sharing is
viewed, in the Report, as a device to increase the financial capacity of
State and local governments, but not as a device for forcing a restruc
turing of State and local jurisdictions in a way that will make them
responsive to metropolitan area problems and alter the current inter
governmental fiscal pattern of underaiding cities and overaiding
suburbs.
Summary
Almost everyone agrees, ourselves included, that policies are vitally
needed as a guide to the nation’s future urban development. The
Report, however, does not represent a major step toward the formula
tion of such policies.
The Report's suggestion that a national growth policy is needed is
surely correct, but does not obviate the necessity for a modular ap
proach and, therefore, a more complete development of policies di
rected to the problems of both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan
society. What follows is our attempt to isolate the metropolitan com
ponent and to develop an institutional formulation of national urban
growth policy within the context of a comprehensive framework of
analysis.
The problems and goals that are identified within this framework
are not unfamiliar; the set of recommended strategies, however, rep
23 Report, p. 23.
656
resent the emergence of a new and significantly different policy per
spective. Unlike our past record of ex post programmatic responses,
this perspective attempts to establish no less than the basis for a new
federalism for metropolitan society. It, therefore, constitutes a major
step in the development of viable national urban growth policy.
III.
A n I n s t it u t io n a l F o r m u la tio n o f N a tio n a l U r b a n G r o w th
P o l ic y
Thus, it is our view that the President’s Report on National Growth
1972 represents a deficient formulation of American urban growth
policy, inadequate both in concept and vision. Granted, the state of the
art in this country is relatively new, and the architects of the Report
have not inherited a particularly rich analytical legacy.24 Yet it seems
fco us that after several decades’ experience with rapid urbanization
and the consequent problems of the “urban crisis,” we are now in pos
session of enough domestic and imported knowledge to begin to formu
late a comprehensive framework that avoids misplaced emphasis,
makes worthwhile distinctions, and leads to a national urban growth
policy which can begin to bring these massive problems under effective
public control. Our efforts in the remaining pages will attempt to
utilize this knowledge in the construction of just such an analytic
framework.
W e recognize, of course, that a national urban growth policy of any
significant merit must deal non-incrementally with major land-use
strategies and other considerations that are fraught with political un
certainties in a society characterized by extensive decentralized deci
sion making. Thus, we shall carefully avoid the temptation of lapsing
into either a series of deflective excursions about the difficulty of growth
policy formulation, or into the overneutrality of a purely apolitical,
“scientific” discussion. W e suggest that, until recently, incremental ap
proaches have dominated our thinking, and although more than ten
years of urban policy research has given us some valuable tools and
perspectives, the persistence of urban problems and their spreading
severity serve to remind us that these approaches have simply failed to
generate or to affect public policy solutions. The realization that “we
don’t seem to be getting anywhere” in the formation of effective urban
ization policy also has created the awakening suspicion that continued
efforts along these traditional lines will only produce like results.
Hence, the crucial need to improve governmental responsiveness to
the nation’s urban problems has set the stage for new dimensions in
policy research. In recent years, we have witnessed some significant
departures from our technical, program-oriented perspective which
tend to regard urban problems as social pathologies whose cure de
pends only upon the dispassionate application of social and physical
science through large-scale government.25These new departures, reflect
ing awareness of the fact that most of our “urban social problems”
amount to “contests between various groups over the control of desira
ble resources,” 26 have begun to make us appreciate the high political
24 A comprehensive account of the “very modern history” of national urban growth
policy is contained in : Lowdon Wingo, “ Issues in a National Urban Development Strategy
for the United States,” Urban Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (February 11972), pp. 3-28.
25 This tendency has been discussed with remarkable insight by James B. Rule, “ The
Problem with Social Problems,” Politics and Society, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Fall, 1971), pp. 47-56.
28 Ibid., p. 47.
657
content of these problems and, therefore, the need for considering al
ternative institutional arrangements within which scientific solutions
are politically attainable. This is not to say that program evaluation
and PPBS have failed, but to suggest that “The analytic, problem
solving approach of the planning-programming-budgeting system can
not realize its full potential unless it considers, not only alternative
public programs and expenditure levels, but also alternative institu
tional arrangements for the achievement of public purposes.” 27 In
other words, approaches to our mammoth urban difficulties, which
merely involve the expenditure of more public funds and the develop
ment of more social programs, may continue to fall considerably short
of solution unless accompanied by nontrivial adjustments in the in
stitutional alignment of political power.
Therefore, m formulating a framework for national urban growth
policy, we have strongly, but not exclusively, emphasized this new kind
of institutional approach, an approach which seeks to answer the fol
lowing question: I f we could be more daring and could develop social'
policy based upon some limited but substantial change of our institu
tional arrangements, which ones would we need to adjust m order to
achieve substantial improvements in human welfare? Although in
stitutional approaches in general are neither value-free nor void of
political content, we believe that many of those employed below are
defensible on “rational” grounds as representing logical derivations
from principles of the emerging fields of metropolitan political econ
omy and social planning.
A Framework for National Metropolitan Growth Policy
First, a terminological distinction: during the past twenty-five
years, the United States has become much more of a metropolitan than
an urban nation with 71 percent of our population now residing in
metropolitan areas. Hence, a national metropolitan growth policy,
which recognizes the high degree of social, economic and environmen
tal interdependence of city and suburb, is distinctly more appropriate
than either a national urban growth policy or a national growth policy
that does not distinguish metropolitan and nonmetropolitan com
ponents.
Next, for greatly needed purposes of clarity, we suggest that the
framework for such a policy must initially consist of four basic in
gredients: (1) a definition of the key “urban” problem set, (2) an iden
tification of developmental goals, (3) an evaluation of alternative
strategies, and (4) an assignment of public responsibilities. As illus
trated in Figure 1, we have attempted to construct such a framework
in as concise a form as possible. It should be mentioned at the outset
that in specifying problem definitions and goal identifications (Col
umns I and I I ) , we have drawn heavily from the recent works of
Canty,28 Downs,29 and Moynihan30 and have discussed the response of
^ M a n c u r Olson. Jr., “T h e O p tim a l A llocation of Ju risd ic tio n a l R e sp o n sib ility: T h e
P rin cip le of ‘Fiscal Equivalence,’ ” The Analysis and Evaluation of Public Expenditures:
The PPB System , V ol. 1, Jo in t Econom ic Com mittee, Congress of the U nited States (1969),
p. 321.
28 D onald C a n ty, “M etrop olity,” City, V o l. 6, No. 2 (Spring, 1972), pp. 29-44.
29 A n th o n y D ow ns. “A lte rn a tive Fo rm s of F u tu re U rban G ro w th in the U nited States,”
Journal of the American Institute of Planners (Ja n u a ry, 1970), pp. 3-11.
30D aniel P. M oynihan, Toward a National Urban Policy (N ew Y o r k : Basic Books, 1970),
pp. 3-25.
658
the Report to these problem definitions and goal identifications in
Part II. Thus, we shall concentrate primarily on the issues of develop
ment strategies and public responsibilities (Columns I I I and IV ) in
the following discussion, which takes up each problem area sequen
tially.
I.
Problems
II.
Goals
III.
S trate gie s
IV.
Responsi
b ilitie s
1. "E x t e r n a lit y "
(wr.rste d is
p o s a l, p o llu
tion., trans
p o rta tio n ,
e t c .) c<ivJ
governmental
fragmentation
E scalate the le v e l
o f planning and
provide adequate
governmental
powers via metro
p o lita n organiza
tion
Organization o f
M etropolitan
States
Federal,
State
and lo c a l
2 . Ghettoizat.ion
and Apartheid
Ghetto D ispersal
and opening up of
the suburbs via
c o lle c t iv e in te
gration
Organization o f
In d u stria l Man
power
Communities in
the suburbs
Federal
3 . Lack o f c it iz e n
involvement in
municipal
a f f a ir s
Greater c it iz e n
p a r tic ip a tio n
v ia cen tral c ity
d ecen tra liza tio n
Organization o f
Neighborhood
Governments
State and
lo c a l
4 . Urban growth
Containment
Organization o f
S a t e l l it e C itie s
(the French
plan)
Federal
and State
Increase and
equalize metro
p o lita n revenue
base
Revenue Sharing
Federal
(sprav7l) and
decay
5 . Inadequate and
uneven lo c a l
fin a n c ia l
resources
Figure 1.
A Framework for a National Metropolitan Growth Policy
A. E X T E R N A L IT Y
( S P IL L O V E R S ) A N D G O V E R N M E N T A L F R A G M E N T A T I O N
Our institutional approach suggests that many urban economic,
social and environmental problems are caused by the failure of gov
ernmental structure to adapt to the spatial concentration and growth
of both industry and population in (balkanized) metropolitan areas.
Consequently, the major conceptual task confronting the U.S. metro
politan growth strategist is to develop institutional parameters for
the correct spatial organization of federalism in a metropolitan so
ciety. Indeed, this awesome task has been the focus of increasing study
over the past several years and, although there is now substantial pro
fessional agreement with respect to the need for governmental recon
659
struction, there is considerably less unanimity as to what form of al
ternative arrangements would be the most appropriate.
The argument about the form of alternative arrangements first
centered on a clash between two seemingly rival philosophies: the
“polycentric” theory of the political economist vs. the “region
alist” rationale of the public administration-planning tradition.31
Essentially, the “polycentric” position opts for highly demand-re
sponsive arrangements and, thus, argues for a metropolitan system of
many centers of formally independent decision-making, each of the
smallest possible size. Professor Stigler of the University of Chicago,
a staunch defender of this viewpoint, claims that:
If we give each governmental activity to the smallest governmental unit
Which can efficiently perform it, there.will be a vast resurgence and revitaliza
tion of local government in America. A vast reservoir of abiUty and imagination
can be found in the increasing leisure time of the population, and both public
functions and private citizens would benefit from the increased participation
of citizens in political life. An eminent and powerful structure of local govern
ment is a basic ingredient of a society which seeks to give to the individual the
fullest possible freedom and responsibility.32
In more formal terms, the argument is that efficiency in allocating local
public goods and services is maximized in the polycentric model by
(1) the presence of “fiscal equivalence,” i.e., by the congruence of com
munity and governmental jurisdiction, (2) by the relative homogeneity
of the population within communities, and (3) by the practice of “cit
izen participation,” or direct rather than representative democracy
in the local governing process. These kinds of public arrangements,
derived from the economists’ perfectly competitive market model,
are associated with the views of the classical liberal tradition.
The regionalist school, on the other hand, has been known to ex
hibit far less sympathy for polycentric arrangements which, in fact,
are regarded by them as something of an anachronism in the context
of metropolitan society. Although rarely stated explicitly, their rejec
tion of polycentrism is on grounds that the sufficiency of that model’s
three maximizing conditions (stated above) requires spatial independ
ence in a system of free-standing, self-contained communities, a con
dition seriously eroded in today’s cluster pattern of interdependent
communities situated around large, heterogeneous urban centers. The
regionalist view rests upon the proposition that today’s urban prob
lems are largely a result of the redistribution of population which ac
companied our transition from an essentially agrarian (nonmetropol
itan) economy to an industrial/service (metropolitan) economy— a
transition rapidly accelerated at mid-century and one that, by all fore
casts, will be virtually complete by the year 2000. This proposition,
developed brilliantly by August Losch, has been restated most suc
cinctly by Valavanis:
Now we appreciate the full force of Losch’s distinction between agriculture
and industry. Agricultural production is areal, industrial production is punctiform. The best location for the consumption of industrial goods is the city,
whereas the best one for consumption of food implies an even distribution of the
people. As long as products of the soil are an important item of demand, pop
31 A n excellent critique of these tw o theoretical strains is contained i n : E lin o r Ostrom .
Metropolitan Reform: Propositions Deprived from Two Traditions, m anuscript prepared
fo r the Society fo r the S tu d y of Social Problem s (Denver, Colorado, A u gu st 1971).
32In E dm un d S. Phelps (ed.), Private Wants and Public Needs (N ew Y o r k : W . W .
N orton, 1962), pp. 637-44.
660
ulation will be scattered, if not continuously at least evenly, like polka dots,
over the land.33
The redistribution effects, of course, have dramatically altered our
national settlement pattern from one characterized by a nonmetro
politan system of small- and medium-sized, free-standing communities
distributed like “polka dots over the land” to a predominantly metro
politan system described by great clusters of small- and medium-sized
(suburban) communities around urban cores, the latter having been
expanded in an intermediate migratory stage commonly referred to
as “urbanization.”
Therefore, the regionalists conclude, in a metropolitan setting where
“no community is an island unto itself,” the individualistic, consumeroriented reasoning of the political economist no longer applies. In
deed, the interdependence of metropolitan communities and the “per
vasive externalities” that result, call for some form of governmental
unification of the entire metropolitan region— for no less than metro
politan government. Although this conclusion is fairly well-known,
note that it places the regionalists squarely within the modern liberal
tradition; they argue that the power of government to countervail
the “anti-social” interests of the private sector is severely diluted when
metropolitan authority is fragmented in a “jungle” of small, over
lapping local j urisdictions.
So here we have i t : the apparently irreconcilable contest between
what Norton Long has described as metropolitan consumership vs.
metropolitan citizenship, a stand-off between the forces of polycentrism and the dispersal of political power vs. those of regionalism and
the concentration of public authority in a single agency. But the ori
gins of this dispute, of course, are hardly new; nor would the con
troversy have persisted if the arguments were not each highly compel
ling. Yet, over time, the heated clash of these contradictory opposites
have turned up noticeable weaknesses in both camps.
But in recent years, a kind of unconscious dialectic has begun to
emerge, a new approach to metropolitan organization pioneered by a
diverse group of men who would attempt to expunge these weaknesses
so as to forge a synthesis of the strengths of each. We have chosen to
label this avant garde the “New Federalists,” and their recent efforts
at constructing new forms of federalism for metropolitan society seem,
in both concept and practice, to represent concrete attempts to reconcile
these strengths. The following is an evaluation of this movement in the
form of a specific strategy recommendation for the first in our urban
problem set: externality and governmental fragmentation.
The Metropolitan 8 tate34
The institutions of State and local government in the United States
are increasingly under heavy critical assault. Some have even claimed
that these “sometime governments” and “anachronisms” are now unfit
to deal effectively with the accumulating social, economic and environ
mental deterioration that characterizes life in our modern metropoli
tan society. This view commonly asserts that we have all become high
33 Stefan Va la va n is, “ Losch on L o c a tio n : A R e vie w A rtic le ,” The American Economic
Review, V o l. 45, No. 4 (September, 1955), pt>. 637-44.
34 Much of the m aterial in th is section has been extracted from : R ic h a rd P. B u rton.
“ T h e M etropolitan S ta te : A P rescrip tion fo r the U rba n C risis and the P reservation of
P olycentrism in M etropolitan Society.” in Regional Planning Issues, P a rt 1, H earings
before the Subcom m ittee on U rba n A ffairs of the J o in t Econom ic Com mittee, N in e ty-first
Congress, 1970, pp. 139-65; and “T h e M etropolitan State,” City, V o l. 5, No. 5 (F a ll,
1971), pp. 44-49.
661
ly interdependent metropolitan citizens, residing in one part of the
metropolitan community, working in another, while shopping and re
creating in still others: State and local governments cannot cope with
the “pervasive externalities” that result. Consequently, what is required
are legal, metropolitan-wide governments to bring order out of the
“organized chaos” that results from the “crazy quilt” fusion of special
districts, city, county, State and Federal agencies that currently com
prise the governmental decision making apparatus in today’s metro
politan regions.
But the assault has not been limited to rhetoric alone: we have
already witnessed some profound changes in the polycentric structure
of our federal (three-level) system in the past twenty or thirty years
that have moved us measurably in the direction of centralism and to
ward a unitary (two-level) system of government in metropolitan
America. Included among the most important of these changes are (1)
the creation of a number of “big local governments,” 35 (2) the decline
of effective State government, and (3) the advent of “creative” or
“direct” federalism, a form of cooperation in which the States are by
passed in favor of direct relationships between the Federal Govern
ment and the cities.
The Metropolitan State strategy offered below is consistent with
a series of academic defenses of polycentrism and local government
that has emerged over the past fifteen years or so.36 By comparison,
however, a different and somewhat schizophrenic position is adopted
here, one that is accompanied at the same time by a sympathetic
recognition of the need for metropolitan-wide governmental organiza
tion. Thus, the central thrust of this inquiry can be simply stated:
are metropolitan governments and polycentrism (i.e., many centers of
formally independent decision making) reconcilable states of the
world? Our efforts to analyze this question will first include a brief
summary of some of the major adaptive responses of the federal system
35 The trend towards centralism in the form of metropolitan government is represented by the creation of
some 11 city-county consolidations since 1947: Baton Rouge (1947), Hampton, Va. (1952), Miami, Fla. (1957),
Nashville, Tenn. (1962), Virginia Beach (1962), and South Norfolk, Va, (1962), Jacksonville, Fla. (1967),
Carson City, Nev. (1969), Juneau, Alaska (1970), Columbus, Ga. (1970), and Indianapolis, Ind. (1970). More
subtle evidence is found, however, in the continual stripping away of local governmental functions which,
under the promise of economies of scale and businesslike efficiency, are elevated to the status of special and
multipurpose districts and virtual immunity to the political process. The following table illustrates the rela
tively rapid increase in the number of special districts:
1942
1952
States................................. ...................
48
48
3,050
3,049
Counties...................................................
Within SMSA’s..........................................................................
Municipalities...........................................
16,220
16,778
Within SMSA’s.............................................- ..........................
Townships or towns........... ....................
18,919
17,202
Within SMSA’s..................................................................... .
School districts........................ ...............
108,579
67,346
Within SMSA’s.................... ....................................................
Special districts........................................
8,299
12,319
Within SMSA’s............ ........................................... ...............
1957
1962
1967
48
3,047
311
17,183
3,844
17,198
2,607
50,446
7,486
14,405
3,736
50
3,043
310
18,000
4,142
17,142
2,573
34,678
6,004
18,323
5,411
50
3,049
404
18,040
4,977
17,105
3,255
21,782
5,018
21,264
7,049
36 F o r some of the m ore persuasive defenses, se e : Charles M. Tiebout, “A P u re T h e o ry
of Local E xp en d itu res.” Journal of Political Economy, V ol. 64 (October, 1956), pp. 416-24 ;
Vin c en t Ostrom , Charles M. Tieb ou t and R obert W a rren, “ In Defense of the P olycentric
M etropolis,” American Political Science Review , V o l. 60 (December, 1961), pp. 831-42;
M ancur Olson, J r., “T h e O ptim al A llocation of Ju risd ic tion a l R e s p o n s ib ility: T h e P rin
ciples of ‘Fisc al Equivalence,’ ” in The Analysis and Evaluation of Public Expenditures:
The PPB Systemf Jo in t Econom ic Committee, V o l. 1, Congress of the U nited States, 1969;
Vincent Ostrom . “ Operational F e d e ra lis m : O rga nization fo r the P ro vis io n of Public
Services in the Am erican Federal System ,” Public Choice, Vo l. 6 (Spring, 1969), pp. 1-17.
602
to the process of metropolitanization; focusing primarily on reappor
tionment, the increased role of grants-in-aid and organizational change
in local government. The principal conclusion reached here is that
metropolitanization, i.e., the spatial concentration of population and
industry, essentially represents a challenge not to the Federal or to
local government, but to the States— and that our polycentric system
requires a major transformation of its “middle tier” if federalism is to
retain its efficacy and survive in metropolitan society. The second part
of the discussion sketches the notion of the Metropolitan State, a con
ceptual prescription that urges political decentralization of State
government to accord with our largest metropolitan areas. It will be
argued that such institutional realignment would:
(1) Preserve intact the current polycentric structure of local
government in the metropolitan area;
(2) Provide metropolitan-wide areas with a fiscally and con
stitutionally viable form of government;
(3) Redress the city/suburban imbalance of political power;
(4) Provide functionally meaningful state boundaries within
which “comprehensive planning” would stand a far better chance
of becoming comprehensive;
(5) Preserve the local political gains of blacks and other
minority groups;
(6) Respond to the governmental problems created by frag
mentation of the metropolitan area along interstate lines;
(7) Force State responsiveness to problems of the urban crisis
and obviate the need for “direct federalism” ; and would, there
fore,
(8) Check the tendency toward centralism in a pluralistic
society.
The Response of the Federal System to Metropolitan Growth
At the risk of superficiality, we will note that the federal system has
attempted to adjust to the spatial concentration of economic activity
and the service requirements of metropolitan society in three principal
ways: the States have reapportioned legislative power, governmental
reorganization has characterized the local response, and the Federal
Government has furnished financial support to the cities via grantin-aid programs.
It is really to soon to gauge all of the effects of reapportionment
which began in the early 1960’s following the celebrated Baker vs. Carr
decision. Clearly, there have been mixed results, but perhaps the most
interesting of all has been the emergence of “rural-suburban” coalitions
within many of the State legislatures which has now replaced rural
domination as a force to politically contain the cities. The impact of
these coalitions, however, makes one thing very clear: given the
boundary locations of the States, the great hope that was once held out
for reapportionment as a cure for metropolitan problems has not, and
cannot hope to be realized without the virtual disenfranchisement of
the nonmetropolitan population, if existing State boundaries are
retained. The geographical areas of the States are simply too large
and encompass substantial proportions of nonmetropolitan population
which, when allied with suburban interests, serve to build-in State
unresponsiveness and artificially separate city and suburb.
663
Thus, in the absence of governmental response at the State level, the
localities and the Federal Government have attempted to step in and
fill the void, even though each is basically unsuited to the task. In the
absence of State response, it has become easier and easier to erode the
structure of local government and to rely on Washington for Federal
aid as a means of “solving” metropolitan service requirements and
the urban crisis. As a result, we have witnessed the growth of largescale local government on the one hand, and increasing Federal in
volvement via use of the grant-in-aid and the proliferation of domestic
programs such as urban renewal, model cities, the poverty programs,
etc. In other words, a trend toward centralism has developed which
finds added emphasis in the concept of “direct federalism.”
Finally, let us inquire briefly into governmental reorganizational
efforts at the local level. Although there are many ways in which local
government has sought to reorganize in response to metropolitan needs
(extra-territorial powers, intergovernmental agreements, transfer of
area-wide functions to the county or State, annexation, etc.), we will
limit our comments to special districts, city-county consolidation
(metro), and the newer “two-level” systems. These are the most dis
cussed forms, and appear to be those which are most competitive tQ
the Metropolitan State alternative.
As mentioned above, there has been an increasing acceptance of the
special district as an appropriate governmental unit for providing a
number of services that were formerly under the province of generalpurpose local government. The utilities, parks, housing, airports, flood
control, public health, etc., are some of the more well-known functions
that have been gradually stripped away and have been provided by
these districts one-by-one. Some of the reasons that have been put
forth in support of their rapidly multiplying numbers (e.g., there
are now over 500 special districts, excluding school districts, in the
nine-county San Francisco Bay area) include: (1) they are free of
the constitutional and statutory fiscal limitations on local government,
(2) they do not represent a threat to local officials, (3) they can per
form area-wide functions, and (4) they are “efficient.” Now, for pres
ent purposes, it should be realized that every one of these “pluses”
could be realized by the existence of Metropolitan States which, at
the same time, would not be as constrained by (1) the lack of a coor
dinated approach, (2) diffused and fragmented authority, and (3)
political invisibility.
Perhaps the largest threat to general-purpose local government,
however, is represented by the portent of city-county consolidation
(metro) as a vehicle for engaging metropolitan problems. Although
this form does provide the basis for a coordinated system of service
delivery, the almost complete damage that it does to local polycentrism
(coupled with the fact that it is highly inapplicable to the major,
multi-county metropolitan regions), makes city-county consolidation
a most unalluring alternative.
In many ways, a far more attractive form of metropolitan orga
nization, an institutional strategy we recommend for the “minor” met
ropolitan areas (500,000 to 1,500,000), is to be found in the “two-level”
approaches, the most typical examples of which include federation,
regional government and the metropolitan (urban) county. In essence,
two-level government would seek to provide metropolitan services on
81-745 o — 72— Pt. 2----- 8
664
a coordinated basis, not by the elimination of municipal government,
but by establishment of a new (fourth) layer of government between
the localities and the State.
But, while two-level approaches do possess the added quality of po
litical visibility and would also satisfy the Federal requirements for
comprehensive metropolitan planning, characteristics which support
our recommendations for their adoption in minor metropolitan areas,
such governments would still enjoy an “inferior” local governmental
status and w’ould be inadequate to the institutional requirements of
our major (1,500,000+) metropolitan regions. Perhaps the major
difficulty with all of the attempts at local organizational reform of
major metropolitan areas resides in the fact that each of them fail to
meet the most critical need of a ll: to restore State government to its
former “keystone” position in the federal system. Special districts,
metro, two-level approaches are all forms of government that are
inherently unsuited to the contemporary difficulties of major metro
politan areas. Therefore, we must turn our attention elsewhere.
Metropolitan States: What Are They?
It is perhaps easier, in the first place, to quickly point out what
Metropolitan States are not. The Metropolitan State, as thought of
in this paper, does not exist, and should not be confused with those
existing States which are characterized by relatively high proportions
of metropolitan-based populations. Neither should they be equated
with the “city-state” of Plato, Mailer and Lindsay; those statehood
concepts, by geographical elimination of the suburban sector of the
metropolitan area, would irretrievably cast the present artificial sepa
ration of city and suburb in institutional concrete.
Basically, the Metropolitan State would be an attempt to reconcile
the jurisdictional boundaries of State governments with the geogra
phical distribution of the population. As such, the concept parallels
that of reapportionment in which the boundaries of legislative districts
were redrawn on the basis of “one man-one vote.” The only difference
is that one tries to put the vote where the people are, while the other
would train its locational focus on the boundaries of State govern
ment. Both reform measures are in direct response to the successive
waves of rural-urban and urban-suburban migration, i.e., to the spatial
concentration of the population.
Although the principles of adjusting boundaries to population con
centrations has merit on a “common sense” basis, there has been no
widely recognized theory of political boundaries (or any other kind of
regional boundaries) that one may fall back upon in these matters.
Thus, we may very well ask, “What is the proper metropolitan area
over which a Metropolitan State would govern?” Granted, we have
the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SM SA) at our disposal,
but this definition has no compelling theoretical or functional founda
tions. Instead, it raises upon atavistic county lines as its basic building
blocks.37 And it was evidently this very difficulty that prompted a
pioneering effort on the part of Professor Karl Fox during the 1960’s
87 “ Counties were established on an artificial basis. U nlike cities, th ey did not g ro w up
as direct responses to local service needs. R ath er th ey were imposed from the state level
upon geographic areas m a n y years ago. F o r example, w hen counties were established in
Io w a the th e o ry w as th a t the county seat should be located w ith in a d a y’s buggy ride of
a n y point in the cou n ty.” Th om a s P. M u rp hy, Hetropolitics and the Urban County,
W ashington, D.C., p. 2.
665
to construct an area delimitation strategy resulting in the functional
economic area38 which “would consist of a cluster of several contig
uous whole counties which approximates the home-to-work commut
ing field of a central city.” 39 Thus, the buggy-determined county was
to be replaced by the automobile-determined FE A.
Supplemented by the work of others, notably Brian Berry at the
University of Chicago, the F E A ’s, in turn, became the building blocks
for both the “metropolitan economic area” (M EA) and the “consoli
dated metropolitan region” in an attempt to redefine the Standard
Metropolitan Statistical Areas of the Bureau of the Census. Although
it is impossible to pursue this subject matter in great detail here,40 we
should at least be aware of the following definitions:
Functional economic area: all those counties within a labor
market for which the proportion of resident workers commuting
to a given central county exceeds the proportion commuting to
alternative central counties.
Metropolitan economic area: an F E A in which the population
of the central city exceeds 50,000, or in which there are twin cities
satisfying criteria of existing SM SA definitional practice.
Consolidated metropolitan region: two or more F E A ’s and/or
M E A ’s (at least one must be an M EA ) in which at least 5 percent
of the resident workers of the central county of one commute to
the central county of another.
In our view, the “consolidated metropolitan region” (CMR) com
posed of functional and metropolitan economic areas, provides the best
areal classification scheme available for separating the nation into its
metropolitan and nonmetropolitan components. Besides satisfying the
criteria of compactness and contiguity, it is consistent with city, coun
ty and SM SA ooundaries. As opposed to the SM SA definition, how
ever, the CMR takes into account the functional interdependence of
our large (polynucleated) metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles,
New York, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. For example, under this plan
the San Francisco Bay Area would become a 9-county OMR, in con
trast to its present (fragmented) treatment by the Bureau of the
Census which divides (part of) the area into three separate SM SA’s.
It is suggested, therefore, that any consolidated metropolitan region
in the United States whose population reaches a lower threshold of
say, 1300,000 would qualify for metropolitan statehood. The closest
available approximation to the complete set of consolidated metropoli
tan regions m the United States is shown in Figure 2. Even though
this mapping is highly approximate, it is worth noting that many of
our existing State boundaries would be unaffected by conversion to
Metropolitan States since many do not contain metropolitan areas of
sufficient size.
38 See, fo r exam ple, K a r l A. F o x and T . K ris h n a K u m a r, “T h e Fu n ctio n a l Econom ic
A r e a : Delineation and Im plications fo r Econom ic A n a lysis and P o lic y,” Papers of the
Regional Science Association, V o l. 15 (1965), pp. 5 7-8 5 ; and K a r l A . F o x , “Fu n ctiona l
Econom ic A reas and Consolidated U rba n Regions of the U nited States,” SSRC ITEMS,
December 1967.
^ C h a rle s L . Leven (ed.), Design of a National System of Regional Accounts, W o rk in g
P aper D R A 9, In s titu te fo r U rban and Regional Studies, W a sh in gton U n ive rs ity, 1967,
p. 161.
40 F o r an extended discussion, see: “M etropolitan A rea D e fin itio n : A R e -E va lu a tion
of Concept and Statistical Practice (revised),” U.S. D epartm ent of Commerce, Bureau of
the Census, W ashington, D.C., J u ly 1969.
666
Source:
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Metropolitan Area Definition:
A Re-Fi'aluaticn of Concept and Statistical Practice (Raw),
Bureau of the Census Working Paper No. 28, Washington, D.C.,
1969, p. 33.
The Metropolitan State: Its Relevance to Externality and the Urban
Crisis
Let us now expand upon the principal ways in which a strategy of
converting to Metropolitan States would in fact respond to urban
problems.
(1)
In the first place, Metropolitan States would preserve intact
the current polycentric structure of local government within their
jurisdictional space (as defined by the consolidated metropolitan re
gion). That is, cities, counties, special districts, etc., would continue to
function as before, the only structural difference being that a new
Metropolitan State government would be established whose legisla
tive body would consist of the same State representatives that had
previously served the population of the area, and that a new governor
would be elected. This feature combines two very compelling advan
tages relative to alternative reorganizational strategies: (a) it would
retain the (polycentric) efficiency characteristics of general purpose
local government, and (b) it would meet the test of political accept
ability. The second advantage obviously requires some clarification.
It is widely recognized that “individuals who are elected or ap
pointed to strategic positions in local governments are very important
parties to any discussion about the future structure of governmental
organization.” 41 This is just a polite way of noting that vested inter
41 A. H . H a w le y and B. G. Zimmer, The Metropolitan Community: Its People and Gov
ernment (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1970), p. 126.
667
ests are very much at stake, and that many proposals for metropolitan
reorganization fail, not necessarily because of the lack of popular sup
port, but because of the fact that such proposals must first pass the
test of political acceptability. A vote for reorganization on the part
of a local official would very often be a vote for political extinction.
Hence, it is not altogether surprising that local officials rarely form
the vanguard of metropolitan reform movements.42 Under a Metro
politan State reorganizational plan, however, the vested interests of
local officials and governmental personnel are not at stake, as the entire
structure of local government is held intact. But, many reorganization
bills are tabled or defeated in State legislatures, and it might be asked:
What about resistance on behalf of State representatives? This is a
more difficult question to be sure, but it should be kept in mind that
conversion to smaller legislatures would have the effect of strengthen
ing the relative political influence of the individual representative.
For example, a representative in a 9-county San Francisco State leg
islature would possess a much larger voice in the conduct of affairs
than he has at the present time.
( 2 ) Secondly, Metropolitan States would provide metropolitanwide areas with a fiscally and constitutionally viable form of govern
ment. Few would dispute the fact that State governments possess the
fiscal and constitutional means to effectively deal with most of the
problems of the urban crisis. Alan Campbell has observed that:
State governments have been described as the “keystones of the American
governmental arch.” They sit midway between the local governments on the one
hand, which are their creatures, and the federal governments on the other, which
constitutionally possesses only delegated powers. By virtue of their position,
state governments possess the power, and theoretically the responsibility, for at
tacking practically all those problems which in sum equal the urban crisis.48
And, in their assessment of the role of the States, the Committee for
Economic Development has noted that:
While there is support for federally encouraged local government reorganiza
tion, the states are still considered the appropriate unit for tackling urban prob
lems. The states have the necessary legal powers and access to sufficient
resources.44
Thus, Metropolitan States would be constitutionally and fiscally
superior to any of the alternative forms of metropolitan reorganization
which would encounter the same kinds of constraints that Dillon ruled
localities face today.
(3) Next, Metropolitan States would redress the city/suburban im
balance of political power that presently exists in State legislatures. It
is now rather widely accepted among students of State and local gov
ernment that most of our State legislatures are dominated by the ex
istence of “rural-suburban coalitions,” and that, among the many
causes of State unresponsiveness to city problems, this is singularly the
most important.45
42 See H a w le y and Zim m er, ibid., f o r an interesting s u rve y o f the attitudes o f local
officials to w a rd reorganization.
43A la n K . Cam pbell (ed)., The States and the Urban Crisis (E nglew ood C liff: PrenticeH a ll, 1970), p. 6.
/T^4iP om m it.t5 £ ^ o r Econom lc Developm ent, Reshaping Government in Metropolitan Areas
(F e b ru a ry, 1970), p. 60.
45 In cataloguing the reasons fo r state fa ilu re, Cam pbell concludes : “F in a lly , and perhaps
closest to re a lity, is the claim th at the d istrib ution o f p olitical pow er w ith in states stands
in the w a y o f state action. T h is d istrib ution — regional, p a rty and interest group— form s
a com bination o f p olitica l pow er w hich, on the whole, tends to be anti-city/* A la n K
Cam pbell (ed.), op. d t., pp. 25-26.
668
Reichley furnishes some historical perspective:
The dominance of the squirearchies has now passed, because of reapportion
ment, in all but the most rural states, but their remaining leaders retain sub
stantial influence. Ylvisaker, who as New Jersey’s first Commissioner of Com
munity Affairs, has learned perhaps more than he wished to know of legislative
behavior, has observed that the skills which the squires acquired during the years
of dominance help now to preserve their effectiveness beyond their numbers. In
addition, they still comprise from one-fourth to one-third of the memberships of
legislatures in most urban states outside of California, New York, and lower
New England. In some states, as has already occurred in Maryland, city dele
gations may find it possible to make common cause with the remaining squires
against the rising power of the suburbs. In general, however, the outstaters
wUl probably choose alliance with the suburbs over coalition with the cities.48
By elimination of nonmetropolitan representation, Metropolitan
States would automatically sever the ties of the rural-suburban coali
tion and, although suburban domination of central cities would still
be maintained in most cases, the relative political interests of the
central cities within the new metropolitan legislatures would be en
hanced. As a basis for illustration, let us again turn to California, our
most metropolitanized state. According to our calculations,47 the com
position of the 1970 California State Legislature is as follows:
Assem bly
Senate
Num ber
Percent
Num ber
Percent
California..................................................................................
79
100
40
100
Central city.......................................................................
Suburban..........................................................................
Rest of State.....................................................................
24
32
23
30
41
29
13
13
14
33
33
34
Hence, it can easily be observed that the suburban/rest-of-state
block constitutes 70 percent of the membership in the Assembly, as op
posed to the central city’s 30 percent. Approximately the same condi
tions prevail in the Senate. But if we eliminate the influence of the
rest of the State’s representation and isolate the “Metropolitan States”
of Los Angeles and San Francisco, a substantial redress in the balance
of suburban-central city political power emerges:
Assem bly
Senate
Num ber
Percent
Num ber
Percent
Los Angeles metropolitan i .................................................... .....................40
100
17
100
Central city....................................................................... ..................... 15
Suburban.......................................................................... ..................... 25
37
63
9
8
53
47
San Francisco metropolitan 2....................................................................... 16
100
9
100
56
44
4
5
46
54
Central city....................................................................... ..................... 9
Suburban.......................................................................... ..................... 7
1 Includes Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties.
2 Includes San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, Sonoma, Solano, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Marin Counties.
(4)
In addition, Metropolitan States would provide functionally
meaningful State boundaries within which “comprehensive planning”
46A .
Jam es R eichley, “T h e P o litic a l C ontainm ent of the Cities,’* in A la n K . Campbell,
ibid., p. 180.
47 See R ic h a rd P . B u rton, “T h e M etropolitan State . .
op. d t., p. 162-65.
669
would be in a position to finally realize its promise. A rather wide
spread consensus exists at the present time that comprehensive plan
ning, the long-time dream of city and regional planners, has not
enjoyed unqualified success in either concept or practice. Its general
failure in arresting spillover, urban decay, sprawl, etc., can be attrib
uted to many causes, but perhaps the most important of all can be
traced to the lack of functionally specialized governments whose
(metropolitan) jurisdictions would supply a “comprehensive” focus.
W e would submit that the scope and content of comprehensive plan
ning has been metropolitan-oriented for some time now, reaching well
beyond the traditional concerns of “city planning” and yet falling
considerably short of meeting the planning needs of State govern
ment.50 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the metropolitan reor
ganization movement in the United States has received considerable
ammunition and support from the modern-day comprehensive planner.
(5) Metropolitan States would preserve the local political gains
of blacks and other minority groups. This attribute, which is closely
tied to the preservation of polycentrism feature mentioned above,
is extremely significant to the politics of metropolitan organization.
It is well-known that central city blacks have been particularly
strong opponents of reorganization, highly suspicious of most pro
posals because of their gerrymandering potential and consequent loss
of local political control. The issue has been set in rather concise
perspective by Charles P. Taft in his comment on CE D ’s policy state
ment on governmental reorganization in the metropolitan area :
I have been informed that one of the reasons for the voter support of Metro in
Nashville and Jacksonville was the fear that within the existing city boundaries
the black voter would take over. The absorption of the core city in the County
insured, the citizens felt, the continuance of white domination of the community
as a whole. This perhaps should have been explored. If true it might happen
elsewhere.51
Once again, the reorganizational plan along the lines of Metropoli
tan States would not constitute a threat to the political life of any
locality in the metropolitan community, and the political gains of
central city blacks would be effectively safeguarded (if not enhanced).
( 6 ) Metropolitan States would respond to the governmental prob
lems created by fragmentation of the metropolitan area along inter
state lines.— As indicated in Table 1 , the fanning out of metropolitan
areas across state lines has become a significant aspect of governmental
fragmentation in the United States, one that is beginning to rival local
fragmentation as a source of institutional failure. The difficulty, aris
ing from the weakness of our middle-tier and the folly of many State
boundaries as presently constituted, is particularly critical for it tends
to make metropolitan problems appear to be national problems because
of their interstate character. A perfect example of this trend toward
centralism is furnished in the President’s Report:
There are also some growth problems which are truly national problems, and
which should be addressed by the Federal Government. These problems are
national, not in the sense that they crop up in many places— street lighting is
a pervasive problem but hardly a national problem— but because no one State
60 F o r an evaluation of com prehensive p lanning at the State level, see Jo h n W . D yckm an,
“ State Developm ent P la n n in g : T h e C a liforn ia Case,” Journal of the American Institute
of Planners (M ay, 1964), pp. 144-52.
61 Com m ittee fo r Econom ic Developm ent, Reshaping Government in Metropolitan Areas
(F e b ru a ry, 1970), p. 60.
670
can deal with them effectively. Water and air pollution are good examples of
these national problems.52
T
ab le
1— Interstate standard metropolitan areas
8M8A
1976 population
1. New York, New York-Newark, New Jersey______________________ 13, 444,400
2. Chicago, Illinois-Gary/Hammond/East Chicago________________
7,373, 500
3. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-New Jersey--------------------------------------- 4, 774,400
4. Washington, D.C.-Maryland-Virginia------------------------------------------ 2, 704,100
5. St. Louis, Missouri-Illinois_______________________________________ 2,311, 400
6. Cincinnati, Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana______________________________ 1,361,000
1,214,400
7. Kansas City, Missouri-Kansas___________________________________
8. Portland, Oregon-Washington___________________________________
933,300
9. Louisville, Kentucky-Indiana____________________________________
795, 000
10. Memphis, Tennessee-Arkansas___________________________________
760,500
11. Toledo, Ohio-Michigan___________________________________________
670,700
12. Omaha, Nebraska-Iowa__________________________________________
514, 600
481,000
13. Wilmington, Delaware-New Jersey-Maryland---------------------------14. Davenport, Iowa-Rock Island-Moline, Illinois__________________
358,100
15. Binghamton, New York-Pennsylvania___________________________
301,100
16. Chattanooga, Tennessee-Georgia_________________________________
299,000
17. Duluth-Superior, Minnesota-Wisconsin________ _________________
272, 600
S ource: U.S. Departm ent of Commerce, B ureau of the Census, Population Estimates,
Series P -2 5 , No. 411, December 5,1968.
It goes without saying, therefore, that the construction of Metro
politan States would be able to respond to this particular class of
State and local problems.
(7)
Metropolitan States would also force State responsiveness to
the problems of the urban crisis and would obviate the need for “direct
federalism? Perhaps the most vivid testimony of Campbell’s “fallen
arch” description of State government’s emerging new role in the
federal system is to be found in the phenomenon of “direct federal
ism.” For example, Daniel Elazar observes that:
It is generally assumed that the federal-city relationship that is evolving is
radically new in several respects: in its very concern with urban problems as
such; in the fact that much of it appears to be a direct relationship, for all in
tents and purposes, bypassing the states insofar as active implementation of pro
grams is concerned; and finally, in its overall impact on American federalism.53
Now, if one is unfavorably disposed to centralism, this is surely an
alarming trend, and represents a most important challenge to Ameri
can federalism. The Metropolitan State, however, offers a logical—
perhaps the only— response to this challenge; through specialization
and political balance, it would force State responsiveness and would
mend the artificial separation of city and suburb that presently exists
in our metropolitan society. Unspecialized and unresponsive, State
government as presently constituted does not qualify as an appropriate
link between Federal government and locality— either by Federal or
by local standards. But the jurisdictions of Metropolitan States would
furnish the comprehensive regional domain demanded by the Federal
Government of COG’s— the servants of direct federalism. In contrast
with any of the alternative forms of metropolitan organization, only
the Metropolitan States would be capable of restoring State govern
ment to its former “keystone” status. This is so simply because regional
52 Reports, p. 31.
63D a niel J. E la za r, “U rba n P roblem s and the Federal G o ve rn m e n t: A H isto rica l
In q u iry ,” Political Science Quarterly (December, 1967), pp. 505-525.
671
government, metropolitan government, etc., are still but variations on
the theme of local government, “inferior” and subject to the will of the
State. As such, there is absolutely nothing about them that would
counteract the centralizing movement towards direct federalism.
The Long-Run Potential of Metropolitan States
The strategy recommendation offered in the foregoing .pages clearly
requires a fundamental change in the territorial structure of State
government, one that has far-reaching consequences for the federal
system. As such, any defense of its merits on grounds of present value
alone is insufficient. Even if it is allowed that the Metropolitan State
could contribute positively to the solution of contemporary domestic
problems, the question of whether or not such a change would be pos
sessed of lasting quality and capable of responding to the needs of
future urban growth is at least an equally important consideration.
This, of course, is a far more difficult matter; when contrasted with
speculations about the present, speculations about the future are nearly
always second-best. Nevertheless, a brief inquiry into some of the pro
posal’s underlying assumptions may provide at least a preliminary
basis with which to gauge long-run potential.
In the first instance, a prescription for converting to Metropolitan
States would be highly negligent if it were not assumed that metro
politan society was here to stay. (Conversely, the same would be true
if it were assumed that nonmetropolitan society was in the process of
withering away.)Indeed, if there were any indications of a return to
a nonmetropolitan, agrarian way of life the present pattern of State
boundaries would become increasingly efficient, as they were long ago—
and as they still are in many of the agricultural sections of the nation.
But, if anything, we know that there is a distinct tendency toward in
creased metropolitanization (see Figure 5), and that the future geo
graphical requirements of metropolitan areas are very likely to in
crease. How then would a system of Metropolitan States be in a posi
tion to accommodate such growth ? This is a crucial question in the con
text of this testimony, and one that requires at least two answers. Both
refer to the flexibility of the proposed system. First, we have pointed
out about that whenever an area had reached the status of a consolidated
metropolitan region (of a population size greater than some designated
lower threshold, e.g., 1,500,000), metropolitan growth would be accom
modated by the introduction of metropolitan statehood. Secondly, the
system would adjust to further metropolitanization in a manner similar
to reapportionment, i.e., whenever any territory (functional economic
area) adjacent to an existing Metropolitan State had become function
ally integrated, as conceivably determined by the decennial census, it
would automatically become annexed. Thus, the system would be char
acterized by a constitutionally sanctioned boundary flexibility, and
would adjust to future changes in territorial specialization either
through the creation of new State boundaries or the expansion of exist
ing ones.
There is another closely related assumption underlying this pro
posal ; it has been assumed implicitly that there is no inherent— cer
tainly no planned— tendency of States to become functionally special
ized within their territorial domains. I f there were such a trend, longrun forces would inevitably produce the required results and conver
672
sion to Metropolitan and non-Metropolitan States would turn out to
have been a costly, short-run response to a fugitive problem. A l
though the trend is toward more extensive metropolitanization in
many States, the key phrase here is “within their territorial domains.”
An excerpt from CED’s position on the boundary handicaps of State
government partially serves to illustrate the point:
The boundaries of many states coincide reasonably well with the economic
and social interests of the citizens, containing resources and population ade
quate for economies of scale in state services. Even where population is small,
geographical isolation may justify separate statehood— as in Alaska and Hawaii.
But some states are severly handicapped in solving their most pressing problems
because of awkward boundary locations. Metropolitan areas containing parts
of two or more states are illustrative, as are river basin problems wherever
major rivers fonm state boundary lines.54
Beyond this phenomenon, however, many States such as California,
Illinois, New York, Texas, etc., are of such great size and diversity of
locational advantages that complete specialization along either metro
politan or nonmetropolitan lines would clearly be unwarranted. W e
must conclude, therefore, that a system of Metropolitan States would
not be rendered redundant in the foreseeable future by the existence of
either planned or unplanned forces seeking the same end.
There are many other important assumptions embedded in the above
strategy whose clarification requires much more space than is allow
able here. For example, we have assumed that the Metropolitan State
legislature would bring about a redress in the balance of suburbancentral city political representation. And, in fact, it seems very likely
that it would— but only in the static, short-run sense. In the dynamic
case, note that the suburban sector would gradually achieve consid
erable dominance if the present migratory trend from city to suburb
is maintained. Furthermore, our discussion has entirely neglected two
exceedingly important issues: ( 1 ) an investigation of nonmetropolitan
boundary conditions, and ( 2 ) an analysis of the repercussions of
boundary realignment on the Congress. A ll of these issues, however,
must be reserved for future research.
In conclusion, it has been argued that our polycentric system of
local government performs an exceedingly important function in the
metropolitan area, and can work well within the bounds of its limita
tions. But the population of today’s metropolitan community is dis
tinguished by “dual citizenship” : they are residents of localities and
the surrounding metropolitan region as well. As such, a large set of
metropolitan service requirements have emerged and have posed what
is essentially an organizational challenge to the federal system. To be
sure, we have defended the need for metropolitanwide government but,
unlike many others, we would regard it as a supplement to local gov
ernment, not as a replacement. Moreover, we have also departed from
the conventional view which asserts that metropolitan reorganization
represents a challenge to sub-State governments. The “inferior” forms
of metropolitan organization— special districts, city-county consolida
tion, two-level government— have been rejected on grounds that they
would be ineffective with respect to constitutional and fiscal viability,
and utterly inappropriate with respect to size in our large, multi-county
metropolitan areas in excess of 1.5 million.
54 Com m ittee fo r Econom ic Developm ent, Modernizing State Government (N ew Y o r k :
1976), pp. 14-15.
673
Thus, our attention turned to the States, the logical governmental
link in the federal system to deal with area-wide problems. But it was
instantly observed that their old, traditional boundary locations have
become functionally obsolete which has served to paralyze the ability
of the more industrialized States to respond to their metropolitan
problems and the urban crisis. In spite of efforts at reapportionment,
the old nemesis of rural, nonmetropolitan interests {necessarily)
hangs on in these State capitals whose very locations— Sacramento,
Albany, Harrisburg, Austin, Springfield, Columbus, Lansing, Tal
lahassee, Jefferson City, Madison, etc.— are remote and symbolic of a
past order of things. Hence, the prescription of Metropolitan States
and boundary reform. It recommends an altered Federal system that
“gets government closer to the people” through creation of an in
creased number of smaller State governments. Thus, the States would
become functionally specialized again as they were in their agrarian
beginnings, but this time along nonmetropolitan and metropolitan
lines. Although the federal system has proven to be rather flexible
over the past three decades, much of the response, with the notable
exception of reapportionment, has been basically expedient, dealing
with symptoms rather than causes. W e suggest that boundary ad
justment tailored to the new geographical distribution of the popula
tion represents another aspect of the system’s capacity for flexibility.
Metropolitan States, however, would not be just another element in
a patchwork response of federalism to the urban crisis, but a major
response to the secular process of metropolitanization that has given
rise to it.
G H E T T O I Z A T I O N A N D A P A R T H E I D 55
The spatial distribution of race and poverty in today’s metropolitan
areas clearly ranks high in the nation’s urban problem set. Indeed, the
“urban crisis” is often associated exclusively with problems arising
from the concentration of poor blacks within the central city com
ponent of the metropolitan area. While this constitutes a much too
narrow view of the range of urban problems, it does indicate the rela
tive importance of urban poverty and the goal of ghetto dispersal
and the opening up of the suburbs.
The major contributors to ghettoization and apartheid are (1) low
income, and (2 ) suburban exclusion (racism). Current approaches
to problems of low income assume that money transfers are sufficient
to break the cycle of poverty and that suburban exclusion can be over
come by fair housing and forced housing integration. In contrast, our
strategy recommendation for ghetto dispersal— Industrial Manpower
Communities— is environmentally oriented and is based on the concept
of redistribution of income in kind through the formation of lowincome communities in the suburbs by the Federal Government.
In many respects, this strategy parallels the Metropolitan State
proposal outlined above inasmuch as ( 1 ) both are concerned with the
principle of governmental decentralization as a means of engaging
domestic problems brought about by the spatial concentration of
society, ( 2 ) both represent a search for new institutional alternatives
® T h e discussion in this section originated in R icha rd P. B u rton, “T h e Suburban
C risis and In d u stria l M anpow er C o m m u n itie s: A Social P la n n in g P roposal,” in Regional
Planning Issues, P a rt 2, H earin gs before the Subcom m ittee on U rba n A ffa irs of the Jo in t
Econom ic Committee, Ninety-second Congress, 1971, pp. 205-26.
674
consistent with our federal structure of government, and (3) both are
strong advocates of the general principle of governmental polycentrism. Perhaps the major dissimilarity between the two proposals,
however, is reflected in the weight of the Industrial Manpower Com
munity’s focus on social (redistributive) problems in the metropoli
tan area, insofar as these might be distinguished from economic (al
locative) problems— the dimension of the urban crisis particularly
addressed by the Metropolitan State.
O f course, there are other prominent differences as well, but our
primary purpose here is to offer the Industrial Manpower Community
as a substitute for the Department of Housing and Urban Develop
ment’s strategy for ghetto dispersal— their alternative to urban re
newal (the latter of which has aptly been termed “gilding the ghetto”
by Daniel Moynihan and John Kain, the chief architects of the ghetto
dispersal goal).
Note that the position adopted here does not contest the principle
of reducing the size of the ghetto, and “putting the resources where
the solutions are, not where the problems are.” When one considers both
the past record of urban renewal and the greatly expanded supply of
jobs in suburbia, such a policy seems clearly preferable to prolonged
ghetto-gilding. W hat is taken issue with is the current strategy of dis
persal which apparently favors a plan of forced housing integration
for existing suburban communities. W e are convinced by the analysis
presented below that such a strategy is as politically unsound as it is
sociologically untenable, and that what is warranted instead is a
strategy based on what we shall refer to as collective integration— im
plemented by the organization of Industrial Manpower Communities.
It will be argued that such a strategy would not only:
( 1 ) Ease the suburban low-income housing shortage,
( 2 ) Relieve population pressure on the central city ghetto, which
would greatly improve the possibilities for effective urban re
newal,
(3) Ease the fiscal pressure on the central city,
(4) Provide proximity to suburban jobs on a more equal access
basis,
but would also:
( 5 ) Obviate the need for forced housing integration in existing
suburban communities,
( 6 ) Preserve, not disperse, black political power,
(7) Provide a density-controlled residential environment for
low-income human development with access to light, air and open
space,
( 8 ) Establish a basis for planned suburban development.
Therefore, a fundamental operation on our svstem of government
is once again recommended, this time through the formation of Fed
erally financed, low-income suburban communities— a missing link
in our system of local government in the metropolitan region. In com
bination with stern enforcement of our fair housing policy, such a plan
would provide access to suburban housing for all residents of the cen
tral city ffhetto, access without that kind of interference in the eco
nomic affairs of existing communities which President Nixon has
rightly identified as improper governmental conduct.
675
Suburban Exclusion
Before turning to the Industrial Manpower Community in more
detail, it is necessary to consider the problem of apartheid and sub
urban exclusion. By such a phrase, we are clearly referring to the
near total exclusion of blacks and other minorities from suburban
residential communities56 and, hence, from equal access to suburban
employment opportunities, this consequence perfiaps less fully appre
ciated.57 On this score, consider the implications of Table 2 which shows
the distribution of employment between central city and suburb on a
white/nonwhite basis.
The impact of this pervasive exclusion, which has seen some 94
percent of the last decade’s increase in suburban employment accrue
to the advantage of whites, has been to furnish the fuel for: ( 1 ) the
debate now being waged between (what may not so rhetorically be
described as) the “urban-based integration alliance” on the one hand,
and the “white noose suburban separatists” on the others ( 2 ) the cre
ation of a growing number of civil rights institutions dedicated to the
integration of suburban communities; and (3) the recent emergence
of litigation contesting suburban zoning practices.
Although suburban exclusion has taken many forms, both economic
and noneconomic, it appears that the present controversy has centered
primarily on the former, which is typically implemented by means of
local zoning and building code practices. These practices, according
to Babcock,58 consist of the suburban attempt to (1) prevent the con
struction of apartments through the use of exclusive single-family
zoning, and ( 2 ) the use of large-acreage zoning to discourage or avoid
entirely more intense residential development. Note, therefore, that
the new assault on suburbia is not the one that has traditionally been
concerned with noneconomic, discriminatory practices (on the part of
real estate agents, etc.) against those who can financially afford to en
ter the suburban housing market, but is one that is directed at those
land-use devices employed for the effective exclusion of the lower in
come classes. And its purpose, in short, is to implement the ghetto
dispersal strategy mentioned above by forcing (rather than forming)
suburban communities to provide low-income housing.
w Th e white/nonwhite composition of suburbia is as follows:
1960
Suburbs..................... ............ .....................
54,881,000
White................................ .....................
Nonwhite......................... .....................
52,033,000
2,848,000
Percent
100
94.8
5.2
1968
69,104,000
65,269,000
3,835,000
Percent
100
94.5
5.5
Sources: 1960— U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1960 Census of Population, selected
area reports: Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas, final report PC(3)-1D, table 1, Government Printing
Office, Washington, D .C., 1963. 1968— U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Current
Population Reports, Population Characteristics, “Population of the United States b y Metropolitan-Nonmetropolitan Residence, 1968 and 1960,” series P-20, No. 181, table A , p. 1.
57Just as we urge fair housing, we, also, recognize the need for continued emphasis on fair employment
policies. Discrimination in hiring needs to be overcome as well as providing more opportunities for proxim ity
to suburban jobs.
58 R ic h a rd F . Babcock The Zoning Game (M adison, W is c o n s in : T h e U n iv e rs ity of
W isconsin Press, 1966).
676
TA B L E 2.— D IS TR IB U TIO N O F EM P LO YM EN T BETW EEN C E N TR A L C IT Y A N D SUBURB, B Y COLOR
[By place of residence]
1960
Num ber
1968
Percent
Num ber
Change (1960-68)
Percent
Num ber
Percent
A L L M E TR O P O LITA N AREAS
Tota l..............................................
42,376,000
100
49,616,000
100
7,240,000
100
W hite..................................... ..................
N onwhite............................... ...................
37,777,000
4,599,000
89
11
43,699,000
5,917,000
88
12
5,922,000
1,318,000
82
18
Tota l...............................................
22,787,000
100
23,096,000
100
309,000
100
W hite.........................................................
N onw hite..................................................
19,099,000
3,688,000
84
16
18,501,000
4,595,000
80
20
-5 9 8 ,0 0 0
907,000
-1 9 4
294
SUBURBS
Total...............................................
19,590,000
100
26,520,000
100
6,930,000
100
W hite........................... .............................
N onw h ite...................................................
18,678,000
911,000
95
5
25,198,000
1,322,000
95
5
6,520,000
411,000
94
6
C E N TR A L C ITIE S
Sources: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Population Estimates, Series P-25, No. 411, Dec. 5,
1968.
Let us now briefly review the most significant means which are
currently being used to challenge the principle of economic exclusion.
Inroads on suburban zoning practices are being pursued over a
wide front that ranges from direct constitutional challenge at one
end of the spectrum, through the efforts of a series of formal and
informal lobbying groups, to outright coercion on behalf of the Fed
eral Government at the other; for the most part, these incursions are
being sought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Suburban
Action Institute and the other similar organizations, and the Depart
ment of Housing and Urban Development, respectively.
By far the most notorious challenge to the constitutionality of sub
urban zoning is represented by the lawsuit by the A C LU in January
of last year against Black Jack, Missouri, in St. Louis County, a
community that has recently incorporated in what was presumably
an effort to exclude the construction of multi-family housing. “The
complaint . . . cites violations of the 13th Amendment, the 14th
Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 1964, the Fair Housing
Act of 1968, and the National Housing Act of 1968.” 59 Lobbying
efforts, beyond those traditionally committed to the quest for open
housing, are also gaining momentum with the emergence of such
organizations as the Suburban Action Institute of White Plains, New
York, which is actively engaged in attempts to persuade industry to
locate in those suburban jurisdictions that either have or will guarantee
to provide for adequate low-income housing.
Finally, it is necessary to consider the tack that has been taken
by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in this matter.
According to William Lilley’s prizeworthy article contained in a
recent edition of the Center for Political Research’s National Journal
“H U D Secretary George Romney is in the final planning stage of a
59 “S uburban H o u s in g : Loosening the Noose” Civil Liberties No. 275 (F e b ru a ry 1971).
677
full-scale effort to disperse largely black and poor populations of
center-city ghettoes into largely white and affluent suburbs.” 60 Lilley
then summarizes how this objective is to be accomplished:
Communities will not have their funds cut off in the future if they fail to
provide for low-income housing on scattered sites; they simply will not get
funds in the first place.
Funds for HUD projects will be parcelled out on a priority basis, with the
priority determined by how aggressively a community is pursuing low-income
housing.
HUD can do this for several reasons:
— Some of its programs are popular with suburbs, especially the water and
sewer program, where demand for funds runs ten times HUD’s supply, and
communities will acquiesce to the strings HUD might attach to the grants.
— The housing industry is suffering, and builders, desperate for funds to
finance new starts, will accept HUD’s open community policies at the grass
roots level in order to get money for construction.
— HUD can make the necessary changes administratively and not have to
rely on congressional support which, so far, has been noticeably absent.
. . . HUD’s program regulation route for implementing open communities has
three major components:
— enforcement of a tenant-selection policy for all FHA— assisted housing
and for public housing;
— enforcement of a site-selection policy for all FHA— assisted housing and
for public housing;
— development of new project evaluation criteria, preferably quantifiable
ones, for the urban development programs so that program money is dependent
on community performance in providing for low-income housing on scattered
sites.
In summary, we have observed that an important component of the
urban crisis stems from the rapid increase in suburban employment
opportunities and the presence of widespread residential exclusion
which have combined to produce an extraordinary social organization
problem in the metropolitan area. And its proposed solution, i.e., ghet
to dispersal through a strategy of forced housing integration, consti
tutes a serious threat to the principal foundation of our system of local
self-government— the (home rule) power to collectively determine the
economic character of one’s community by use of the zoning ordinance.
Rather than taking up a discussion of the economic legitimacy of
land-use regulation, this has been done elsewhere admirably; 61 we will
now consider the possibility of an alternative to ghetto dispersal
through a strategy of forced housing integration— the Industrial Man
power Community.
The Industrial Manpower Community: A Strategy for Collective
Integration
In his perceptive essay on “Alternative Future for the Ghetto,” 62
Anthony Downs derives the following five strategies for future de
velopment of the urban ghetto:
1. Present Policies: Concentration, segregation, and non-enrichment
2. Enrichment Only: Concentration, segregation, enrichment.
3. Integrated Gore: Concentration, integration (in the center only), enrichment.
60
“H o u s in g R eport/R om ney Faces P o litica l P e rils w ith P la n to In tegra te Suburbs’’
National Journal V o l. 2 No. 42 (O c to b e r 1 7 ,1'970) m>. 2251-2263.
® See, fo r example, O tto A . D a vis, “Econom ic Elem ents in M u nicipal Z o n in g Decisions,”
Land Economics, \ol. 39, No. 4 (Novem ber. 1963), pp. 3*75-86.
62 A n th o n y D ow n s, Urban Problems and Prospects, C hapter 2 (Chicago, 1970).
678
4. Segregated Dispersal: Dispersal, segregation, enrichment.
5. Integrated Dispersal: Dispersal, integration, enrichment.” 63
Like Moynihan and Kain, Downs clearly supports the dispersal al
ternative, but with regard to the relevant means, i.e., the choice be
tween segregated vs. integrated dispersal, he forthrightly admits that:
The speculative nature of the above discussion illustrates that society needs
to do much more thinking about what dispersal really means, how it might be
achieved, what alternative forms it might take, and what its consequences would
be.64
Indeed, this perplexity is clearly manifest in Mr. Downs’ conception
of applied dispersal as recently recommended in testimony before the
Select Committee on Equal Education Opportunity:
These differences make it possible to achieve most of the main residential ob
jectives of both groups simultaneously by “clustering” many lower-income house
holds with large, predominantly middle-income areas, and “scattering” some
individual lower-income households within smaller predominantly middleincome areas. The only fundamental requirement is that each cluster of lowincome housing should be small so that the children living in it would not
dominate the schools which they attend.65
Thus, as later set forth in his six-point “More Practical Initial Pro
gram,” his strategy of combined segregated and integrated dispeifeal
turns out to be no more than a plan of forced housing integration
under guarantee of white cultural and political domination.66 Now
this is a curious result, for “the kind of drastic steps that Anthony
• Ibid., p. 41. These strategies d erive from the fo llo w in g classification:
Degree-of-Concentration A lte rn a tive s
1.Continue to concentrate n onw h ite population g ro w th in central cities o r perhaps in a
fe w older suburbs n e xt to central cities. (Concentration)
2. Disperse n onw h ite p opulation g ro w th w id e ly th rou gh ou t a ll p arts o f m etropolitan
areas. ( Dispersal)
Degree-of-Segregation A lte rn a tive s
1. C ontinue to cluster w h ites and nonw hites in resid en tia lly segregated neighborhoods,
regardless o f w here th e y are w ith in the m etropolitan area. ( Segregation)
2. Scatter the n onw h ite population, o r at least a significant fra c tio n of it, “ra n d o m ly”
am ong w h ite residential areas to achieve at least p a rtia l residential integration,
( Integration)
D egree-of-Enrichm ent A lte rn a tive s
1. C ontinue to p rovid e re la tive ly low -level w elfare, educational. housing, job tra in ing,
and other support to the m ost deprived groups in the population— both those w ho are
incapable o f w o rk in g , such as the va s t m a jo rity o f public-aid recipients and those w h o
m ig h t p ossibly w ork, b ut are unem ployed because of lack of skills, discrim ination, lack of
desire, o r a n y oth er reason. (Non-enrichment)
2. G re a tly raise the level of support to w elfare, educational, housing, job tra in in g , and
other program s fo r the m ost deprived groups, la rg e ly th rough fed era lly aided program s.
(Enrichment)
Ibid., p. 50.
65 A n th o n y D ow ns, “R esidential Segregation b y Incom e and Race— Its N a ture, Its
R ela tion to Schools, and W a y s to A m eliorate It,” Te s tim o n y presented before the Select
C om m ittee on E q u a l E du ca tion a l O p p o rtu n ity of the U n ite d States Senate, September 1,
1970, p. 27.
"I b i d ., pp. 35-37.
1. E xp a n s io n of e xistin g subsidy program s fo r the creation of new lo w - and m oderateincome housing in suburban areas.
2. E n fo rc in g a requirem ent th a t suburban com m unities receiving a n y Federal financial
aids w hatsoever, inclu d in g the location o f new Fed era l facilities, develop and p u t in to
practice effective program s of creating low - and moderate-incom e housing.
3. Loca tion of m a n y new lo w - and m oderate-income housing u nits in suburban areas
both in re la tive ly sm all clusters and in in d ivid u a l scatteration in m iddle-incom e neighbor
hoods th rough ren t subsidies and public housing re n t allowances extended to in d ivid u a l
households.
4. C reation o f new educational subsidies, o r new means o f financing local educational
costs, th a t take the financial p ena lty out of accepting low -incom e residents in a com m unity,
and con vert it to an advantage.
15. T h e launching o f legal attacks on zonin g b a rrie rs th a t to ta lly exclude low-incom e
residents fro m suburban com m unities.
6. S up portin g extensive fu rth e r research in to the p ractical advantages o f sp a tia lly
m ix in g m iddle-incom e and low er-incom e households ( if th e y re a lly exist), and w id e ly
p ub licizing the results, so as to create a clim ate of public acceptance fo r this kind of
stra te g y described above.
679
Downs recommends67 seems peculiarly at odds with the otherwise
excellent discussion of the socio-economic value of community and
residential exclusivity that preceded it. Such incongruity probably
results from his sharing of the widely held assumption that “subur
banization of the Negro and housing integration are synonomous . . . ”
(and the failure to realize that “ . . . many of the disadvantages of
massive, central ghettoes would be overcome if they were replaced or
even augmented by smaller, dispersed Negro communities” ** This
recognition, we suggest, represents an important possibility and per
mits addition of a sixth option to Downs’ classification scheme for
future development of the ghetto, one which we will define as “col
lective integration”— the strategy upon which our strategy of Indus
trial Manpower Communities is grounded.
Before turning directly to the specifics of this proposal, let us
briefly consider the issue of collective integration of suburbia through
low-income community formation, first by itemizing alternative possi
bilities for their realization and, secondly, by briefly assessing their
relative virtues in light of the Tiebout-Buchanan theory of local
government.
As nearly as we can determine, there are not more than three pri
mary means by which low-income suburban communities may be
developed:
( 1 ) Ghetto Extension: Gradual market solution, unforced,
slum conditions.
(2) Community Tipping: Immediate nonmarket solution,
forced, quasi-slum conditions.
(3) New Community Development: Immediate nonmarket so
lution, unforced, non-slum conditions.
Ghetto extension simply represents the trend described above whereby
the central city ghetto, in many metropolitan areas, is now spreading
into those adjacent suburban communities which are in a state of eco
nomic decline. This movement, if unchecked, will doubtlessly result
in the gradual establishment of a number of all-black communities in
the inner suburban ring which in all likelihood will retain their slum
characteristics.
Deliberate community tipping as a means of achieving black com
munities has been suggested by Kain and Persky. Noting that “the
presence of Negroes in the suburbs does not necessarily imply Negro
integration into white residential neighborhoods,” they argue that:
Although such a segregated pattern does not represent the authors’ idea of a
more open society, it could still prove a valuable first step toward that goal.
Most groups attempting to integrate suburban neighborhoods have placed great
stress on achieving and maintaining some preconceived interracial balance. Be
cause integration is the goal, they feel the need to proceed slowly and make
elaborate precautions to avoid “tipping” the neighborhood. The result has been
a small, black trickle into all-white suburbs. But if the immediate goal is seen
as destroying the ghetto, different strategies should be employed. “Tipping,”
rather than something to be carefully avoided, might be viewed as a tactic for
opening large amounts of suburban housing. If enough suburban neighborhoods
are “tipped,” the danger of any one of them becoming a massive ghetto would
be small.69
67 N. Deakin and B. O. Cohen, “Dispersal and C h o ic e : T o w a rd s a S tra tegy fo r E th n ic
M in orities in B rita in / ’ Environment and Planning, V o l. 2, No. 2 (1970), p. 190.
68 Jo h n P . K a in and Joseph J . P ersky, “A lte rn a tive s to the G ild ed Ghetto/* Public
Interest, No. 14 (W in ter, 1969), p. 80.
“ Ibid., p. 81.
Hence, the Kain-Persky formula (if we may assume equivalence in
their use of “community” and “neighborhood” ) for the establishment
of black suburban communities contains a strategy of active interven
tion— tipping— in the existing housing market. This strategy is a de
liberate one (as opposed to the spontaneous, market character of
ghetto extension) and would presumably be implemented by the use
of government subsidy to acquire existing housing units for low-income households up to the point where a number of suburban com
munities would be tipped.
The establishment of new communities in the suburban periphery
completes the strategies available for ghetto dispersal through col
lective integration. This alternative is clearly differentiated from all
of the suburban integration schemes noted previously (including those
of forced housing integration), insofar as it does not involve full or
partial use of existing suburban communities. Therefore, the range of
choice is essentially reduced to: ( 1 ) partial use of existing communi
ties; (2) full use of existing communities; and (3) use of new com
munities. W e trust that the first choice, i.e., partial use of existing
communities, has been adequately dealt with, and that the discussion
may now be limited to weighing the relative advantages of the two col
lective integration possibilities that remain.
It should be noted at the outset that each of these alternatives recog
nize the (political and economic) value of community, and the fact
(implicitly) accounted for in the local public expenditure theories
of Tiebout70 and Buchanan,71 that communities homogeneous with
respect to low-income are not generally provided by our quasi-market,
club system of local government in the suburban sector of the metro
politan area. This omission can be illustrated by reference to the
shaded area in the following generalized frequency diagram:
70 Charles M. Tiebout, “A P ure T h e o ry of Local E xp en d itu res,” Journal of Political
Economy, V ol. 64, No. 5 (October, 1956).
71 Jam es M. Buchanan, “A n Econom ic T h e o ry of Clubs,” Economica, V o l. 32 (F e b ru a ry,
1965).
o
15
Average Family Income Per Community
$50,000+
682
This diagram simply takes note of the fact that the mi-ssing link
in our system of local government results from the non-existence of
suburban communities of average household income less than approxi
mately $ 12 ,000.72 Thus, both of the collective integration strategies
would attempt to close this gap, and to expand the ghetto inhabitant’s
range of residential choice by providing a number of homogeneous
“low-income” communities in the suburban periphery. Although both
these strategies must be considered superior to any of those which
would violate the homogeneity conditions of existing suburban com
munities by interference in local zoning practices, the Kain-Persky
solution must be regarded as second-best, inasmuch as it would re
quire temporary Federal intervention in the economic affairs of exist
ing communities during the conversion (tipping) period. Further
more, one greatly suspects that at least some of the “tipped” suburban
residents would suffer uncompensated financial losses, while all would
be faced with a reduced number of comparable residential alternatives.
Therefore, the most frictionless integration alternative presently
available appears to be that which would require the use of new com
munities— Industrial Manpower Communities— located in a number
of the many unincorporated suburban places still remaining in most
metropolitan areas.
The Industrial Manpower Community.— As suggested in the intro
duction to this section, the Industrial Manpower Community repre
sents an application of the new town concept to the social planning
objective of ghetto dispersal through a strategy of collective integra
tion. Although it is clearly impossible to develop anything approach
ing a detailed plan here, we will nevertheless attempt to sketch out
something of a profile for an Industrial Manpower Community whose
parameters draw almost exclusively upon the imaginative precedent
set by Clarence Stein’s Greenbelt Towns during the depression years
of the 1930’s. The most compelling reason for this selection is that,
among the wide variation one encounters in the theory and practice of
new towns, Stein’s work was singularly unique in his commitment
to the creation of (Federally sponsored) low-income new towns which
maintained the integrity of the Garden City principles of Ebenezer
Howard.73 Indeed, the purposes of the Greenbelt Towns as officially
stated were:
1 . To give useful work to men on unemployment relief;
2 . To demonstrate in practice the soundness of planning and op
erating towns according to certain garden city principles;
3. To provide low-rent housing in healthful surroundings, both
physical and social, for families that are in the low-income bracket.74
The three Greenbelt Towns that were actually created (Greendale,
Wisconsin, seven miles from the center of Milwaukee; Greenhills,
Ohio, five miles north of Cincinnati; and Greenbelt, Maryland, thir
teen miles from the center of Washington, D.C.) were “made possible
72 T h is figure, used b y M a yo r L in d s a y and others, is a cu rren t one and o b viou sly varies
ove r tim e and from place to place.
73 Stein quotes the accepted definition of a Garden C ity : “A garden c ity is a to w n planned
fo r in d u s try and h ealthy livin g , o f a size th a t makes possible a fu ll measure of social
life, but no larger, surrounded b y a perm anent ru ra l belt, the w hole of the being in public
ow nership, o r held in tru st fo r the com m unity.” Clarence S. 'Stein, Towards New Towns
for America (Cam bridge : T h e M .I.T . Press, 1966), p. 130.
™IMd., p. 119.
683
by the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act and the National Indus
trial Recovery Act, both of 1935.” 75
The Greenbelt experiment, guided by Frederick Bigger, the chief
planner of the Suburban Resettlement Division (of the Resettlement
Administration), sought as its overall objective:
To obtain a large tract of land, and thus avoid the complications due to diverse
ownerships; in this tract to create a community, protected by an encircling green
belt; the community to be designed for families of predominantly modest income,
and arranged and administered (managed) so as to encourage that kind of family
and community life which will be better than they now enjoy, but which will not
involve subjecting them to coercion or theoretical and untested discipline; the
dwellings and the land upon which they are located to be held in one ownership,
preferably as a corpora ted entity to which the federal government will transfer
title, and which entity or corporation will rent or lease the dwellings but will not
sell them; a municipal government to be set up, in character with such govern
ments now existing or possible in that region; coordination to be established, in
relation to the local and state governments, so that there may be provided those
public services of educational and other character which the community will
require; and finally, to accomplish these purposes in such a way that the com
munity may be a taxpaying participant in the region, that extravagant outlays
from the individual family income will not be a necessity, and that the rent will
be suitable to families of modest income.78
As it turned out, these objectives were most fully realized in the
case of Greenbelt, Maryland, which, on 3,300 acres of Federally ac
quired land, admitted its first 3,000 residents (average family income:
$1,250) in the years 1937-38. The town plan for Greenbelt is shown
in Figure 3, and its relation to Washington, D.C., with its suburban
periphery in Figure 4.
75 T o trace the Federal role to its con clu sion : “B y executive ord er o f September of
th at ye a r (1935) the President established the Resettlem ent A d m in istra tio n and pre
scribed its functions in regard to the Greenbelt To w n s. Since then the a dm inistra tion of
these com m unities has been successively tra nsferred to va rio u s federal agencies: in D e
cember 1936 to the Secretary of A gric u ltu re, under w hom it operated as a separate u nit
of the D epartm ent, the name of w hich w as afterw ard s changed to F a rm S ecu rity A d m in
istra tion ; in F e b ru a ry 1942 the President tra n sferrred all housing developm ents w hich
did not relate chiefly to fa rm in g to the N a tiona l H ousin g Agency, a fte rw a rd the National
P ublic H ousin g A u th o rity, and now the P ublic H ousin g A dm inistra tion. I n 1949, as a
result of special legislation fo r th at purpose (Senate No. 351), the tow ns were to be
disposed of by sale, w ith first preference to veterans and present tenants and present
tenants groups organized on a non-profit basis.” Stein, ibid., p. 119.
7*Ibid., p. 120.
684
X
AOiCULTUftAl
KZSCAnCH
/
/
Figure 3.
Street Map of the City of Greenbelt
[Prince Georges County, Maryland,
March 1970—Not to Scale]
685
Figure 4. Regional Map Showing Relation of Greenbelt to Washington, D.C.
Source:
Richard P. Burton, "The Suburban Crisis and Industrial Manpower
Communities: A Social Planning Proposal," in Hearings Before
the Subcommittee on Urban Affairs of the Joint Economic Committees
Congress of the United States, Ninety-Second Congress, 1st Session,
Part 2, Invited Comments, 1971, p. 218.
During its period of Federal guardianship, and especially during
the war years, the population expanded as additional homes were con
structed under carefully controlled density standards. And, through
out the past 20 years under the auspices of private development,
Greenbelt has gradually attained a population size of 18,199 with an
average (adjusted gross) income of $7,671.
Thus, with but a few exceptions, the case of Greenbelt (whose
acclaim as an example of successful regional planning by the Federal
Government has been somewhat lost in the fame of the Tennessee
Valley Authority) offers a highly pertinent, experimentally tested
prototype for the Industrial Manpower Community. Note, however,
that while it offers a model of low-income community formation, fur
ther experimentation would be required in order to establish the viabil
ity of the Industrial Manpower Community as a mechanism for inte
gration. I f proven successful, the objective of ghetto dispersal through
686
collective integration could ultimately be realized by their planned
replication, i.e., by establishment of a network of these prototypes
within the metropolitan community system. The exact number, size
and location for the Industrial Manpower Communities, as in the case
of Greenbelt, would be heavily based on an analysis of the metropoli
tan labor market and suburban industrial location trends.
Finally, we hope that the above sketch has been sufficiently graphic
to differentiate the Industrial Manpower Community from the un
savory image of the worker-exploited “company town,” or from a
series of slum-ridden, suburban “mini-ghettoes.” Any such inferences
would result from a failure to fully appreciate the Greenbelt model.
Again, quoting Stein:
The fact that the federal government has been the owner of Greenbelt and
the landlord of practically all of its citizens might give the impression that it is
a “freak” town. On the contrary, the citizens take at least as active a part in deter
mining civic policies as in most small American municipalities. Their local gov
ernment, the Town (now the City) is under a City Manager directly responsible
to it and the Mayor. The only difference between it and other Maryland mu
nicipalities with managers is that all voters have been tenants of the single
owner of all taxable property, the U.S.A.77
Thus, on the company town score, corporate or business ownership of
residential property is clearly ruled out; and, to prevent the Industrial
Manpower Community from lapsing into the condition of a “mini
ghetto,” we have the incubation period of Federal guardianship to
maintain low-density and adequate maintenance conditions, and the
fact that the home-rule political character of the Community is such
that it is no different in that respect from any other homogeneous
suburban community. A third factor inhibiting slum conditions would
be the simple, but powerful proviso that each household must have
an income sufficient to pay rent equal to the cost of the maintenance of
its housing.
In conclusion, the contemporary assault on suburban exclusion has
focused on attacking residential zoning practices of suburban com
munities. Zoning practices are, however, one of the principal foun
dations of our polycentric system of local self-government in the met
ropolitan area. Deprived of their right to zone, suburban jurisdictions
will, in effect, become central city neighborhoods— just as powerless, as
in need of “neighborhood participation,” and as subject to the commu
nity-disruptive play of the speculative builder that has given shape to
the congestion, hyperdensity and decay of our contemporary urban
environment. In other words, suburban zoning remains as the only ob
stacle to those forces which threaten simply to reproduce the central
city land-use and social organization patterns within the suburban
periphery, the only barrier to the urbanization of suburbia.
Nonetheless, the “ white barrier” to urban expansion paradoxically
remains the “white noose” of suburban exclusion. Thus, in view of the
desirability of suburbanization of the black (relative to socially de
structive perpetuation of urban renewal), our attention turned to an
evaluation of alternative strategies which can be illustrated by refer
ence to the following simplified 78 residential integration patterns.
J7 Stein, op. cit., p.168.
78 A lth o u g h these patterns do not take m in o rity/ m a jo rity conditions in to account (nor
is the geom etry of p attern 3 consistent w ith the others), th ey nonetheless serve to illu s
trate the basic principles involved .
f
f '
l^nv-iinrTiniHnMigi
- .......
2. Collective
Integration
L]
r
.J .......^,.,..1
1. Complete
Segregation
4. Complete
Integration
3. Forced Hdusing
Integration
i
688
In this diagram, the two basic dispersal strategies discussed in the
foregoing pages are represented by patterns 2 and 3 : collective inte
gration and forced housing integration. And, as argued above,
implementation of these strategies, which describe alternative transi
tional states between the limits of complete segregation, i.e., the pre
vailing residential conditions shown in pattern 1 , and complete (“salt
and pepper” ) integration (pattern 4 ), would require:
(1) Partial use of existing communities (forced housing integration; (2)
full use of existing communities (collective integration) ; (3) use of new com
munities (collective integration).
While it was suggested that all of these strategies would: (1) Ease the
suburban low-dncome housing shortage, (2) relieve population pressure on
the central city ghetto, which would greatly improve the possibilities of
effective urban renewal, (3) ease the fiscal pressure on the central city,
(4) provide access to suburban jobs on an equal opportunity basis; only
the collective integration strategies would: (5) obviate the need for forced
housing integration in existing suburban communities, (6) preserve, not disperse,
black political power; whereas only the use of new communities would: (7) en
sure a density-controlled residential environment for low-income human develop
ment with access to light, air and open space, (8) establish a basis for planned
suburban development, and (9) obviate the need for interference in the eco
nomic affairs of existing suburban communities.
Given the relative advantages of establishing new communities,
therefore, the Federal organization of Industrial Manpower Commu
nities is proposed as a ghetto dispersal strategy distinctly preferable
to that fashioned by H UD . Although our search uncovered no exact
precedent for this kind of social planning, a near approximation was
discovered in Clarence Stein’s Greenbelt which offers a Federally
financed and incubated prototype for low-income community forma
tion. As a plan for the implementation of ghetto dispersal through col
lective integration, however, it was suggested that this Garden Cityinspired model requires development and testing under actual experi
mental conditions. No amount of a priori, non-experimental research
can hope to substitute for actual construction of an Industrial Man
power Community, based upon a carefully articulated, interdiscipli
nary plan. Such experimentation would provide the laboratory condi
tions necessary to empirically record suburban acceptance and ghetto
demand for this new concept in governmental organization, measure
ments without which it would be impossible to establish the entire
range of costs and benefits of the Industrial Manpower Community
relative to other dispersal strategies.
As Herbert Gans has keenly recognized:
It appears that the (planning) profession is being split into progressive and
conservative wings: the former calling for social planning to reduce racial and
economic inequalities, and the latter defending traditional physical planning
and the legitimacy of the middle-class values.79
By this definition, our proposal for the Federal creation of Industrial
Manpower communities doubtlessly qualifies as an exercise in social
planning; but, given the spectre of the urban crisis and the advance
of urbanization, is it not also critically in defense of “traditional phys
ical planning and the legitimacy of the middle-class values?”
79H erbert Gans. “ Social P la n n in g : Regional and U rban P la n n in g ,” International En
cyclopedia of the Social Sciences (N ew Y o r k : the M acm illan C om pany and the Free Press,
1968), p. 131.
689
C. L A C K O F C I T I Z E N I N V O L V E M E N T I N M U N I C I P A L A F F A I R S
Perhaps the most urgent appeal for improved citizen participation
has been manifest in the contemporary grassroots demands for “neigh
borhood government” within the central city sector of the metropoli
tan area. This movement, akin to the demands for local home rule in
pre-metropolitan society, is in line with a growing appreciation of the
impact of spatial concentration of population growth and the conse
quent inability of (outmoded) governments to respond effectively to
public needs, an appreciation recently registered by the Commission
on Population Growth and the American Future:
Our political institutions were designed originally to govern a much smaller
society, organized and oriented differently from what we have today. These insti
tutions have changed as the society has changed. They have demonstrated re
markable flexibility and adaptability, but they also have shown some serious
inadequacies. Are they capable of accommodating still more population growth in
the future?
The answer to this question depends in part on maintaining and improving
citizen participation and representation.80
In the preceding pages we have offered two metropolitan develop
ment strategies which seeks to improve governmental responsiveness
through the process of adaptive decentralization. Yet, if “most state
boundaries are a blatant anachronism, having no relation to either ex
isting population distributions or the geographic impacts of present
market failures,” 81 then the jurisdictional boundaries of most of our
major central cities are surely subject to the same criticisms. While
local municipal government in these cities was perhaps “close to the
people” during the period of the drafting of our Constitution (e.g., the
population of Philadelphia was 30,000 in 1787), some 200 years of
urbanization has produced a situation in which 26 cities now contain
more than 500,000 inhabitants, six of which exceed 1,000,000. Two
major results have been ( 1 ) the gradual formation of large “neighbor
hoods” or communities within the central city, and ( 2 ) the centraliza
tion of municipal authority engineered by the municipal reform move
ment of the late 19th and early 20th century, a movement which was:
. . . concerned with overcoming corruption and governmental inefficiency by
concentrating responsibility within the formal structure of urban governments,
and, in so doing, destroying the power and influence of the political party ma
chines of their day. To accomplish these goals, they fought for and (for the most
part) achieved centralization of authority in the hands of the chief executive,
a mayor or city manager; professionalization of public employees through the
merit system; and acceptance of the concept of nonpartisan expertise, which
required a clear separation between policy making and administration.82
The deterioration of governmental proximity caused by these two
forces evolved to such an extent that:
During the 1960’s the inability of many municipalities to respond adequately
to demands for more and better public services resulting from the urbanization
of our nation, and the growing role of the federal government in dealing with
problems that were traditionally local responsibilities, were accompanied by a
sense of citizen powerlessness and frustration.
80 T h e Com m ission on P opulation G ro w th and the Am erican Fu tu re , Population and the
American Future, W ashington, D.C., G overnm ent P rin tin g Office, M arch, 1972, p. 56.
81 Dennis C. M ueller, “Fisc a l Federalism in a C onstitutional D em ocracy,” Public Policy,
Vol. 19 (F a ll, 1971), p. 593.
83 D onna Shalala, Neighborhood Governance: Issues and Proposals, N a tio n a l P roject on
E th n ic Am erica, T h e A m erican Je w ish Com m ittee (N ew Y o rk , 1971), p. 2.
690
Many citizens, especially the poor and minorities, felt they were unable to gain
access to the “system,, and to influence decisions affecting their lives either
through the bureaucracy or the ballot box. In the wake of declining services and
persisting bureaucratic remoteness, they became more and more apathetic and
alienated.83
Thus, over the last decade, a new municipal reform movement has
emerged whose objective is clearly defined: the quest for community
(neighborhood) control. The movement has already turned up a num
ber of strategies which the A C IR has classified under “three progres
sively greater degrees of decentralization: territorial, administrative,
and political.” 84 Territorial decentralization involves various kinds of
interactions between city hall and neighborhood citizens but, as op
posed to administrative decentralization, no delegation of substantive
policy making or discretionary authority of the type that includes the
establishment of neighborhood councils or boards, appointment of
neighborhood managers, or the creation of little city halls and multi
service centers is granted.
Even these courses of action, however, have been met with consider
able scorn; Milton Kotler, for example, contends that they are based
on “trickery:”
It is easiest to meet the demand of new power with gimmicks, which endeavor
at the same time to embrace and resist the interest of self-rule. Government has
the capacity to mix all elements and conjure up pretended solutions. It has the
logic to argue from false causes as well as true causes. Thus it is that govern
ments often say that demand stems from other than its true sources, or that some
contrived method will meet the true causes, when in fact it will not. So long as
these gimmicks that refuse to meet the issue of self-rule and equality are prom
ises of action, they may convince new power, for along with new power there is
a lot of hope and innocence which can be played on. When promises are not ful
filled, we know from experience that the gimmick simply fails to work. This only
aggravates the struggle for power.85
Curiously enough, Kotler’s reasoning does not lead him (directly)
to a strategy of political decentralization in which the central city is
partitioned into smaller, autonomous municipalities with independent
revenue bases. Instead, he opts for the establishment of Federally
funded “neighborhood corporations,” private (non-profit) institutions
which receive transfers of authority over neighborhood concerns from
the city government. Kotler’s concept of “creative federalism” thus in
volves the most extreme form of decentralization— privatization— in
which the Federal Government would forge direct relationships with
private neighborhood corporations, bypassing not only State govern
ment but the cities as well.
The principal reason why Kotler favors the neighborhood corpora
tion over the “gimmicks” of territorial and administrative decentral
ization seems straightforward enough. He is concerned with the plight
of low-income neighborhoods, and he suggests that their major prob
lems derive from an unfavorable “balance of payments” situation:
The effort (the neighborhood corporation) is to reverse the present flow of
resources out of low-income neighborhoods to absentee landlords, absentee busi
nessmen or to other institutions which exist outside the ghetto. The hope is to
provide a means by which investment by community people in the local economic
83 A d v is o ry Com m ission on Intergovern m en tal Relations, The New Grass Roots Govern•
mentt (W ashington, D.C., 1972), p. 1.
84 Ibid., p. 3.
85M ilton K o tle r, “T w o E ssa ys on the N eighborhood C orpora tion,” XJrban America:
Goals and Problems, Subcommittee on U rban A ffa irs of the J o in t Econom ic Com mittee,
Congress of the U nited States (August, 1967), p. 177.
691
activities would bring and keep scarce resources in the neighborhood, thereby
improving the community’s general economic condition.86
Thus, home-rule separation from the city (on neighborhood issues) is
justified. But what is not so evident, however, is why Kotler ranks
privatization ahead of political decentralization as a means of
separation.
It is only after a considerable sifting of this argument that his
position on these alternatives becomes somewhat less opaque (but
never quite clear). He seems to argue that total separation of neighbor
hood from central city is not justified on grounds that the city provides
important inter-neighborhood services of a coordinating type and,
thus, the basis for a division of labor through the creation of a public/
private, two-level system.87 However, in the very next breath, we are
startled to discover that:
Thus far, we have been speaking about the neighborhood corporation as a
private legal structure to which public authority can be transferred. The practice
of this transfer and the delegate agency of the neighborhood to city departments
and agencies will lead to a further step of government reorganization; the
neighborhoods and city government will have a common interest in making the
neighborhood structure a public corporation. Accomplished by city ordinance,
this move would represent a basic change in municipal constitution, recognizing
as it would the necessity of local territorial authority as a fundamental element
of city government. It will move the option of political power for the poor away
from the futility of group pressures and toward a practical foundation in local
sovereignty and self-rule. The city will become a federated system of govern
ment, dividing authority between itself and the local neighborhoods and involving
these structures and interests in a common constitution.88
Voila! The neighborhood corporation, as it turns out, is only an
evolutionary step to political decentralization, a transitional form
that is (apparently) necessary to establish direct links between neigh
borhood and the Feds (because, initially, the city would not be favor
ably disposed to granting political autonomy to neighborhood units).
Thus, we have the case for political decentralization as set forth by
Kotler. W e concur that it is a good case— well grounded in the Ameri
can tradition of local home-rule and, in combination with the proposals
developed above (Metropolitan States and Industrial Manpower Com
munities), it should go far in the direction of reestablishing citizen
participation in municipal affairs. Yet, even though his goal of greater
citizen participation in municipal affairs and his strategy of neighbor
hood government corresponds exactly to our own, we still have some
serious misgivings with regard to his concepts of intergovernmental
relations.
The first of these concerns centers upon his choice of the city as the
appropriate object of federation. W hile Mr. Kotler has accurately
pointed to the failure of city boundaries to accommodate the needs of
individual communities (neighborhoods), he somehow assumes that
the territorial limits of the city are appropriate to their inter-commu
nity (collective) needs. Such an assumption clearly disregards the
spatial structure of modern metropolitan society and its major socio
economic characteristic: community interdependence. Obviously, the
inner-metropolitan, low-income communities (neighborhoods) have
important stakes in public functions that extend well beyond artificial
86 Donna Shalala, op. cit., p. 6.
87 M ilton K o tle r, op. cit., p. 188.
**Ibid., p. 189.
692
city boundaries into the outer (suburban) reaches of the metropolitan
area, functions that include transportation, jobs, housing, recreation,
etc. These vital non-local interests may be accounted for in an appro
priate area-wide institution just as their local interests are to be re
corded in neighborhood government. W e would therefore amend Mr.
Kotler’s plan for governmental reorganization to the extent that cities
would be replaced by our proposal for Metropolitan States as the most
logical object of federation.
This amendment brings us to our second reservation with Kotler’s
approach: his contention that local (city) government can create local
(neighborhood) governments.
Relative to administrative decentralization and privatization, Kot
ler clearly recognizes the value of political autonomy “. . . in order
to secure continuing resources and revenue from municipal, State, and
Federal taxations.” 89 However, for some unknown reason, he believes
that this separation can be “accomplished by city ordinance,” in spite
of the fact that almost anyone who has taken a course in high school
civics knows perfectly well that local governments are creatures of
the State, and that local home-rule charters can only be granted by
act of State government. While this may or may not be a “bad” law,
it exists among the most important of the powers of the States and,
in the present context, it cannot be ignored because of its crucial im
plications for the goal of political decentralization.
Briefly, these implications concern the willingness of State govern
ment to grant political independence to central city communities. As
presently constituted, we have already shown why there is no reason
to believe that State legislatures are going to respond to the interests
and political aspirations of central city residents. Moreover, we have
shown also why a plan for converting to Metropolitan States would
be more responsive to those interests. Thus, if political decentralization
of the city is the goal, we have another important reason for rejecting
the city as the obj ect of federation.
In conclusion, we hope that our efforts have indicated that political
decentralization of the central city and the organization of Metropoli
tan States represent mutually consistent strategies in the adaptation
of our public institutions to present-day population distributions.
Those who persist in the belief that these social distributions are not
radically new (and that our urban problems which derive from them
are capable of easy solution) will doubtlessly see the strategies as radi
cal ones. On the other hand, the increasing number of policy analysts
who interpret the evidence otherwise will recognize the strategies as
logical cornerstones basic to a new federalism for metropolitan
America.
D. U R B A N G R O W T H
(S P R A W L) A N D D E C A Y
The fourth element in our metropolitan growth framework concerns
the problems associated with what Downs has alluded to as the two
“urban frontiers” : “One is the Frontier of Deterioration in older cen
tral cities and suburbs, especially in ghetto areas. The other is the
Frontier of Groicth on the periphery of built-up portions of our metro
politan areas.” 00 Obviously, any national metropolitan growth policy
&>Tbid.. p.flRft.
90
A n th o n y Dow ns, “ A lte rn a tive F o rm s of F u tu re U rba n G ro w th in the U nited States,”
Journal of the American Institute of Planners (Ja n u a ry, 1970), p. 5.
693
that disregarded these phenomena would be seriously incomplete, for
we know that the problems of urban growth (sprawl) and decay are
beginning to take on widespread, if not epidemic, proportions. For ex
ample, as illustrated in Figure 5, it is clearly evident that unchecked
metropolitan sprawl promises to megalopolize the nation to such extent
that :
The projected geographical extent of the great metropolises of 2000 is difficult
to envision. Fourteen areas will exceed 1,000 square miles in land area (only two
did in 1960) ranging upward to 4,900 square miles in the Los Angeles Basin and
4,300 square miles in New York-Northeastern New Jersey. In 1920, 11 urbanized
areas covered at least 100 square miles each; in 2000, 124 separate urbanized
areas are projected to reach this extent.01
91 Jerom e P . Pickard, “Is M egalopolis Inevitab le? ” The Futurist, (October, 1970),
p. 152.
Figure 5.
Urban Regions:
Year 2000
Based on 2 child family projection
Source: Fopulation and the American Future 3 The
Report of the Commission on Population
and Growth and the American Future, U.S.
Government Printing Office, Washington,
D.C., March 27, 1972, p. 33. (Originally
in Jerome P. Pickard's "U.S. Metropolitan
Growth and Expansion* 1970-2000, with
Population Projecti o n s p r e p a r e d for
the Commission in 1972.)
695
The profligate frontier ethic that has given rise to metropolitan
sprawl has its analogue in the spread of urban deterioration and decay:
The great urban slums and ghettos spread and impacted, and new ones began
appearing in the older, closer suburbs. Everywhere the process of forming the
slum-ghettos was essentially the same. Into an already decrepit neighborhood
would come one minority family, then another, sometimes, in their poverty
doubling up in the same apartment. The owner of the first building would begin
to see other tenants leave, cut back on maintenance, and a seemingly inexorable
cycle of decay and racial change would grip his building and its neighbors.92
Yet, these unsavory land-use conditions are more than just analogous—
they are highly interconnected, even though they appear to be inde
pendent due to the institutional fragmentation of city and suburb in
the metropolitan area. Thus, “most public policies treat these frontiers
as completely separate from and totally unrelated to each other” rather
than “to use the dynamic economic expansion of suburban growth as
a major input to solving inner-city problems.” 93
Insofar as urban decay is concerned, we believe that our strategy for
ghetto dispersal through the construction of Industrial Manpower
Communities would be quite sufficient to arrest, and to eventually
eliminate the problems— if coupled with a redirected urban renewal
effort. This redirected urban renewal effort would have two major
purposes: ( 1 ) constructing Industrial Manpower Communities for the
relocation of low-income center city residents and ( 2 ) rebuilding the
cities. It must be stressed, however, that even though such a tack makes
use of the suburban sector as a “major input to solving inner-city prob
lems,” it falls considerably short as a total strategy for peripheral
metropolitan growth (sprawl).
The importance of developing planned strategies for the accom
modation of metropolitan growth derives from two important con
siderations. The first has already been alluded to in the forecast
estimates above which strongly suggest that the lion’s share of future
growth in the United States will take place in the existing metro
politan areas. These estimates are consistent with the recent work of
Alonso 94 and Downs95 which take serious issue with those earlier, more
immature visions of a national urban growth policy that would have
relied almost exclusively upon a population redistribution strategy im
plemented by the development of new towns and cities beyond the
commuting range of any of the existing metropolitan areas. Although
they cited several reasons, the principal thrust of their arguments
were: ( 1 ) the financial cost of building new settlements would be too
great, relative to the costs that are likely to be incurred by the expan
sion of existing settlements, and that ( 2 ) hinterland locales for major
settlements are hopelessly unrealistic adjustment alternatives to future
growth because of the diffused structure of both private and public
decision making authority in the United States.
These considerations, while not entirely closed to debate, are never
theless persuasive, and should be given much more weight than the
current Administration is inclined to do in their emphasis on “urbanrural balance.” Donald Canty’s comments here are particularly in
structive :
03 D on ald C an ty, op. oit., p. 31
93 Downs, op. cit., p. 5.
94 W illia m Alonso, “T h e M irage of N ew T o w n s ,” Public Interest, Vol. 19 (Spring, 1970),
pp. 3-17.
95 D ow ns, op. cit.
81-745 O — T2— pt. 2--------10
696
On the surface, it (urban-rural balance) is an attractive idea, even aside from
its obvious political utility. It promises to correct the irrationality of “75 per
cent of the people living on 2 percent of the lan$,” to quote one of its advocates’
favorite statistics. This, of course, is a purpose shared by David Rockefeller
and others in proposing that some of the growth be siphoned off into a network
of large new cities, built from scratch.
But beneath the surface, the idea of fashioning an urban growth policy mainly
to achieve urban-rural balance is a dangerous one. It would amount to a diversion
of resources from where the people are to where the land is.
Moreover, such a policy would not work, according to the near unanimous
counsel of demographers and the experience of every industrial nation that has
tried to stay or divert the growth of large metropolitan areas. Russia, with all
of its centralized state powers, has been trying without success since the mid1930’s to halt the growth of the Moscow area. And Britain, with its advanced
planning and new-towns policies, has experienced the same frustration with the
London area.
Rural development is worth undertaking for its own sake, as are new cities
(if only as laboratories of urban innovation). But it is sham or delusion or both
to label either “urban growth policy.5’ Any such policy must focus upon metro
polis, where the needs and people are now— and where the bulk of the impend
ing population growth inevitably will occur.88
The second reason for developing planned strategies for metro
politan growth is simply that we cannot afford to hand over the com
plete spatial allocation of this growth to the “market” as we have
done in the past. Instead of a “policy” of sprawl, with its well-docu
mented characteristics of fragmentation, low-income exclusion, over
priced and aesthetically monotonous housing, lack of open-space con
servation, automobile dependency, etc., etc., we would contend that
a national metropolitan growth policy worthy of its name must begin
to concentrate on planned land-use alternatives. A s a beginning, let us
identify these ex ante kinds of alternatives by referring to the clas
sification scheme developed by Downs for land conversion on the
metropolitan periphery:
Planned peripheral growth on the edges of the continuously built-up
portions of metropolitan areas. It has two forms:
(a) Peripheral planned-unit-development (under plannedunit-development type of control).
(b) Peripheral nexo cities (under comprehensive planned, citywide type of control).
Satellite growth beyond the continuously built-up portions of exist
ing metropolitan areas but within commuting range of them. It has
three forms:
(а) Scattered satellites (under planned-unit-development type
of control).
( б ) Satellite new cities (under city wide type of control but not
contiguous to existing smaller communities).
(<?) Satellite expanded cities (under citywide type of control but
contiguous to existing smaller communities) .w
Simplifying somewhat, we find that we are faced with essentially
two major options: ( 1 ) the choice between new communities and new
cities, and ( 2 ) the choice between satellite and non-satellite (planned
peripheral) settlements. The choice between new communities or new
cities seems clear enough: both will probably be needed. But, on several
important counts, we would place particular emphasis on the need for
96 C a n ty, op. cit., p. 34.
07 D ow ns, op. cit., p. 4.
697
new cities. First of all, if we are to successfully accommodate the ex
pected metropolitan population growth of some 70 million by the year
2000 on a planned basis, the number of new communities (30,00085,000), as opposed to new cities (100,000-500,000), required by the
major metropolitan areas would be astronomical. Secondly, in the pro
vision of infrastructure and public goods, there would be considerable
economies of scale to be realized in the construction of new cities. But
perhaps the most compelling reason for a new cities approach centers
on the question of employment. New cities constructed on the metro
politan periphery would be in a much better position than new com
munities to accommodate the millions of jobs that will be generated by
the anticipated population increase over the next 30 years. This is so
because the principal focus of new communities is essentially dormitorial; and, even if this were not the case, their relatively small size
would limit the agglomeration forces necessary to deflect central city
industrial growth (i.e., to level out the employment density function).
Thus, a new cities policy would also go far in the direction of reducing
the principal cause of congestion in the metropolitan area— the con
centration of employment in the central city.98
Turning to the choice between satellite and non-satellite (planned
peripheral) settlements, we need only point to the rather obvious fact
that land assembly becomes a far more manageable process beyond the
continuously built-up portions of metropolitan areas. This would
especially apply to the case of satellite cities where land availability
and land costs loom relatively large in the picture.
E. INADEQUATE AND UN EVEN PUBLIC RESOURCES
Thus far, the analysis contained in our national metropolitan growth
framework has identified four major metropolitan problem areas and
has yielded a like number of institutional strategies for dealing with
them— Metropolitan States, Industrial Manpower Communities,
Neighborhood Governments, and Satellite Cities. For the most part,
these considerations complete our discussion, yet in one important
respect they do not.
W e have yet to examine fiscal aspects of our current problems and
the fiscal implications of our recommended strategies. I f our pro
posals followed the ad hoc programmatic response conventional to the
current approach to metropolitan problems, it would be just as con
ventional to recommend marginal increases in Federal financial sup
port to cities. However, we have seen that such an approach under
estimates both the (institutional) character and magnitude of the
problems, and the consequent need for significant departures from
incrementalism. W e would, therefore, be remiss if we failed to note
that our recommendations require not only major institutional change,
but also major infusions of public resources into metropolitan areas.
In this section, therefore, we will examine the fiscal aspects of our cur
rent problems and the fiscal implications of our proposed strategies.
98 I t is im p orta n t th a t the Com mittee be aware of the fact th a t such a m etropolitan
grow th policy is cu rre n tly being implem ented in France on a v e ry large scale. T h e ir “deflec
tion pole” strategy in vo lve s the construction of nine satellite cities to be situated w ith in
com m uting range o f fo u r m etropolitan a re a s : P aris, L yo n , M arseille, and Bordeaux. T h e
first— E v r y , located 25 kilom eters south of the P a ris region— is near completion, and is
designed like each of the others to accommodate a population of 500,000 b y the ye a r 2000.
698
The current fiscal patterns in metropolitan regions have two major
defects: ( 1 ) the unevenness between the requirements for local public
goods and services and available local public finances within the metro
politan region; and ( 2 ) the inadequacy of local public finances avail
able to the metropolitan region as a whole.
Uneven Public Resources
Short of major institutional reform, there is little that can be done
about the first of these defects which does not, on one hand, exacerbate
the problem or, on the other hand, lead to further extensions of “direct
federalism,” thus undermining the principles of federalism in the
attempt to solve urban problems.
Clearly, the most serious local fiscal strains in metropolitan regions
occur in the central cities of our large industrialized metropolitan
regions. As Robert Reischauer puts i t :
. . . the fiscal outlook of state and local governments is much more bleak in
particular states and cities than it is in the aggregate. For the prosperous suburbs
and the states without large urban centers, the outlook may be fairly promising.
On the other hand, in areas with large low-income populations and in congested
and deteriorating central cities, the situation is desperate and likely to get worse.9®
What is the central city to do to correct this desperate situation?
Increase taxes on central city residents? Perhaps, but in the absence of
corresponding tax increases in surrounding suburban jurisdictions,
this would, not unnaturally, lead to further exodus of those individ
uals and businesses mobile enough to leave. Impose taxes (e.g., com
muter taxes) on those suburban residents who use the central city as
a place of work or recreation? Perhaps, but the likely response, if
not declared unconstitutional, is to reduce mobility and accelerate
metropolitan “sprawl.” Turn to the State for financial assistance? Per
haps, but the States have clearly not demonstrated their responsive
ness—nor are they likely to do so in a situation where State legisla
tures reflect rural/suburban coalitions against which the central cities
are relatively weak. Turn to the Federal Government for assistance?
Perhaps, but the Federal Government has structured access to the
Treasury through a labyrinth of categorical programs which simul
taneously heightens the difficulty of obtaining financial support and in
creases the reliance of both city and Federal officials on “direct” ap
proaches thereby accentuating the trend toward centralism.
This, however, is not a particularly original list of fiscal difficulties
arising from current institutional arrangements. Almost everyone
knows about them, and some even propose solutions. The most fre
quently mentioned solution, of course, is some form of a Federal reve
nue sharing system with a mandatory pass-through of shared funds
to the beleaguered central cities. Indeed, this is the major solution
recommended in the Report.
W e agree with the views expressed in the Report and most propo
nents of revenue sharing on the need for such a plan of fiscal assist
ance; our fear is that Federal revenue sharing will simply not work
within the present institutional context. Campbell had it right when
he said:
99 Charles L . Schultze. E d w a rd F rie d , A lic e M. R iv lin , N a n c y H . Leeters, Setting National
Priorities, The 1972 Budget (W ashington, D . C .: T h e B rookings In s titu tio n , 1971), p. 143.
699
I am a long time champion of revenue sharing as a concept. I am much both
ered by the question of the conditions which surround the distribution of that
aid. If it is to be simply passed on to the States with the States then allocating
it according to their present pattern of aid distribution the outcome will be the
same pattern we now have of underaiding cities and overaiding suburban juris
dictions.
I f there is a hard, fixed pass-through provision in the revenue sharing, then
what you will get is a pass-through to local governmental jurisdictions such as
the towns and villages in New York State. This would tend to solidify present
local government systems. I therefore suggest that it is an indication of responsi
bility by the Federal level if it has not thought hard about the impact of revenue
sharing on the local and State governmental systems of the country, and that
this requires much more than a simple laissez f aire response.
The fact is, in terms of the political culture at the State and local level, that
unless the Federal Government is willing to direct its aid to also encouraging
necessary reorganization, it will mean continual passage upward of more and
more substantive responsibility to the Federal level.
In other words, what I am saying is the Federal Government does not fulfill
its responsibility by simply providing financial assistance.100
Nowhere is the importance of our institutional approach and the
recommendations flowing from it more clear than in dealing with the
unevenness of local public resources in metropolitan regions. Our rec
ommendations for the creation of Metropolitan States in major metro
politan regions (and two-level governments in small urban areas)
would help achieve balance in each of the following ways:
( 1 ) By providing for a governmental unit which corresponds
to the spatial configuration of the metropolitan population per
mitting inter-jurisdictional coordination and comprehensive plan
ning for the provision of public goods in the entire metropolitan
region;
( 2 ) By internalizing many of the externalities (with respect
to individual local jurisdictions) at the Metropolitan State level;
(3) By yielding a more uniform fiscal structure through the
availability of State taxing powers, coupled with the relatively
enhanced representation of the central city in the Metropolitan
State legislature; and
(4) By providing a comprehensive recipient of Federally
shared funds— the Metropolitan State government (or two-level
government in smaller areas) would be a sensible recipient of
any Federally shared funds, as opposed to attempting to deal
with the present multiplicity of local governments m our metro
politan areas.
In short, our institutional recommendations, even without additional
Federal funds, would go a considerable way in the resolution of the
problem of uneven public resources in the metropolitan region and,
in addition, would provide an area-wide government to utilize any
Federal funds received in the interests of the entire metropolitan
region.
Inadequacy of Public Resources
The second major aspect of the metropolitan fiscal problem is
whether or not the total amount of public resources is sufficient to
provide for needed public goods and services. As discussed above, the
100 A la n K . Cam pbell in Regional Planning Issues, P a rt 1, H ea rin gs before the Subcom
m ittee on U rb a n A ffa irs u nder the J o in t Econom ic Com m ittee, N in e ty-firs t Congress (1970),
700
chronicle of problems associated with increased ghettoization and
apartheid plus urban decay and sprawl certainly suggests that past
fiscal arrangements have been both quantitatively inadequate and qual
itatively misdirected. Moreover, the projections of future metropolitan
growth cited above suggest these fiscal problems are likely to get
more, rather than less, severe if we continue to deal with them as we
have in the past. A s in the case of the problem of uneven resources,
the most frequent suggestion for remedying this defect is Federal
revenue sharing— sometimes coupled with proposals for a Federal
assumption of some current . State and local expenditures, e.g., for
welfare.
But gaps between requirements and expected revenues are notoriously
hard to define. However, some estimates have been made. For example,
Musgrave and Polinsky have estimated a gap between the revenue
and expenditure requirements of State and local governments of $6.5
billion as early as 1975.101 Eeischauer estimates that this gap will be
$9.4 billion in 1976.102 Frankel provides a similar estimate; and sug
gests a more fundamental issue:
There is little doubt that state and local governments, in the aggregate, need
more money. Their expenses have increased more than twelvefold since World
War II— to an estimated $132 billion— more than three times as fast as spending
by the Federal Government of individual citizens. By 1975, presuming roughly
the present range of obligations, the state and community budgets will total
about $200 billion, and between $6 billion and $10 billion of that amount will be
lacking.
But none of this tells us anything about who actually needs money, or how
much. And only by the crudest possible standards of accounting do these figures
alone justify a massive Federal dole. To define the “needs” of state and local
governments we ought to have some idea of how much and how fairly they tax
their own citizens. We ought also to have some common standards to suggest
which level of government should properly pay for different kinds of services.103
These gap estimates are defective, from our point of view, in two
ways. First, they are predicated on ex post incrementalism, that is a
continuation of our past program responses to metropolitan problems
is assumed. Secondly, they cannot hope to substitute for politically
recording citizen demand and identifying metropolitan needs that can
only be accurately realized by the creation of viable metropolitan gov
ernments. Hence, our recommendations for the creation of Metro
politan States are crucial. Metropolitan States would provide the
political forum in which such issues could be raised. They would also
enjoy State taxing powers, which go beyond those currently available
to metropolitan regions, so that they could directly attack the issue of
the overall inadequacy of urban financial resources.
Our own strategy recommendations for metropolitan growth policy,
however, in addition to the creation of Metropolitan States, go well
beyond incrementalism. W e have argued above for the construction of
Industrial Manpower Communities for the suburban accommodation
of people with low incomes, for the construction of Satellite Cities
within commuting distance of major metropolitan regions to accom
modate expected urban population growth, and for a redirected urban
101 R icha rd A . M usgrave and M itchell P o lin sk y, “Revenue S haring— A C ritic a l View/*
Discussion P ap er #128, H a rv a rd In s titu te of Econom ic Research, Cam bridge (A ugust,
m 0 ) , p . 5.
102 Schultze, op. cit., p. 141.
103 Revenue S h a rin g Is a C oun terrevolu tion,” M a x Fra n k e l, The New York Times
Magazine, A p ril 25, 1971.
701
renewal effort to rebuild our existing cities. The large-scale expendi
tures required for these activities (if undertaken) are likely to result
in even larger gaps than the above estimates indicate. Therefore, our
formulation of metropolitan growth policy clearly requires Federal
revenue sharing to financially implement our other proposals. On the
other hand, we would emphasize that these financial requirements do
not alleviate the necessity for direct Federal assumption of costs as
sociated with national problems, e.g., the provision of a minimum
income level for all Americans, maintenance of full employment, price
stability, and economic growth. Similarly, our proposals do not address
the issue of the Federal role in meeting the local fiscal requirements of
nonmetropolitan growth policy.
In conclusion, the creation of Metropolitan States alone would sig
nificantly improve the chances of solving the problems of uneven public
resources within metropolitan areas and their inadequate resources
overall. Nevertheless, we still see a critical need for supplementing
Metropolitan State revenues with Federal revenues in the implementa
tion of our overall recommendations. Federal revenue sharing, how
ever, which simply reinforces the existing institutional chaos at State
and local levels, is unlikely to move us very far forward in the solution
of our metropolitan problems.
IV .
Summary
and
C o n c l u s io n
Part I I of our testimony has attempted to lay out a comprehensive
framework for national metropolitan growth policy in five distinct but
interrelated parts. Overall, the framework represents an institutional
approach, one which argues that responsibility for the solution of
spatially limited urban problems rests with all levels of government—
Federal as well as State and local. It was emphasized, however, that
many of our States and localities are hopelessly out of spatial align
ment with the major economic and demographic distributions of mod
em metropolitan society. Thus, as indicated clearly by the proposed
strategies, our framework concluded that the revitalization of these
institutions is a necessary condition to the resolution of urban problems
and, as such, indispensable to the formulation of coherent metropolitan
growth policy.
But the concept of revitalizing State and local government as an
integral part of U.S. metropolitan growth policy is obviously not
unique to this presentation; indeed, Congressman Moorhead of this
Committee has recently stated:
We have outlined the beginnings of a national urban growth policy in the
Housing and Urban Development Act of 1970. Our panel represents the next
step in the discussion, the colloquy, that must be continued if we are to define
such a policy and develop the implementing programs. The Federal government
should articulate objectives, design standards, provide inducements to state and
local governments to carry out this growth policy. Local institutions should be
strengthened because their performance is the key to the achievement of
coherent development.
On the surface, this kind of reasoning, with its position on institu
tional reform, seems highly consistent with the point of view expressed
in this paper. Yet, in its appreciation of governmental structure, this
well may not be the case. W hy? Because the statement above very
much seems to imply that a linear (unitary) model of political au
702
thority, as contrasted with a federal model of divided and limited rule,
is best.104 Thus, what is unique to our analysis is the extent to which
our strategies would “strengthen” State and local government. They
would go well beyond those which favor the old remedies of “mod
ernization” or “efficiency” in government, administrative decentral
ization, and other devices in pursuit of a more well-oiled unitary
system of “direct federalism.” In short, our version of a national
metropolitan growth policy would favor strategies for the adaptation
of federalism to metropolitan society primarily through the creation
of Metropolitan States and the political decentralization of the central
city. This “new federalist” approach would be prerequisite to a redi
rected urban renewal program, which would include the construction
of Industrial Manpower Communities, Satellite Cities, and Federal
revenue sharing. As can readily be seen, this set of activities is tailored
to the problems of modern metropolitan society and provides the basis
for a metropolitan renewal program.
It is important to note that both approaches recognize the contem
porary breakdowns of American federalism; ours, however, would
abandon the machinery, not the principles of federalism. Conversely,
the proponents of direct federalism would sacrifice the principles and
attempt to make the old machinery work. And, of course, these at
tempts to respond to the problems of an urbanizing society without
altering the constraints imposed by a set of basic institutional arrange
ments which have existed for nearly two centuries are well-known—
even in the District of Columbia:
The top policy making level in Washington has become so bogged down in
administrative detail and responsibility, so disorganized that for decades policies
have been neither consistent nor coordinated. Execution of policies by the ad
ministrative apparatus has been adversely affected because the administration
has been concentrated in Washington far from where the people, their problems
and their aspirations can be known and dealt with rationally. Information has
simply not filtered up from the bottom to Washington, nor orders flowed back to
local communities with the necessary speed, efficiency, and effectiveness. The
organization of government has not kept pace in many other ways. The same
programs turn up in many different bureaus and departments. The requirement
at the grassroots is for coordination between water supplies, sanitation, roads,
highways, housing, education, and other services of government, but from locality
to Washington these are divided between a morass of bureaus and agencies to
which the individual or the local group must appeal in an endless series of paper
shuffling processes. Local government officials face the same senseless complexity.
The result is a despairing search for political messiahs and magic nostrums like
revenue sharing."*
Thus, for some time now, our (direct) attempts to solve urban prob
lems have been frustrated and defeated by massive institutional failure,
a condition admirably recorded in 1970 by the President’s State of the
Union Address:
The time has come to reverse the flow of power and resources from the States
and communities to Washington, and start power and resources flowing back
from Washington to the States and communities . . .
The fact is that we have made the Federal Government so strong it grows
muscle-bound and the States and localities so weak they approach impotence.
104 F o r a superb analysis o f w h y th is occasionally becomes the p re va ilin g v ie w in the
professions of politics and public a dm inistra tion , see: V in c e n t OstrOm , “O p eration al F e d
e ra lism : O rga n iza tion fo r the P ro vis io n o f P u b lic Services in the A m erican Federal
System ,” Public Choice, V I (S pring, 1969), pp. 1-17.
105 R eport of the Subcom m ittee on U rba n A ffairs of the J o in t Econom ic Com mittee.
Restoration of Effective Sovereignty to Solve Social Problems, Congress o f the U nited
States (December, 1971), p. 2.
703
Unfortunately, the Administration’s response to this recognition has
been less than admirable, i.e., it has recommended the twin strategies
of revenue sharing and the administrative decentralization of the Ex
ecutive Branch (as designed hy the Ash Committee). The shortcomings
of such a plan are obvious: without a concurrent restructuring of the
machinery of State and local government, revenue sharing and the
streamlining of the Federal Government would merely extend the op
erations of direct federalism and would preserve intact the artificial
divisions of a fragmented society.
In conclusion, therefore, we find ourselves most in agreement with
the recent remarks of Joseph Califano106— remarks that have been
met with “thunderous silence.” After noting that:
The notions of decentralization and the distribution of government power
remain practical imperatives to limit the power of the central government and
thus provide a political structure that will permit the enhancement of our demo
cratic values. But our experience over the past decades makes it increasingly
doubtfuly whether we need 50 states with their existing boundaries to achieve
this balance; and the empirical evidence of domestic programs frustrated by frag
mentation establishes beyond reasonable doubt that our nation and its people
would be far better off with more rational local jurisdictions than the haphazard
menagerie of some 25,000 cities and counties that stifle social and environmental
progress.
Mr. Califano went on to suggest that ;
It may now be time for our scholars and foundations— to say nothing of our
national Congress and Executive— to confront systematically and head on the
issue of how the country should be organized to preserve the balance between
central and local government, and at the same time encourage the establishment
of sensible regional and local boundaries that will facilities, rather than impede,
the resolution of urgent national problems and the achievement of worthy
political and social goals.
As the nation’s Bicentennial draws near, we are also convinced that
reconstituting the machinery of American federalism rates high as a
national priority. It has already been realized in most of the Western
industrial nations, most recently in the U .K ., Italy and France, that
conversion from unitary to federal systems is essential to meeting the
public requirements of metropolitan societies. Unfortunately, our con
version process has been moving in the opposite direction. It is for this
reason that we have focused on an institutional formulation of national
metropolitan growth policy, and have offered the foundations for a
new federalism for metropolitan America.
106
Joseph A . C alifano, J r.. “H o w Should W e Change C entra l and Loca l G overnm ents ?”
Washington Post, J a n u a ry 30,1972, p. D6.
COMMENTS ON NATIONAL GROWTH
(By Jay W . Forrester, Germeshausen Professor, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology)
The country is rapidly becoming aware of the environmental, eco
nomic and social pressures that are being generated by growth of popu
lation and industrial activity. Such pressures develop as growth begins
to fill the available natural environment. The stresses from growth do
not become conspicuous until growth begins to impinge on its many
limits. Growth was able to continue without negative consequences as
long as we had an excess of farm land, natural resources, energy, and
pollution dissipation capacity. But once these limits began to be ap
proached, pressures started to rise. As growth continues, the pressures
from the consequences will increase ever more rapidly.
In response to these pressures created by growth encountering the
various national limits, Congress requested and the President sub
mitted a “Report on National Growth 1972.” Against a national
history in which growth has been strongly encouraged, the report is a
break with tradition when it recognizes that many of the nation’s diffi
culties are being created by growth. But, as I pointed out in the key
note address for the American Public Works Association in Min
neapolis on September 25, 1972 (text included as an annex to these
comments), the report fails to come to grips with the growth issue.
The President’s report still seems to suggest that the difficulties arising
from growth can be alleviated without having to control the under
lying cause. In so doing, the theme follows the “quantity with quality”
viewpoint expressed in the title of an earlier report.
But the issue is no longer “quantity with quality” but instead is
“quantity versus quality.” As population grows and the production
of goods is more and more limited by environmental capacity, the ma
terial standard of living will level out and then decline. As population
and industrialization expand, crowding will increase, environmental
damage will continue, and economic and social aspects of the society
will gradually deteriorate. A ll of this means a declining quality of
life as population and industrialization continue to become denser in
the available space.
The “Report on National Growth 1972” perhaps moves as far as is
now politically feasible toward questioning growth. It does identify
the symptoms of growth. It does suggest we must do something about
those symptoms. But is does not face the issue of doing something
about the causes of the symptoms.
On the matter of growth as the came of the problems discussed in
the report, the report is most misleading. It suggests that growth can
continue without detrimental consequences. It suggests that the gov
ernment must find ways to continue and to encourage growth. This is
quite incompatible with the ultimate need to slow and stop growth so
that the quality of life can be kept as high as possible.
(7 0 5 )
706
The report is a transitional document. It identifies the undesirable
consequences of growth but does not face the cause itself. One might
hope that the next bi-annual report from the President to Congress
would address the question of how long growth can continue. It should
also face the inherent trade-off between quality and quantity. It
should examine the time span necessary for moving into an equi
librium in population and industrial activity. It should begin to aiscuss the quality of life that can still be retained after the unavoidable
growth occurs that will take place during the transition time between
now and when equilibrium can be established.
CONTROL OF U R BAN G R O W TH
(By Jay W . Forrester)
K
A ddress , A m e r ic a n P u b l ic W orks A ss o c ia t io n ,
M in n e a p o l is , M i n n ., S eptem ber 25,1972
eynote
The theme at this meeting of the American Public Works Associa
tion is “A Balanced Approach to Community Development.” What
does it mean? Ten years ago, “community development” would cer
tainly have meant community growth. But, today community devel
opment might imply emphasis on the economic health of the com
munity, or concern for a broad array of issues we call the quality of
life. The phrase “community development” is one of those ambiguous
terms that means what the listener wants it to mean, and reflects our
uncertainty about the future of urban living. The theme speaks of
“A Balanced Approach,” but the program of the meeting is essen
tially technological. That too reflects our national attitude and our de
pendency on technology for the solution of any problem that arises.
There are sessions on equipment, drainage, solid waste, transportation,
water supply, buildings and grounds, roads and streets, and adminis
tration. But nothing in the program suggests the close coupling that I
believe exists between the strictly public works function and the
worsening social stress that are beginning to face our cities.
Public works administrators are concerned primarily with the tech
nology of urban living. For more than a hundred years, the improve
ment of technology has been the route to improvement in urban living.
Public confidence in technology is deeply ingrained. When there is
a problem, the countrv begins by seeking a technical solution. The
reasons are twofold. First, technical approaches in the past seem to
have succeeded. Second, technical programs are usually easier to visual
ize, organize, and execute than are changes and improvements in the
psychological, social, economic, and ethical aspects of our existence.
But the faith in technology is being clouded by doubt. Technology
has been improving while at the same time social conditions have been
worsening. Many people are beginning to wonder if there may not be
a connection between the two. Is it posible that the time is past when
better technology automatically means better living ?
The evidence of faltering confidence in technology is everywhere.
People are objecting to more highways because our roads and turn
pikes have not reduced the total time spent in travel. Sewer extensions
are being questioned because they imply more houses marching across
70T
the remaining open area. Urban transit systems are being questioned
because they go hand in hand with economic segregation of the popu
lation and the decline of the central city. Taxes are rising, but the tech
nology purchased by taxes seems to be losing the battle.
Is it possible that our social system has changed since the days when
improved technology did lead to improved living? Can a social sys
tem undergo changes in its apparent character so that yesterday’s
solutions to problems become the causes of tomorrow’s problems? I
suggest that indeed such changes in the behavior of our social system
are possible, and that they are occurring.
A social system can change its behavior when the restraints under
which it operates become different. In the past, the production of ma
terial goods was determined by and limited by the availability of capi
tal ana labor. To say that production is determined by capital and
labor, implies that it is not determined by or limited by anything else.
Our traditions and rules of thumb have been developed in a period
when the inputs to production from nature were, for all practical
purposes, unlimited. There was no significant shortage of agricultural
land, water, natural resources, energy, or pollution dissipation capac
ity. But times have changed. In every direction production is now be
ing limited by the maximum capacity of the natural environment.
When the constraints shift from human effort, in the form of labor
and the creation of capital, to a different set of limits, the entire
character of the social system can seem to change. Our economic sys
tem is undergoing such a transition. Under the new conditions, reme
dies that worked in the past are apt to be disappointing.
The change to a new kind of behavior in our socio-economic system
is a consequence of population and economic growth. In the past,
when land and natural endowments were unlimited compared to our
needs, no pressures were reflected back from nature as a result of
exponential growth. But as the natural limits are approached, re
flected pressures develop ever more strongly. More and more effort
is used in overcoming tne limitations rather than, as earlier, produc
ing effective human benefit. For a while, by expending enough energy
and physical effort and capital, the barriers set up by nature can be
pushed back. But if we follow the route of fighting nature’s limits
we will exhaust ourselves. The limits can be pushed some, at ever
increasing cost, but they cannot be eliminated.
The underlying cause of today’s social pressures is growth.1 The
changing attitude toward economic growth shows how completely our
world is changing. Until ten years ago, everyone promoted growth.
Boosterism was the central theme. States had development commis
sions to promote industry and to attract population. Towns and cities
had chambers of commerce to promote growth. But times have
changed.
In the present transition period the prevalent attitude is to accept
growth with resignation as a burden to be borne. But that resignation
is giving way to opposition. More and more there is active resistance
to growth. Oregon, Vermont, Colorado, California, Florida, and Dela
ware have, in various ways, taken steps to limit the expansion of
population and industry.
1 Forrester, J a y W ., World Dynamics, W rig h t-A lle n Press, 238 M ain Street, Cam bridge,
Mass.
708
Not only is the national attitude faltering toward growth as the
solution to social problems, but the country is also unclear on where
to expect leadership in setting new social directions. Is the leadership
for facing the fundamental issues of society to come from the na
tional government or from local leadership? Can the national gov
ernment seit new directions, or is it limited to attempting minor
improvements on the old patterns?
The ambiguity in national government leadership is illustrated by
the “Report on National Growth 1972” from the President to Con
gress. The report acknowledges the multiplicity of problems asso
ciated with population and economic growth. But it nowhere faces
squarely the need for slowing down those processes that are creating
ever more difficult problems. In noting the difficulties associated with
growth, the report uses such phrases as—
. . . responding to the challenges of growth . . . coping more effectively with
growth . . . to deal with the problems of growth. . . . Increasing population in
metropolitan areas has intensified problems of air, water, and noise pollution
and other forms of environmental degradation. Forests, streams, swamps, shore
lines, wetlands, open space, and scenic areas have been consumed by metropolitan
development. . . . The problems associated with growth, by any definition, in
clude many of the most intractable social and governmental concerns of this
country.
But the report is politically unable to depart from the past national
tradition of depending on growth for the solution of all problems.
Rather than clearly facing growth as the cause, and raising the issue
of stopping growth as the long-term solution, the report pays homage
to the national idol of growth in such phrases as—
. . . formulating a growth policy. . . . Population growth recovered rapidly in
the 1940’s. . . . Urbanization also benefited the Middle Atlantic States; after
1900, they were able to reverse their steadi’y diminishing share of the total
population. . . . This growth, in the form of population changes, technological
development, economic expansion, and individual initiative, will almost cer
tainly continue during the foreseeable future. . . . The Federal government can
do much to set the tone and provide leadership and new direction for the
Nation in preparing for growth. . . . This is especially true in the economic
area. Fiscal and monetary policy, prudently conducted, can do much to keep
the Nation’s economy growing at its full potential. Similarly, Federal support
for research and development can help accelerate the pace of technological
advancement, which is so necessary to a growing economy.
So, the Federal policy at the moment is, in effect, to attempt to re
lieve the pressures that result from growth while at the same time
attempting to accelerate that growth. This is not said as a criticism
of the national administration.
Our national political system does not permit a national admin
istration to exercise effective leadership in new directions that break
sharply with past traditions. Until new trends in thought are well
established and widely recognized, there is no constituency to support
a national government in a major reversal of past social beliefs. Leader
ship in small things can come from the national government. Leader
ship in big things must start with individuals and local governments.
The United States is now in one of those major periods of reorienta
tion that occasionally face a society. Probably not since the founding
of the country and the writing of the national Constitution has so
much been at stake and so much unfettered and innovative thinking
been necessary. The cliches, the folklore, and the Horatio Alger stories
of the past must be shaken off as we face the fact that further growth.
709
far from solving problems, is the primary generator of our growing
social distress. But there is reason for hope and confidence.
The issues are being faced squarely by many individuals, groups,
and even to some extent by cities and states. Many are beginning to
see that the rising social and natural pressures will make it impossible
to maintain the present quality of life if population and industrializa
tion continue to grow. Instead of running ahead of the growth wave,
it is becoming clear to many that ways must be found of facing the
issue and controlling the expansionary forces that are coming to domi
nate society. The implications are staggering. The ramifications will
extend into corporate and governments organization, into the legal
structure, and into values, goals and ethical beliefs.
The detrimental consequenses of continued growth are appearing
not only as environmental damage. In fact, environmental damage
from growth is probably one of the lesser threats to society. The greater
threats may be psychological as frustration rises, as the individual
perceives himself as powerless to affect his future, and as discord
increases. Growth is bringing pressure on every facet of existence.
Imbedded in our folklore is a belief that larger size leads to greater
economic efficiency. Up to a point, that probably has been true.
But now in cities, even medium-sized ones, the economies of scale no
longer favor additional growth. The cost per capita for the operation
of a city rises steeply as the total population and the population den
sity increases. A t some point, and the largest cities have arrived at that
point, the rising costs pull down the vitality of the entire socio-economic process until further growth is impossible.
When costs from growth rise faster than benefits, we find ourselves
in the position where “the faster we run, the behinder we get.” Many
people are beginning to recognize the futility of solving problems by
further growth but, strangely enough, there is as yet little attention
to the possibility of “catcmng up by stopping.” I f we could slow the
growth of population and population density in a city while adopting
policies to generate continual renewal and revitalization, it would be
much easier to increase the standard of living and the quality of life.
But under the existing circumstances, improving the services of a city
leads, not to improvement in quality of life, but instead, to larger size
with the additional services being swallowed up by more people who
demand more of the municipal administration.
W hy can public services not get ahead of demands? W hy do the
best of intentions for improving a city lead, instead, to greater social
pressures, more commuting delays, increased drug addiction, higher
crime rates, and greater welfare loads? The answer lies in what we
have come to call the “attractiveness principle.” 2
The “attractiveness principle” states that, to any particular popu
lation class, all geographical areas tend to become equally attractive.
Or perhaps more realistically stated, all areas tend to become equally
unattractive. W hy do all areas tend toward equal attractiveness ? It is
because people move from unattractive areas to areas of greater attrac
tiveness. I use “attractiveness” to encompass every aspect of a city
that contributes to its desirability or undesirability. Population move
ment is an equalizing process. As people move toward a more attrac
tive area, they drive up prices and overload the job opportunities,
2 Forrester, J a y W ., Urban Dynamics, M .I.T . Press, Cam bridge, Mass.
710
the environmental capacity, the available housing, and the govern
mental services. In other words, rising population drives down all of
the characteristics of an area that made it initially attractive.
To illustrate the attractiveness principle, imagine for a moment the
ideal city. Perhaps the ideal citv would be one with readily available
housing at low cost, a surplus of jobs at high wages, excellent schools,
no smoke or pollution, housing located near one’s place of work, no
crime, beautiful parks, cultural opportunities, and to this list the reader
can add his own preferences. Suppose such a city existed. What would
happen ? It would be perceived as the ideal place to live. People from,
everywhere would move into the ideal city until the advantages had
been so swamped by rising population that the city would offer no net
attractiveness compared to other locations.
There is a necessary and fundamental compromise that must be
accepted between growth and quality. To hope otherwise is to delude
oneself. A White House report carried the title “Toward Balanced
Growth, Quantity with Quality.” The phrase “Quantity with Quality”
is inherently a contradiction. It is a political transitional phrase that
lies between the old concept of “growth is good” and the future realities
in which growth is seen as the fundamental cause of rising social
problems.
When there are no geographical or environmental limits, economic
growth can run ahead of population growth to increase the public
well-being. During the growth phase, the many goals of society tend
to be independent of one another and can be separately pursued. In the
past, if an individual wanted more personal freedom, he could move
to the unsettled frontier, while at the same time improving his stand
ard of living by farming rich and virgin agricultural land. But as
space fills up, all of the social goals begin to interact more strongly
with one another. More and more the system begins to offer only trade
offs and compromises. I f one wants a higher population, he must ac
cept less personal freedom. I f there is to be more industry, there will
necessarily be more government regulation and more social groups to
intervene in each step and action. I f agriculture is to become more
capital intensive, there will be more pollution and more long-term
damage to the productivity of the land. A s population rises against the
environmental limits, there will necessarily be higher unemployment
and more welfare with rising governmental costs that divert resources
away from additional capital investment.
There is a fundamental conflict between quality and quantity, after
quantity has grown beyond a certain point. It appears that the United
States is now beyond that point. Further growth in population and
industrialization means declining quality. How is the compromise be
tween quality and quantity to be struck ? Is it to be done uniformly
for everyone, or is there to be a local choice between quality and
quantity? Returning to-the theme of this meeting, “balanced develop
ment” means the choice between quality and quantity.
A society has many goals. These impinge on one another more and
more heavily as an economic system approaches the end of growth,
enters the transition period, and eventually moves into some form of
equilibrium. The multiple goals have the characteristic that no one of
them can be maximized without unacceptable losses in one or more
other goals. Some of the goals are material, other are social and
711
psychological, but they all impinge on one another. W e want freedom,
but not at the expense of extreme economic hardship. W e want to
build more housing, but cannot forever at the expense of agricultural
land. W e want more capital investment to increase productivity and
control pollution, but not to the detriment of governmental services.
Many people seem to assume that control of growth will circumscribe
our freedoms but that continued growth will not. Nothing could be
further from the truth. The fallacy is illustrated by a paragraph again
taken from the President’s “Report on National Growth 1972,”
where we find:
In many nations, the central government has undertaken forceful, compre
hensive policies to control the process of growth. Similar policies have not been
adopted in the United States for several reasons. Among the most important
of tliese is the distinctive form of government which we value so highly in this
country. Ours is a federal system, with powers shared between the States and
National Government. This system preserves the ability of citizens to have a
major voice in determining policies that most directly affect them. This voice
is sustained by keeping government close to the people.
But it is becoming more and more apparent that growth, in popula
tion, industrialization, pollution, unemployment, welfare costs, infla
tion, and imbalanced trade is undermining local and state freedom.
The symptoms resulting from growth are being attacked mostly from
the national level with the result that national policies and the terms
of national funding impose nationally-determined values on all areas.
National laws to cope with the results of uncontrolled growth restrict
local choice. The higher the social stresses from growth become, the
more governmental machinery will be assembled to fight the symp
toms. On the other hand, control of growth can be done in many ways,
some of which would also destroy freedom, but other ways can be
devised to save freedom. However, the alternative of continued growth
runs only in one direction— toward less individual and local freedom.
A whole set of pressures are now beginning to inhibit growth. The
country faces an oil shortage. Pollution is no longer merely an indus
trial problem; to reduce pollution created by the individual, his auto
mobile now has less performance, more maintenance, and higher gaso
line consumption, and that in turns makes the oil shortage worse and
our national dependence on other countries greater. Pollution has also
become a major issue in agriculture as fertilizers and the wastes from
animal feed lots pollute rivers and lakes. A t the social level, rising
crime, drug addiction, and mental stress, and community breakdown
are all exerting pressure against further growth. Many pressures are
developing to stop growth, some we can influence, others we cannot. A
most important question is how we would like to have the growth-sup
pressing pressures distributed.
Pressures to slow the growth process will continue to rise. The pres
sures will tend to develop from every direction. Some of the pressures
can be alleviated. But do we want to alleviate, where we can, the pres
sures arising from growth? Or, do these pressures serve a valuable
purpose ?
Unless ever-rising exponential growth can go on forever, and that is
generally accepted as impossible, then some set of pressures will even
tually stop growth. From whence should the growth-suppressing pres
sures come ? Should the pressures be distributed throughout our society
or should they be concentrated in only a few places within our socio£1-745— 72— pt. 2-------11
economic system? This choice between concentration or distribution
of pressures is of the greatest importance. The question arises because
we have the power to alleviate pressures in some sectors of the society
but not in others. I f we alleviate pressures where we can do so, it will
inevitably lead to a further rise in those pressures that we cannot con
trol. The way we react to present pressures determines the nature of
future pressures.
One set of pressures can be alleviated by technological means. W e
are very good at handling technology, and can eliminate those pres
sures if we wish. A second set of pressures can be alleviated by eco
nomic means, and those we know’ less about but can still influence. A
third set of pressures are of a social nature— crime, civil disorder, de
clining mental health, war, drug addiction, and collapse of goals and
values. These are the ultimate pressures with which we do not know
how to cope.
I f we alleviate the pressures that can now be overcome, those pres
sures make no contribution to slowing the growth process. Growth
then continues until higher pressures are generated in other sectors.
This process has been going on. The first pressures to arise were dealt
with technologically by increasing building heights, improving trans
portation, bringing water from greater distances, developing new
sources of energy, and improving medical treatment. As a result of
such technological successes, growth continued until a variety of eco
nomic malfunctions began to appear— rising unemployment and wel
fare, worsening balance of trade, and inflation. To a small extent, the
economic pressures have been alleviated and their consequences de
layed. Growth has thereby continued until social deterioration has be
gun to manifest itself in serious ways.
In this sequence of technology solving one problem only to produce
an insolvable problem later is buried the reasons for the anti-tech
nology attitude that has begun to develop. In the past, technology ap
peared to be solving our problems. The technologists became selfconfident. The public came to depend on them. The attitude took root
that all problems could be solved by an ever-improving technology.
But instead, the rising technology, with its consequent growth in
population and industrialization, has carried the society to a com
plexity and a congestion that is producing rising symptoms of distress
in the economic and the social sectors. The very fact that technology
succeeds in meeting its narrow goals produces greater difficulties in
other parts of our social system. The anti-technology feeling grows
because of the repeated cycle in which pressures develop, technology
produces an excellent solution within its narrow self-perceived goals,
the social system becomes more compressed and frustrating, and the
public perceives that the overall quality of life has failed to respond
to the technical solution. The failure to satify society results because
meeting the subgoals of the technologist is less and less likely to truly
enhance the combined composite value of all the social goals. For each
technical goal that is improved, some social or economic goal is forced
to decline.
Growth has continued past the point where sub-optimizing is satis
factory. Sub-optimizing means the meeting of a local goal without
attention to consequences in other parts of the system. During the past
period of our industrial growth, the various facets of the technical
713
socio-economic system were sufficiently uncoupled that sub-optimizing
was satisfactory procedure for decentralization. Sub-optimizing allow
different groups to pursue independently their own ends, with con
fidence that the total good would thereby improve. But as the system
becomes more congested, the solution of one problem begins to create
another. The blind pursuit of individually laudable goals can create
a total system of degraded utility.
What does this discussion of technology and social goals mean for
the American Public Works Association"? It means that in the past
those who deal with the technological aspects of urban life have
been free to sub-optimize. The public well-being was increased by the
best possible job of drainage, waste disposal, transportation, water
supply, and the construction of streets. But no longer is it true that
improving each of these will improve a city. By solving each of these
technical problems the technologist becomes a party to increasing
the population of a city and the densities of population. He starts
social processes that eventually reduce the quality of ]ife. The public
is recognizing that improved technology is not bringing an improved
society. As a result, men who have sincerely dedicated their efforts
to the public good, but perhaps have not foreseen the diversity of
social consequences, have already begun to feel the backlash of public
criticism.
So far I have developed several propositions. First, pressures are
rising to inevitably stop growth. Second, the national commitment
to growth is too strong for the national government to lead in a new
direction until a broad constituency has already formed in the country.
Third, if the nature of growth is to be recognized, and if experiments
are going to be carried out to find a satisfactory wav of moving from
growth into equilibrium, leadership must come from the local and
state levels. Fourth, technical accomplishments no longer offer a basic
solution to social problems, instead, technology, as now being used, is
often the cause of rising social difficulties. Fifth, all cities do at all
times tend toward equal attractiveness, Given this set of propositions
what freedom of action is left to a city ?
A city can choose, to a substantial extent, the mix of pressures under
which it wishes to exist. There are many components of urban attrac
tiveness and if one of these is decreased, others can be improved. One
cannot create the ideal city. But one can create certain ideal features
if he is willing to compensate for these bv intentionally allowing
other features to worsen. In the past, we have improved the technologi
cal aspects of cities and have thereby unintentionally caused many
of the economic and social characteristics to deteriorate. There are
many facets to a city. There are many things that the public and an
urban administration can do. One thing they cannot do is to produce
the perfect city. They can, however, exercise a wide choice between
imperfect cities.
I suggest that a valid goal for local urban leadership is to focus on
improving the quality of life for the residents already in the city,
while at the same time protecting against growth that would over
whelm the gains. In short, one might maintain the attractiveness for
the present residents while decreasing the attractiveness to those who
might inundate the system from the outside.
714
Such statements, I recognize, lead to ethical and legal controversy. I
am saying that a city should look after itself first. Its own welfare
should come ahead of concern for others who are taking no steps to
solve the fundamental problems for themselves. I f enough cities
establish successful policies for themselves, there will be two results,
First, a precedent will have been set for coping with the fundamental
underlying source of difficulties. Second, the larger the number of
areas that solve their problems for themselves, the greater will the
remaining uncontrolled growth impinge on the other parts of the
country, and the more quickly will the nation face the long-range
issues of stress arising from excessive growth.
So what can a city do ?It can influence its future by choosing between
the components of attractiveness. The attractiveness components of a
city fall into two categories according to whether they operate more
forcefully on quality of life in the city or on inward migration and
.growth. These two categories are the “diffuse” and the “compartment
alized” characteristics of a city. The objective should be to maximize
those diffuse chacteristics of the city that improve quality of life while
controlling the compartmentalized characteristics that can prevent
expanded population and population density that would defeat the
improvement for present residents.
The diffuse characteristics, such as public safety and clean air,
are shared equally by all, their effect is not limited to particular indi
viduals, and they apply alike to present residents and those who might
move in. The compartmentalized characteristics of a city, like jobs
and housing, are identified with particular individuals; thev can be
possessed by present residents but are not necessarily available to
others from the outside.
Ev&ry diffuse characteristic of a city that makes it more attractive
for the present residents will also make it more attractive for those
who might move in and who would increase the population and density.
Therefore, every improvement in the diffuse categories of attractive
ness must be accompanied by some worsening in the compartmentalized
categories of attractiveness to prevent self-defeating "row+h. The
attractiveness characteristics of a city should be categorized in terms
of whether they affect all residents or primarily notential newcomer*.
For example, the vitality of industry, a balanced socio-economic mix
of population, the quality of schools, the freedom from pollution, low
crime rates, public parks, and cultural facilities are all desirabe
to present residents. I f there is no counterbalance to restrain an ex
panding population, such attractive features tend to be self-defeating
by causing inward migration. But the compartmentalized character
istics of a citv primarily affect growth without necessarily reducing
cmalitv of life for persent residents. The number of housing units
and the number of jobs tend to be compartments in the sense that they
have a one-to-one correspondence with individuals rather than each
being shared by all. The absence of an unoccupied house and/or job
can be a strong deterrent to in-migration, without necessarily driving
riown the internal quality of life.
I see no solution for urban problems until cities develop the courage
to plan in terms of a maximum population, a maximum number of
herding units, a maximum permissible building height, and a maxi
mum number of jobs. A city must also choose the type of city it wants
715
to be. To become and remain a city that is all things to all people is
impossible. There can be many uniquely different kinds of cities, each
with its special mix of advantages and disadvantages. However, the
policies that create one type of city will destroy another type. A choice
of city type must be made, and corresponding policies chosen to create
the required combination of advantages and disadvantages that are
characteristic of that type. One might have an industrial city, a com
mercial city, a resort city, a retirement city, or a city that attracts and
traps without opportunity a disproportionate number of unemployed
and welfare residents as some cities are now doing. But there are
severe limits on how many types of cities can be created simultaneously
in one place. When the choices have been made, and when effort is 110
longer dissipated in growth, there will be an opportunity to couie to
grips with social and economic decay.
W hy do I bring this message to the American Public Works Asso
ciation ? Because the members are at the center of the two most impor
tant issues I have raised. First, leaders in public works are the custo
dians of the technological aspects of the urban environment. Those
responsible for the physical aspects of a city can continue to solve the
technological subgoals of roads, water, waste, and transportation and
thereby sustain the growth process and cause a continual shifting of
pressures into the social realm of rising crime, increasing psychological
trauma, growing welfare costs, and accelerating community break
down. Or, they can move to reverse what in the past we have considered
good, but is good no more, and help halt further expansion of that part
of our technological base on which the urban crisis is growing. A
second reason for these issues to be important in public works comes
from the unique influence that public works has over what I call the
compartmentalized characteristics of a city. Public works actions
directly affect the number of streets that are built, the number of
houses that will be erected, and the number of industrial locations that
are established. Such physical actions, backed up by zoning and munic
ipal policy, determine the kind of urban growth and whether or not
there is to be growth. Through the judicious use of, and indeed the
appropriate limitation of, water supply, drainage, building heights,
waste disposal, road building, and transportation systems, a city can
influence its future.
The reader may be thinking that planning and controlling the size
and composition of a city and the migration to it are undemocratic
or immoral. It may even seem that I am suggesting control where there
has not been control before. Neither is true. Every city has arrived at
its present size, character, and composition because of the controls that
have been exercised in the past. By adding to the water system, sewers,
and streets, a city has, in effect, decided to increase its size. By building
a rapid transit system a city is often, in effect, deciding to change the
composition of its population by encouraging new construction in
outlying areas, allowing inner areas to decay, and attracting lowincome and unskilled persons to the inner ring at the same time that
job opportunities decline. In other words, control on growth and
migration has been exerted at all times. But the control has often been
unintentional, wtih unexpected and undesirable results. The issue is
not one of control or no control. The issue is the kind of control and
toward what end.
71t>
The interurban control of population movement is the internal
counterpart of international control of population movement. Except
for the legal, coercive, psychological, and economic deterrents to human
mobility, the standard of living and quality of life of all countries
would fall to the level set by the population group that accepts the
lowest standards. No group can be expected to exert the present selfdiscipline necessary to limit population and the environmental
demands of industrialization unless there is a way to keep the future
advantages of the present price from being swallowed up bv inward
migration. I f the control of international movement of population
is ethical then some intercity counterpart must also be ethical. Or, if
the justification is only that of practical necessity, then the internal
necessity arises in a country that is reaching its growth limit without
having established a national means to implement a compromise be
tween quantity and quality. Between nations, countries exert restric
tions on population movement that are not allowed internally between
urban areas. Even so, the policies of each city have a powerful effect
011 mobility and 011 the resulting character of the city. Because controls
are implicit in every action taken and every urban policy adopted, a
city should understand the future consequences of its present actions.
A city affects its local choice between quantity and quality mostly by
how it handles the diffuse versus the compartmentalized components
of attractiveness.
The difference between diffuse and compartmentalized control of
urban population can be illustrated by two extremes of policies that
might govern the availability of water. Depending on how it is man
aged. the availability of water might be either a diffuse or compart
mentalized control on growth. Consider a city with a limited water
supply— more and more this will be the actual situation. To illustrate
diffuse control, one could distribute water freely and equally to every
one. both present and future residents. New houses could be con
structed. new industries could be encouraged, growth could be con
tinued, and the water could be divided among all. I f no other growth
limits were encountered, growth would continue until the low water
pressure, occasional shortages, and the threat of disaster from drought
had risen to the point where out-migration equaled in-migration.
Under these circumstances, net growth would have been stopped, but
the equally-distributed nature of the water shortage would have re
duced the quality of life for all residents. The water shortage would
be diffuse; it would be spread to all, former residents and newcomers
alike. Alternatively, the opposite water policy illustrates compart
mentalized control. Building permits and new water connections could
be denied so that water demand is constrained to lie well within the
water supply. Water would be available to present residents, but not
to new. Under these circumstances, quality of life for the residents
would be maintained, but growth would be controlled.
I believe that such choice between present and future residents is
inherent to a practical solution of our urban problems. Unless control
through such self-interest is acceptable, and ways are available to im
plement it, there is no incentive for any city or state to solve its own
problems. Its efforts will be swamped from the outside. A ll will be
717
pulled down while the nation continues to debate the issues endlessly
and acts on symptoms rather than causes. There must be freedom for
local action, and the consequent differences between areas, if social
experiments are to lead to better futures and if there is to be diversity
in the country rather than one gray homogenized sameness. Local
areas must be able to control their destinies in different ways and
toward different ends, if there is to be any meaning to the President’s
hope of preserving “the ability of citizens to have a major voice in
determining policies that most directly affect them.”
I f people are to influence the policies most affecting them, it follows
that policies will be different in different places and the resulting
tradeoffs between growth and quality of life will be different. I f there
is to be any substance to local choice, there must result differences
between localities.
In the policies for a city that I am proposing, the ethical and legal
issues are substantial. A city, in looking after its own well-being, will,
110 doubt, be accused of being selfish because it discriminates against
non-residents. But what are the alternatives? Must it discriminate
against its present residents? Must it discriminate against its own
long-term interests ? Must it be forced to take only a short-range view
of its future ? Must it be a party to delaying the day when the nation
faces the fundamental choice between quality and quantity ? Our past
policies have not been so successful that they should persuade us
against new experiments.
I f a sufficient number of cities find new ways of controlling their
own destinies in spite of national policy and what other cities do, then
pressures to work toward the long-term well-being of the country will
be quickly generated. I f some cities and states take effective steps to
establish an equilibrium with their natural surroundings, and to
maintain a viable and proper internal balance of population and in
dustry, then the remaining growth in the country will quickly descend
on those communities and states that have taken no such action. A
national consensus to establish a viable balance with the capacity of
the environment will quickly develop out of the contrasts that will be
established between those who have and those who have not dealt with
the basic issues of overcommitment.
In summary, I believe that the country is now heading more deeply
into economic and social difficulty. Technological solutions will no
longer suffice. There is no national consensus strong enough to support
an effective national policy nor to insure national leadership in solving
the problems that are arising from growth and overcommitment of
the nation’s long-term capability. But, fortunately, the problems are
solvable piecemeal at the local level independent of other areas and
independent of the national government. Local action can set a prece
dent for the country as a whole. Those in public works are in a unique
ly influential position for exerting that leadership.
Revised October 1,1972.
METROPOLITAN GROWTH AND THE NATIONAL
GROWTH REPORT
(By Herbert M. Franklin, Director, The Potomac Institute, Inc.,
Metropolitan Housing Project, Washington, D.C.)
Unlike the great cities of Europe, which developed over hundreds
of years, many American cities have gone from cow pastures or trading
posts to giant metropolitan complexes in little more than a single cen
tury. America today is a metropolitan nation. In the foreseeable future
it will become even more so.
Yet if the metropolis has in fact become the heartland of America,
it can hardly be said to exert much of a hold on our emotions. W e are
apparently unwilling to love the metropolis even as we are unable to
leave it.
To some extent this explains the strong anti-urban bias present
in discussions of national urban growth policy. Frequently the search
for such a policy is cast in the guise of an effort to find some formula
by which we can turn the clock back to a more rural, or at least a less
urban, past.
In 1970, when the first census takers went forth on horseback only
five percent of the nation’s population lived in the 24 places of 2,500
or more. Only two of those places, New York and Philadelphia, with
populations over 25,000 each, could be considered major cities.
By the dawn of this century one-third of the nation’s people lived in
places over 2,500. Today we are not only urban— we are metropolitan.
Census estimates that by the end of the century some 225 million peo
ple— 85 percent of our total population— will live in metropolitan
areas. Over half the nation’s people now reside in areas of a half
million or more; and four out of ten Americans live in metropolitan
areas of one million or more. By the end of the century, six out of ten
will live in these largest urban complexes.
In general, the larger and older the metropolitan area, the greater
the share of growth for the suburbs. By 1985, if present trends con
tinue, nearly half of the nation’s total population will live in suburban
parts of our metropolitan areas, and only one-fourth in central cities.
Virtually all the increase in metropolitan population in the decades
ahead will accure to the suburbs.
The 1970 Census confirms that as metropolitan America has become
more suburban it has also become more segregated. Over the 1960-70
decade the vast majority of central cities had an increase in the black
proportion of the population. The suburbs showed little change in
racial composition.
I f these trends persist, blacks and other nonwhites, now 22 percent
of central city residents, by the year 2000 will comprise 40 percent of
that population. The larger the central city, the larger the gain in
the black population in the last decade.
(71 9 )
720
Over half of black families in central cities live in poverty neigh
borhoods. This urban poverty is quite different from its rural counter
part in a major respect. A n individual measures his wellbeing against
a social standard he sees around him, not against some official meas
ure of income deprivation. A s the President’s Commission on Income
Maintenance observed, “When the median income is growing rap
idly, those above it will perceive the poor differently, and the poor
living on an unchanged income will view their lot differently . . .
A s the? general American standard of living improves, the poor will
become progressively worse off by comparison with some norm.
The poor— defined by an unchanging scale— will be struggling for
social survival even after the problems of physical survival nave
been solved . . .”
Consequently, the internalized norm— what disadvantaged people
themselves believe is poverty, and how the relatively affluent regard
the poor— is an important ingredient in the psychology of urban
policy.
Even urbanites of good will and compassion may shrug off the
resence of rotting neighborhoods with the observation that cities
ave always had richer and poorer neighborhoods. The fact today,
however, is that an income-determined section of a city is likely to
be so large that residential stratification is likely to be strengthened
and sharpened over time.
Metropolitan America today is thus in a process of social and
economic division which lies at the heart of our problems of urban
growth. Managing that growth will require new institutions, and
balancing competing interests as crucial to the future of the nation
as those which led eventually to the drafting of a new Constitution
to supplant the old Articles of Confederation. W e cannot begin this
task unless we disabuse ourselves of some of the more crippling
urban myths.
The first is the myth of the crowded city. The assumption behind
many prescriptions for urban ills seems to be that there is little wrong
with metropolitan life that fewer people would not cure. But a closer
look at metropolis suggests that it is not nearly as congested as it may
seem, and that congestion is not the basic source! of urban problems.
Our growth rate, according to recent data, is close to zero popula
tion growth. It is worth remembering in this connection that, had
the U .S. growth rate of the Civil W ar years continued, we would
be a nation of 900 million people in year 2000, not the expected 300
million at most.
Even a declining population growth rate will require substantially
more jobs, schools, housing ana open space over the next decades.
The growth in population, nowever, is hardly the problem. The prob
lem is related rather to the distribution of the population in economic
and social terms and our readiness! to pay for dealing with transpor
tation, housing, and job dislocations flowing from maldistribution
rather than the total number of people.
Words like “megalopolis” conjure up images of people piling up
on top of each other in densely crowded cities. Density is technically
the number of people occupying a given land space. In this sense
density is in fact diminishing in U .S. metropolitan areas and, to a
lesser degree, in Europe.
E
721
There is no clear evidence that densities as such cause public
health or criminal problems. The tenants of a luxury apartment build
ing on Manhattan’s East Side do not suffer from the high residential
densities in that area; but in a virtually abandoned neighborhood on
Detroit’s East Side, six people living in two rooms suffer from the
baleful effects of overcrowding.
Decreasing densities, in fact, do pose metropolitan problems. The
waste of land occasioned by leapfrog development is matched by
the waste of capital on water and sewer lines, roads and other
elements of urban structure.
Migration myths also stymie policy-development to manage urban
growth. From time to time it is said that the best way to “ defuse the
population” bomb would be to “anchor” the rural population and
spur the growth of smaller towns by attracting immigrants who
otherwise would move to large metropolitan areas.
In the 1930s a witness before a committee of the House of Rep
resentatives intoned: “The vast population must depart from the
congested industrial centers and cities and once again become selfsustaining on our vast and fertile farms, pasture and prairie lands.”
This ancient belief in part stimulated the Homestead legislation of
the 1860s.
The staying power of the notion that urban problems can be
addressed effectively by luring or diverting people away from large
cities is worth pondering. Anti-urban nostalgia explains some of it.
It is also possible that this is a sophisticated version of hostility to
“newcomers” which has marred all great migrations in our history:
certainly the black rural-to-urban migration of the past decades
has not gone unnoticed (and many proponents of reducing the size
of cities are themselves confirmed urbanites who would be unlikely
to be the first to move to the country).
In terms of its impact on metropolitan America, however, the ruralto-urban migration is over. The last year to show more than a one
million loss of farm population was 1962 • five years later it was half
of that. Intennetropolitan migration and the influx of foreign-born
people now exceeds rural-to-urban migration.
Year 2000 projections indicate that of 81 million additional metro
politan residents, nonmetropolitan in-migrants will account for only
four million, while immigrants from other countries will number 10
million.
Proposals that aim to ease urban growing pains by reducing ruralurban migration are addressing a problem that no longer exists for
cities.
Closely allied to the earlier myths is the myth of reversing urbaniza
tion. This policy objective would not stop at the goal of preventing
rural-to-urban migration— it would seek to lure people out of the cities.
The efforts in countries with far greater central powers over land
development and industrialization have not reversed the growth of
large cities and the increasing urbanization of the population. Perhaps
the most drastic attempt has occurred in China, where vast author
itarian powers have been employed to influence the location of people,
including the forced transfer of workers. Perhaps the only read “suc
cess” in the world has been achieved in unique circumstances by Israel.
In 1949 about 48 per cent of its then much smaller population (900,-
722
090) lived in three major cities, 26 percent in otlier towns, and 26 per
cent in the countryside. By 1970, the distribution of its 3 million peo
ple— most of this increase the result of immigration— changed to only
W per cent in the three major cities, 52 per cent in towns, and only
17.5 per cent in the countryside. The circumstances which enabled this
conscious policy of town settlement to succeed are probably unique.
Urbanization is occurring most rapidly in the developing nations.
O f the world’s 36 largest urban “agglomerations” as defined by the
United Nations, 17 are in developing nations.
The older values we cherish as a nation, therefore, must be realized
not in rural isolation but in a metropolitan setting. National growth
policy must focus on metropolitan growth.
It seems apparent that the President’s “Report on National Growth,
1972” recognized the metropolitan reality but refused to come to grips
with it. A key sentence in the Report sums it u p : “There is no place
in our countrv for any policy which arbitrarily dictates where and how
our citizens will live and work and spend their leisure time.”
This is meant to eschew the development of any new national policies
which purport to determine or affect residential opportunities. The
problem is that public policies now exist which do arbitrarily dictate
where people may live, and corrective action to overcome them is re
quired. In other words, this single sentence turns our major urban
growth problem on its head.
The rural-to-urban and eastern-to-westem migrations of our past
saw people moving to improve their economic condition. National
policy encouraged these migrations in the conviction
opening
up greater opportunities for individual advancement would stimulate
national economic growth.
Our latest migration, from central city to suburb, differs in sig
nificant respects from these earlier movements. It stems not from eco
nomic motives, but the desire of relatively affluent city families for
what they regard as a more attractive and secure urban environment.
Unlike public policy governing earlier migrations, which satisfied a
n.*ed for cheap labor, existing public policy increasingly cuts lower
income economic groups off from economic and environmental
opportunities.
Tims, lower income groups find their residential opportunities
diminishing in the central city by the removal of older housing from
the inventory through abandonment, highway and other public works
construction and the conversion of core areas to commercial uses. A t
the same time they find the doors to suburban opportunity are closing
because of “no growth” and “slow growth” policies in metropolitan
areas.
The need for greater access to suburban housing opportunities for
lower-inccme Americans is premised on three different rationales.
The first— or “job access” rationale— is related to the need to compete
for iobs which are flowing to outer city locations. A second rationale
mi.<rht be described as “tax base equity.” In the words of a Chicago
Tribune editorial, “the residents of a suburb that welcomes industry
hut not its employees are trying to take the best of both worlds.”
Executive Order il512 and certain provisions of the proposed 1972
bousing bills recognize the “job access” and “tax base equity”
principles.
But compelling as these arguments are, there is a more fundamental
reason for requiring the removal of local barriers to low- and moderateincome housing: the geographic mobility and freedom of residential
choice of American citizens is a basic right that no locality should uni
laterally be permitted to fetter.
In the Great Depression of the 1930s, impoverished farmers from
the dust bowl— the “Okies”— set out to make a new life in California.
Those who had earlier settled there tried to protect their California
paradise from later arrivals by stationing guards to prevent
“indigents” from crossing the border. The Supreme Court held sucli
restrictions unconstitutional as violative of the right to travel. The
principle might more clearly be described as “the right to migrate and
settle.”
Job location, therefore, cannot be the only criterion for deter
mining whether low-income people ought to be able to find decent
housing throughout a metropolitan area. Since many central city fam
ilies with central city jobs may wish to live in suburban locations^ open
ing up options for them is a" matter of fundamental right as well as
better urban planning. Yet we have encouraged the development of
public policies which inevitably exclude lower-income Americans from
moving freely for environmental or economic reasons in metropolitan
areas.
Public policies inflate the cost of land and thus directly impact on
housing costs. (The Proside* f*s Fourth Annual Report on Xational
Housing Goals is the first such report to omit any reference at all to
this critical issue.)
The market for land is hardly a “pure” private market. Indeed, few
“private” markets are as intimately affected by public decisions as
the land market. The location of highways, sewers, and key public
facilities such as airports, schools, and parks all indirectly affect land
values. And public decisions such as zoning and subdivision approvals
directly affect such values.
These latter policies are publicly adopted and enforced without
the participation of those negatively affected— the people who are
foreclosed from living in a jurisdiction. “Power to the people who
got there first” is an operative political principle of urbanizing areas.
These policies are implemented through time-honored techniques:
1 . Underzoning for residential use. Communities, competin 9; with
one another for development which will enhance their local real estate
tax base, reserve excessive amounts of land for nonresidential uses. In
some cases, school boards have been known to urge local planning
and zoning authorities to restrict the amount of land available for
residential development to keep down increases in the school-age
population.
2 . Inadequate planning and zoning for muUi-family residentW use.
The prevailing mythology that the-ownership of a single-familv house
either instills or reflects ‘moral virtues which are not present among
apartment tenants tends to restrict the availability of land for higherdensity residential use. In some instances, the animosity against multi
family development is based less on claims of moral superiority than
on fears of an increased child population and resultant school' taxes,
increased traffic congestion and the assumption that apartment devel
opment will ruin the community’s scenic or historic character. It pro
724
ceeds on the further assumption that apartment dwellers, whose
property tax is hidden in the rent, will be less vigilant against “extrav
agant” school or other local government spending than will the single
family home owner who is hit at one time for a whole year’s property
tax.
3. Bedroom connt limitations. A more sophisticated device to dis
criminate against those who do not live in single-family homes is the
limitation on the number of bedrooms allowable in multi-family devel
opment. By reducing the average apartment to between one and two
bedrooms, some jurisdictions contrive to accept only those apartment
dwellers who are childless, or young couples (with a preschool child)
who are upwardly mobile, or smaller families generally. This permits
some mix of housing type without diminishing the community’s official
discrimination against children, large families, and lower-income
groups.
4. Larg e-lot residential zoning. Even where single-family homes are
the prevalent or exclusive residential style, a community may require
the land area used by each home to be so large that it effectively puts
a high floor under the value of the home by increasing the cost of the
site. A related form of economic exclusivity is a requirement for exces
sive floor areas. The National Commission on Urban Problems reported
in 1969 that almost half of the communities it surveyed imposed
minimum floor area requirements. In addition, where most of the un
developed land in a locality is zoned for large lots, the price of the
smaller lots in comparatively short supply rises unreasonably. O f all
potential restrictions on landuse, “large lot” zoning may prove most
costly to a community over the long run. The demand for housing is
not limitless, and as prices rise there may be a “trade off” between
falling housing quality and rising land prices. In addition, the installa
tion and maintenance of roads, water lines, and other facilities will
offset the presumed short-term economies of requiring excessive floor
areas and land for housing.
5 . Discrimination against Federally-subsidized housing. A com
munity may engage in none or all of the foregoing practices and try,
nevertheless, to exclude Federally-assisted lower-income housing. The
rationale behind total opposition by a locality to any subsidized hous
ing is explained by a leading zoning authority, Richard Babcock: “The
present rubric of zoning law tends to accelerate the concentration of
low-income housing in the community that takes any. It is easier
legally to exclude all subsidized housing than to hold it to a managed
program— just as it is safer to keep out the first gas station at the
intersection than to try to keep out the second or third.” Some com
munities, to avoid outright discrimination against such housing, may
relegate it to the least desirable locations.
In a number of cases, Federal courts have set aside local regulations
that were intended to, or had the effect of, discriminating against
proposed low- and moderate-income housing developments. Such
developments would have increased housing opportunities for racial
minorities. Some observers believe that the courts in these cases are
fashioning an important rule of law : that a locality has an affirmative
duty to make adequate provision for the housing needs of its racial
minorities; and that this rule applies with greater force where such
persons are being displaced by public action. Racial motives may not
725
be overtly evident in many cases of discrimination against subsidizing
housing. But since every subsidized development is potentially open
to minority citizens, the exclusion of such housing has a racial impact—
and it is this impact which is legally significant. The rule may be in the
process of extension to protect the rights of nonresident minorities,
an important step in freeing up the “right to travel” for the interstate
migrant. Under the Civil War amendments to the U.S. Constitution,
it is clear that Federal courts will show special solicitude for the rights
of racial minorities. It may be up to the state courts to address directly
the economic motives for exclusion.
Economic motives for local public policy are now being strengthened
by ecologicl rationales. The twin goals of protecting environmental
values and achieving a better distribution of goods and services in a
metropolitan society can be reconciled. But reconciliation cannot result
simply from literally preserving green pastures for the affluent.
The real or feared pollution of the ground water has in recent years
become a convenient reason in some localities for preventing or slowing
residential development. Some communities believe that, if residential
growth can be slowed or halted altogether, they can avoid the addi
tional costs and effects of growth such as roads to handle increased
traffic, schools to educate more children, plants to treat more sewage.
In April 1972, for example, the city of Livermore, California, a
San Francisco suburb east of San Francisco Bay, enacted a law that
would shut off building permits if any of three conditions exist:
double sessions in public schools, failure of sewage treatment plants
to meet regional water quality standards, or the rationing of water
supplies to the existing population. Other small towns in California
have also voted to suppress population growth by refusing to rezone at
higher densities or by setting outright limits to population growth.
The voters of Boulder, Colorado almost approved in 1971 an amend
ment to the city charter calling for regulations and policies to stabilize
ultimate population of that city to 100 ,000.
Courts have begun to wrestle with the problem. Some observers
believe that state courts may ultimately declare “no growth” strategies
illegal. The most advanced legal opposition to the “no growth” strategy
has come from a “conservative” state court, the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania. In two separate cases the court has found “no growth”
zoning to be unreasonable. Its language in one case has been widely
quoted:
. . . communities must deal with the problems of population growth. They may
not refuse to confront the future by adopting zoning regulations that eflectively
restrict population to near present levels. It is not for any given township to say
who may or may not live within its confines, while disregarding the interests
of the entire area. If Concord Township is successful in unnaturally limiting
its population growth through the use of extensive zoning regulations, the
people who would normally live there will inevitably have to live in another com
munity, and the requirement that they do so is not a decision that Concord
Township should alone be able to make.
The basic principle laid down by the Pennsylvania court is that
“zoning is a tool in the hands of governmental bodies which enables
them to more effectively meet the demands of evolving and growing
communities. It must not and cannot be used by those officials as an
instrument by which they may shirk their responsibilities.”
726
By contrast, in May 1972 New York?s highest court ruled that the
town of Ramapo could enforce “slow growth” landuse controls by
baring residential subdivisions in the jurisdiction pending the provi
sion of sewers and drainage facilities, schools, roads, recreatonal areas,
firehouses on a time schedule designed to divert growth to other juris
dictions and awav from the verdant open land controlled by the town.
It is difficult to draw the line between landuse controls intended to
slow growth and those intended to bring higher fiscal returns. The
U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the local power to zone in 1926
and has not dealt with it since, has left open the question of whether
this power might be used to maximize local revenues by closing the
locality's doors to additional residents.
Thus the demands of equity and “ecology” have come into conflict,
a conflict which is sharpened because there exists no process for ration
ally resolving it at the local level. For example, in Suffolk County,
Long Island, separate Federal court actions have sought both to fore
close further housing development and to increase it. An environ
mental group has sued all of the local governments in the county to
prevent further issuance of building permits because, they assert, prof
ligate development is ruining the water quality on the Island. By con
trast, civil rights groups have tried to prevent construction of a large
Internal Revenue Service facility in the County on the basis of an
inadequate supply of housing for low- and moderate-income workers.
The Court did not enjoin the almost completed building, but it did
order affirmative relief to increase the housing supply. The legitimate
objectives in both cases could have been accommodated only through
overall reform of landuse controls in the region, reforms that are
designed to manage urban growth.
In the absence of such reforms, local governments will be under
pressure to accede to whichever interests seems stronger at a given time,
regardless of the impact on regional and national housing and environ
mental goals. It appears that the foes of any development are in
creasingly strong. For example, the number of areas experiencing sewer
moratoriums is significantly increasing. These moratoriums reduce
the land available for residential development and inevitably drive
up the price of that which is available,
The metropolitan “sewer crisis,” on the other hand, could provide
a new opportunity for managing urban growth by encouraging cluster
development, preventing construction in flood plains, wetlands or
other ecologically sensitive areas, and by assuring a wider economic
mix of housing. This, again, would require the creation of new instru
ments of land planning and development.
In the light of these local policies, it is apparent that the major urban
growth policy question facing the United States relates to the better
management of metropolitan land to meet both ecological and housing
needs.
Existing fragmentation of landuse controls in our metropolitan areas
can be faulted on several grounds. This fragmentation:
Frustrates a more efficient arrangement of land uses in the
regional economy;
Trammels the social and economic opportunities of many Amer
ican families;
727
Denies participation in decision-making processes to those,
directly affected by them;
Frustrates the more equitable allocation of economic benefits
and burdens within metropolitan areas.
I f this diagnosis of our major urban growth problems is correct,
the first Presidential report on national urban growth policy was
actually issued under another name in June 1971. Entitled “Federal
Policies Relative to Equal Housing Opportunity,” it denied the exist
ence of any national interest in the policies of economic exclusion
practiced by many localities. The report was quite specific in givingfree rein to local housing policies regardless of their impact 011 regional
or national needs. A “hands off” policy was in effcct adopted in that
statement.
This approach was then in effect adopted in the “ Report on Na
tional Growth” issued months later. It comprises a little more than
a comprehensive list of state and local initiatives that have the barest
potential connection with a coherent national urban growth policy.
Some of the initiatives, like general and special revenue sharing,
are wholly neutral on the spatial patterns of human settlement. Two
are listed, however, which merit special attention because they illus
trate how Federal neutrality 011 social aspects of urban growth is
not mirrored by a similar passivity on other facets of growth policy.
The Administration’s national landuse policy proposals, emanating
from the Council on Environmental Quality, reveal a laudable
preference for limiting local landuse controls to preserve ecologically
sensitive land and water resources. The reforms it proposed would en
able developments of regional benefit, such as airports, solid waste
disposal plants and powder plants, to be located under procedures which
would insert the states into decision-making.
A t the same time, however, the Report promotes a quite separate
Federal power plant siting bill, which clothes the power generating
industry with new Federal protection from local governments and
environmental interests which have made the location of such facilities
so difficult. Under this bill the Federal government would be em
powered to issue guidelines controlling state agencies who would in
turn select optimum sites for power plants and large transmission lines.
The Federal government would itself, however, establish such power
plant siting agencies where the states failed to act. Power plants, like
subsidized housing, are not popular in many localities even though
they are required to serve regional needs. There is an obvious Federal
interest in preventing the limitation of the nation’s energy supply
by arbitrary local exclusionary landuse policies.
These same Federal interest in preventing an artificial supply of
housing, particularly for low- and moderate-income households, finds
no expression in the report. The national policy contemplated is thus
one of active intervention for some but certainly not all of our growth
requirements.
It is the function of such reports to draw the attention of the Con
gress to problems and potential approaches to their solution. Had this
report addressed the real problems of managing urban growth it
would have dealt with at least the following issues:
S l-74 5 — 72— pt. 2------- 12
728
1 . How can the Federal interest in assuring an adaquate sup
ply of low- and moderate-income housing be harmonized with
the existing state and local powers controlling the use of land?
2 . How can new instruments of planning an development guide
the use of metropolitan land to produce socially and ecologically
responsible living environments ?
3. How can such instruments be organized to balance the needs
of an urban region with legitimate local interests ?
These issues suggest a range of institutional reforms not even touched
upon in the Report. Some of these include:
1 . Metropolitan planning for housing subsidies to assure a “ fair
share" allocation.
2 . Limitation of unilateral local control of land for social
housing.
3. Creation of metropolitan land and development agencies to
guide urban growth, through investments in water and sewer lines
and advance land acquisition.
The development of any national policy requires, in addition,, the
creation of a national planning capability. It is significant that the
Report mentions, in passing, the National Resources Planning Board,
an agency which went out of existence during the Second World War.
Comparing reports of the NRPB— especially its excellent report
on the problems or urban growth issued in 1937— with the President’s
report of 1972 indicates how little progress has been made in 35 years
to give urban problems serious, ongoing professional attention at the
highest level of government.
URBAN PLANNING AND TAX REFORM CONSIDERATIONS
(By Arthur L. Grey, Chairman, Department of Urban Planning,
University of Washington, Seattle)
These remarks are in reference to the committee’s on-going interest
in national growth and particularly its consideration of the first an
nual report submitted by the President in accordance with the Hous
ing and Urban Development Act of 1970. That was a notable legisla
tive enactment, a gratifying reassurance to all of us whose closest
concerns are with the problems of urban environment and the bearing
upon the general welfare. The 1970 law signified we had reached a
new maturity in facing the realities of our circumstances as an urban
nation. It matched our national purpose to otherwise overwhelming
national problems.
To turn a new comer resolutely and without backsliding to former
and outdated attitudes in effecting public policy changes on impor
tant questions is rare, if ever possible. Thus, I do not think that we
need to be unduly discouraged at the uneventful circumstances since
the passage of the law in December 1970.
However, it is evident that the Report of National Growth sub
mitted by the Executive Branch in February is not really responsive
to the spirit of the 1970 law and its concern for the consequences of
random growth of communities.
What appears to be the most striking deficiency of the Report is its
acceptance of this random pattern as (a) very largely inevitable and
(b) expressing fundamental popular preferences. Indicative of this
judgment, which appears to me to dominate the report, is specific com
ment on trends of metropolitan suburban population growth which
concludes the section on population density (p. 15) : “There is no rea
son to believe that the trends exhibited between 1960 and 1970 will not
continue through the 1970’s.” The continuation of these trends of the
last decade into the future cannot be accepted with equanimity, yet
the tenor of the whole of the National Growth Report appears"to be
attuned to the sentence just quoted.
Before writing further, I should identify my own interests and
qualifications: I am Professor and Chairman of the Department of
Urban Planning at the University of Washington in Seattle. Recently,
I concluded a year’s residence in the Greater Los Angeles area as John
C. Lincoln Visiting Professor of Urban Land Economics at the Clare
mont Colleges. I shall return to comment further upon (a) the urban
growth problems of Southern California and (b) the interests of the
Lincoln Foundation.
My colleague from the University of Washington, Dr. Alan Rabinowitz, has recently appeared before the subcommittee on housing in
behalf of our national professional organization, the American In
stitute of Planners. Among the important points made by Dr. Rabinowitz is, I think, this observation:
(729)
730
The process by which change and improvements will come to the urban scene
is all important. . . . Planners are people who want to help this process. A
planner is not interested in making a plan to be imposed on the system. He is
someone equipped to help the process of democratic decision-making.
Planning and Random Growth,
This point of view is at variance with the belief conveyed by the
report that existing trends express what is best and what people prefer
for the future. C early, the dissatisfaction which led to the passage o f
the 1970 law shows a belief that other choices can be made. Dr. Babinowitz’ point is that the process of planning is to help the public bring
into reach of possibility other alternatives from which we may be
driven away if we only consider present trends.
I mentioned that, until recently, I was temporarily living in the Los
Angeles area. Specifically, in the town of Claremont, some 30 miles east
of downtown Los Angeles. By coincidence having nothing to do with
my recent visit there, I assisted in preparing a land use plan for this
community some 17 years ago. This was planning based upon wide
spread public participation, as described by Professor Babinowitz.
Gratifyinglv, in the intervening years, many of the specifics of that
plan and the spirit that emanated it has continued.
In 1955, there were only the slightest sullying intimations of smog
and rapacious sprawl. In 1972, from my office in Claremont, on selected
winter days, I had a magnificent view of the San Gabriel mountains
which beset Los Angeles County. However, most of the time a stranger
would look in disbelief if told there were mountains so near, such is
the pervasive envelope of air pollution that wafts across the Lcs An
geles Basin.
The air space of the Los Angeles area has been overcommitted, prob
ably irrevocably. This is not for lack of advances in the efficient use of
energy but because of growth with only token regard to the cost to the
atmosphere. That overcommitment is steadily expanded, despite claims
to the contrary, thus mortgaging beyond conceivable hope of requitment future accomplishments of technology. The dull ooze of the air
pollution problem across the national landscape will require a sterner
confrontation with the process of random growth heedless of atmos
phere capacity.
Claremont sits as a tiny island of relatively orderly growth, in a vast
sea of urban sprawl, ever threatened with extinction in the main. Citrus
groves and vineyards have disappeared as urban growth proceeded,
not just because the land was needed for growth, but because no effort
was made to conserve it for agriculture and the scattered pattern of
urban development and the attendant appreciation of land values were
uncongenial for continued farming even if the land were not built
upon.
Taxation and Urban Growth
My visit there at the Claremont Colleges was sponsored by the Lin
coln Foundation. This non-profit trust was established by John C.
Lincoln who was persuaded by the ideas of the philosopher and eco
nomist, Henry George. The contemporary relevance of George’s ideas
is, it appears to me, mat he advocated the use of taxes, operating upon
people’s self-interest and preferences, to influence the use of land in
ways more nearly consistent with the general public interest.
731
Four years ago, the National Commission on Urban Problems,
headed by former Senator Paul H. Douglas, concluded its monu
mental work with a final report entitled Building the American City.
I think it noteworthy that the commission, especially in a minority
addendum on this subject, subscribed to by its chairman, called for a
fuller application of taxation reflective of the ideas of Henry George.
In February, the President in his message on the environment ad
vocated that taxation of air pollutants (specifically sulphur) be
levied on the emitting source. I understand that this has received
active study in the Joint Economic Committee.
It seems clear that the realization of a better America than is por
tended by current trends will riot be regulatory fiat alone. The record
of air pollution control, where variances for the regulations persist
with immunity show this. Elsewhere, in the work of the Douglas Com
mission it was similarly made evident that regulation of land use—
“zoning’-— has worked indifferently.
W e should be turning wholeheartedly to a reform of the property
tax tending to reshape it int-o a more effective system of incentives and
disincentives for influencing the pattern of urban land use and future
urban development to give substance to zoning. Instead, this issue is
being largely ignored in proposals to provide property tax relief.
In other words, the approach of using differential" charges advo
cated by the Administration in the case of air pollution, should be,
but is not, being applied by extension to urban land use and growth
problems.
Elements To Be Included in Balanced Growth
Zoning is a regulatory process, relying upon administrative pro
cedures within a framework of law to accomplish orderly, efficient,
rational and satisfying community physical development.
Two objections greet efforts to strengthen land use regulation by
bringing it within the purview of the price system: One is the objec
tion that if the use of the environment is undesirable, then it should be
categorically banned and the public welfare should not be trifled
with by a payment of money. Another is that this is an unwarranted
interference with the rights of private property.
The fault of the first objection is evident in the appalling ineffec
tiveness of the zoning process, unsupported as it now is by publicly
imposed financial incentives and disincentives. There is ample evi
dence of changes in zoning being “sold” by errant public officials,
or more subtly, by an exchange of favors.
The second objection is no doubt often offered sincerely, bit. there
is no reason why a privilege in regard to development which can
greatly increase the value of an owners property should be conferred
without substantial participation by the community which confers
this opportunity.
The power to zone, instead of pursuing the objectives stated earlier,
can be the power to prematurely destroy needed housing, to inflict
blighting elements on a neighborhood, to impose disruptive scales
changes (traffic volumes, street widths, loss of amenity to existing
useful improvements of property), and erratic loss of productive
agricultural space and natural environment.
A price commensurate with the likely private benefits that will
accrue from a change of land use with rezoning will assure that the
proposed change is a serious undertaking and not merely a strategem
for a speculative windfall, banking on tlie expectation that a change
to more intensive zoning will garner a higher sales price. In another
form, this is the objection Henry George expressed to land speculation:
Space, a resource whose value is socially created, is deployed prin
cipally for short run gain and with scant regard for community
interest.
Unless planning and zoning achieve a different balance to the forces
of community interest and private advantage, they are only a wasted
effort.
Were a land reclassification fee imposed, reflective in some measure
of ( 1 ) the expected financial gain to the owner— or ( 2 ) the anticipated
added cost to the community, this would surely reduce the pressure of
largely speculative changes. The added costs consist of (a) increased
expense of public services or (b) adverse effects upon neighbors or
community in the use and enjoyment of their property and public
facilities.
The following diagram illustrates the relationship between land
reclassification, normal taxation, and a land reclassification fee:
The land reclassification fee would be, in effect, the price for obtain
ing a zoning change to a more intensive use. The fee, rather than a
permanent rise in property taxes, might have a greater possibility of
adaption and has merit of calling attention specifically to the benefit
conferred by land reclassification. The rate of land use change will be
733
reduced because the land reclassification fee will have the effect of
lowering the post-rezoning value of land below the level of B, which
is without the fee.
These remarks apply to any shift to a more intensive use from open
land through highly developed commercial projects, but they apply
most strongly to the latter which tend to represent the most pernicious
and redundant form of incursions on community stability and quality.
How does this relate to new communities ? The problem with past
outlying growth was that it proceeded on the basis of lower standards
to induce land sales and development. The outlying community, until
at least a certain stage of maturity, is a kind of Gretna Green of urban
planning— it gets the action because rules are absent or less stringent,
rather than for inherent good as far as the pattern of metropolitan
growth is concerned. In the future, we should strive to develop ground
rules of community growth and development which are consistent,
rather than sources of further problems.
Urban expansion has taken place largely at the expense of agricul
tural surroundings, since from the very beginning many communities
derived their livelihood from an agricultural base. How far this can
go is revealed in one of the first photographic images obtainable from
the Earth Resources Terrestrial Satellite launched in July, 1972. In a
picture taken over a portion of Central California, the essential out
line of San Jose, California, is readily apparent. This locality was at
one time one of the most famous fruit growing districts in the world.
In this picture one can see that the fruit orchards have all but dis
appeared in the voracious spread of urban growth which has blanketed
over these rich alluvial soils. A differential tax policy conducive to
the preservation of such land on agricultural use can be an important
guide for carrying out a national growth policy. It can discourage
urbanization where it is not in the national interest and by limiting
such short lived alternatives promote expansion where it is desirable
to occur.
Viewed historically, the new community is a strangely American
phenomenon. Not only do the random settlements that marked our
Western expansion come to mind, but also our idealism that guided
the founding of utopian communities, especially in the 19th Century.
It is thus a very daunted spirit which dominated the first annual na
tional growth report because it concludes that present trends of metro
politan growth inhospitable to significant new community development
have a quality of inevitability. Given the innumerable difficulties of
our central cities and metropolitan areas we can scarcely settle for the
counsel that what we can expect must be largely some more of the
situation associated with our present troubles. The purpose of the
report- required by the 1970 law is not to tell us what will happen if
we sit on our hands, but to show us how we may work for a different
and better result.
The proposed National Land Use Policy Act would establish a
significant basis in the form of state programming for advancing the
objectives of the 1970 Housing and Urban Development Act. However,
future settlement policy in a country so mobile, so spacially bound
together, as we are (and we shall become much more so by the end of
the Century) cannot be determined without a guiding national ra
tionale. Trifling new community development can, of course, occur.
734
But we are beyond the scale when the building of model suburbs
will suffice. That was an exemplary activity in the past. What we need
to consider in our present age is where major new communities can
most feasibly be situated, what their physical structure and social
institutions should be and how we can bring this about.
Finally, toward what ends are regulation, taxation, federal sub
sidies, and moral suasion to be used in regard to urban growth and
development? What plans should we make? The annual reports in*
implementation of the 1970 law should confront this question. Indeed,
the 1970 Presidential staff report entitled Toward Balanced Growth:
Quantity with Quality said that “The major lesson to be extracted
from the substantive problems reviewed here (in that report) is the
high desirability of an explicit growth policy with a relatively long
term perspective.”
A national policy for urban growth must essentially be a compro
mise. That is, it must be a balanced judgment reflecting the several
elements of ( 1 ) the limits on the supply of air, water, land and other
natural resources, ( 2 ) the alternative costs of different patterns of
development, (3) the opportunities afforded for productive employ
ment, (4) the growth of economic productivity, (5) the transference
to our successors of an environment not despoiled by preceding gener
ations. ( 6 ) the maintenance of a healthful environment including re
gard for mental health, (7) security stability and continuity in ur
ban life. ( 8 ) a personally fulfilling life for an expanding share of the
population, (9) a wide range of personal choice.
I am convinced that it is possible to give some specifications to these
points and to construct proximate objectives, which will take account
of the main conflicts that exist among* them. Such an outline will
necessarily be flexible. This has generally received too little attention.
I am surprised that the witnesses before Congress when the Ashley Bill
was under consideration said very little about criteria of the desirable
or optimal size or characteristics of urban communities.
It is, however, impossible to contemplate any meaningful kind of
national growth policy if the cumulative effect of federal expenditures
on the size, shape, and extent of our urban communities is not a con
sideration in their allocation. Almost a generation ago Miles Colean
published a study which analyzed the impact that federal expenditures
(then largely sec. 203(b) mortgages) were having in forming the ur
ban environment. Much of what has happened was desirable— per
mitting a better way of life for millions. But the cumulative conse
quences of continuing present trends without substantial modification
is deeply disturbing. It is an interstate problem, a national problem
with, critical elements that cannot otherwise be approached. The pri
vate individual, business organizations, local governments, and the
states are all “locked in” to a counterproductive process of urban
growth, just as firmly as we were locked into the congestion of the cen
tre! cities before federal support initiated a massive breakaway for
the suburbs.
I
wish to add my voice to those who will urge that we keep faith
with the objectives of the 1970 law and develop the techniques required
to do *0.
“REPORT ON NATIONAL GROWTH 1972” : A REVIEW
ARTICLE
(By Philip M. Hauser, University of Chicago)
This Report, transmitted by President Nixon to the Congress of
the United States, is the first biennial Report on National Growth as
required by section 703(a) of the Housing and Urban Development
Act of 1970. It was prepared by the members and staff of the Domestic
Council Committee on National Growth, which Secretary George
Romney of the Department of Housing and Urban Development
served as Chairman. As the first of a series of Reports required by
law, it marks a significant milestone in the ever expanding role of the
Federal Government, which, from now on, will be reviewing, evaluat
ing and, presumably, guiding national growth. Embraced by the con
cept “national growth,” judging from the Report, are virtually all
elements of the American society and economy including population
size, distribution and composition; social development, including edu
cation, welfare, ethnic and racial intergroup relations, and new com
munity development; economic growth in general, including regional,
urban-rural and metropolitan growth, and in specific sectors such as
land use, housing, transport, finance and power; and growth of gov
ernment itself— national, state and local. Attention is focused, as may
be expected, on the problematic aspects of growth and on growth
policy.
O f the Report’s five chapters, after a brief “Introduction,” the first
is concerned with “ Population Growth and Distribution.” It sum
marizes national population growth from 1790 to 1970 with consid
eration of the components of growth— fertility, mortality and immi
gration. It also gives an overview of national population distribution
from 1790 to 1970, including a review of internal migration patterns
for the total population and for blacks. This chapter has separate sec
tions on rural to urban population shifts and on metropolitan area
growth and composition.
Chapter I I is mainly a discussion of “The Challenge of Balanced
Orderly Growth.” It outlines the problems associated with growth
including consideration of the decline of rural areas and small towns,
the changing role of the central city, racial and economic concentra
tions, environmental and transportation problems, and rising land
costs. It discusses the pros and cons of a “single comprehensive growth
policy” pinpointing the issues which arise, and it points to a possible
di vision of labor between the Federal and local governments in “meet
ing the challenges of growth.”
Chapter I I I summarizes “Recent State and Local Actions to Influ
ence Growth.” It outlines “recent trends in the involvement of states
in the growth process” covering the emergence of such state bodies as
departments of urban affairs, housing finance agencies, urban develop
(735)
736
ment corporations, environmental control agencies, and land use con
trol agencies; and it points to state concerns with new communities,
financing of urban functions and problems of housing, mass transport,
education and modernization of local government. Chapter I I I also
presents the various forms of interstate cooperation— voluntary group
ings, multi-state compacts, Federal-multi-state compacts, Federal-state
commissions and Federal corporations cutting across state lines.
Chapter IV presents a picture of “Administration Actions to Deal
with the Challenges of Growth." It briefly summarizes “past Federal
involvement and concentrates on the present Administration pro
gram initiatives.” It describes thirteen areas of such initiatives, in
cluding proposals for strengthening the Federal systems, rural devel
opment, transportation, national environmental policy implementa
tion, the use of Federal land, housing, new community assistance, plan
ning requirements, “A -95” reviews, Federal property insurance pro
grams, planned variations, annual arrangements, and property tax
reform.
Finally, Chapter V contains “Administration Recommendations to
the Congress.” Its “legislative initiatives” include those fo r: govern
ment reorganization, revenue sharing, expanded rural credit, planning
and management assistance, national land use policy, powerplant sit
ing, tax policy to conserve natural and cultural values and welfare
reform. The “Summary” in this final chapter expresses the judgment
that “progress toward enactment of many of these legislative pro
posals— and especially toward reorganization of the executive branch—
has been discouragingly slow.”
This first of the biennial series of Reports on National Growth is
not the first Report of this Administration on the subject. In 1970
a report entitled Toward Balanced, Growth: Quantity with Quality
was released by the White House as a product of its “National Goals
Research Staff” (N G R S). This report w^as motivated, as explained by
President Nixon, by the fact that: “In seven short years, the United
States will celebrate its 200th anniversary as a nation. It is time we
addressed ourselves, consciously and systematically, to the question of
what kind of a nation we want to be as we begin our third centurv”
(p. 219).
It was the function of that Report (NGRS) as set forth by the
President “to assemble data that can help illumine the possible range
of national goals for 1976— our 200th anniversary.” The NGRS was to
deliver a report “by July 4 of next year, and annually thereafter,
setting forth some of the key choices open to us and examining the
consequences of those choices” (p. 2 2 1 ).
The President’s anticipation of the action of the Congress in setting
in motion the preparation of the Report, “Toward Balanced Growth
. . . ” was short lived. A second NGRS Report was never published and
the staff was disbanded. In fact. then, the present Report on National
Groivth 1972, is the second report of this Administration focusing on
national growth. As for the first Report, its aim, as stated in the stat
ute, is “to assist in the development of national policy” not to “enun
ciate” such policy. This Report, as stated in the “Introduction,”
“makes no claim . . . to present a single comprehensive national growth
policy for the United States” (p. X ) .
737
Yet the Report does embody a set of values, mainly implicit, that
precludes the establishment of a comprehensive national growth policy.
Its “philosophy” explicitly stated is that it is “based on a respect for
diversity and pluralism” (p. X ) . It assumes without examination
that “no single policy, nor even a coordinated set of policies, can remedy
or even significantly ameliorate all of our ills” (p. X ) .
As in the first Report this one takes it for granted that “balanced
and orderly growth” are “twin objectives”—thus setting forth ob
jectives with respect to process rather than substantive ends. Also, as
in the earlier Report, this one sets no specific goals or targets— a prac
tice that leaves quite open the question of to what ends national growth
is to be directed.
This first of the biennial reports marks the beginning of a systematic
effort to:
I. Understand the forces that are shaping the communities in which
we live and wrork;
II. Articulate some of the challenges that must be confronted as
the Nation responds to the challenges of growth;
III. Identify recent developments at the State and local level for
coping more effectively with growth;
IV. Identify major actions of the Federal Government undertaken
to deal with the problems of growth; and
V. Advance recommendations for Federal action to strengthen the
Nation’s ability to deal with the challenges of growth more effectively.
A chapter, as has been indicated, is devoted to each of these five
objectives. Their content has been described above. A critique of their
content follows.
This Report then, as the Administration’s earlier report on national
growth, can be faulted for failing to face up to the need for evaluating
national priorities, setting broad national goals— and, thus, providing
at least broad guidelines for national growth. For example, although
the Report provides descriptive data on the distribution of blacks and
their concentration in central cities in metropolitan areas, it is elo
quently silent about the failure of this Nation to provide equality of
opportunity for blacks and other minorities, which accounts for the
pattern of concentration and segregation. It, of course, refrains from
the usage of the word “racism” contained in the Report of the Na
tional Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders— a report which has
been studiously ignored. It uses instead careful language in stating that
“the trend is due in large part to economic and social forces which have
limited the availability of housing for blacks and minorities outside
the central city area” (p. 23). It, for understandable reasons, does not
mention this Administration’s superb non-leadership on the integra
tion front in respect of suburban residence and housing. Should it be
a policy of national growth to prevent the accelerating trend to an
apartheid society ? One would have hoped that at least the question were
raised even if, understandably, no affirmative answer is given by this
Administration in an election year.
Similarly, the Report describes at various points (e.g., p. 22 ) the
economic segregation which characterizes our metropolitan residential
patterns but, consistently, does not raise any question about the great
inequality in income distribution in the land and, in the main, ignores
738
the plight of the “poor." This posture may be consistent with this Ad
ministration’s edict to the Bureau of the Census to substitute “low in
come” for “poverty” in its annual report on poverty in the United
States. Should national growth policy have as an objective more equi
table income distribution ? Again one would have hoped that at least
the question had been raised.
To be sure, the Report does include three short paragraphs on the
Administration’s “welfare reform” proposal before the Congress. But
in describing the proposal it fails to even raise the policy questions
about it, consideration of which has blocked its passage to date. Should
“welfare reform” contain punitive provisions for the poor ? Is pro
posed “welfare reform” consistent with vetoed educational legisla
tion and appropriations that will affect the welfare load in the com
ing generation ? Is “welfare reform” an adequate substitute for pro
grams designed to prevent welfare in a racist society which, bv failin'*
to provide equality of opportunity for minorities for education, the
acquisition of vocational skills, jobs and adequate income flow, guar
antees a permanent and increasing welfare load? Should it be a goal
of national growth greatly to reduce, if not to eliminate, the need
for welfare ?
In respect of population growth it is significant that this Report does
not even have a single reference to the recently released Report of the
Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. That
Report, the product of two years of labor by a Commission appointed
by the President and headed by John D. Rockefeller I II , contained a
number of proposals for guiding national population growth policy
and should have served as a major item for at least discussion in the
national growth report under review. Since it was lightly treated f»nd
in part refuted by the President, it can be understood why it is ig
nored in this Report.
Finally, in resnect of the Nation’s housing it is significant that al
though a number of references are made to housing (pp. 36, 40, 60),
nowhere in the Report does one find a comprehensive treatment of the
problems relating to the supply and quality of housing and to maior
housing policy considerations in the private and public sectors. This
omission is truly an astonishing one in light of the fact that the Re
port was required by Title V II of the 1970 Housing and Urban Devel
opment Act. It may be inferred from this benign neglect that the
Nation’s housing stance will remain one of promising much and de
livering little.
Consideration of the “program initiatives” and “legislative initia
tives” d'scloses a number of commendable directions. But also dis
closed is their discrete and uncoordinated character and unforgivable
omissions. The uncoordinated character of the initiativs set forth are,
of course, consistent with the Administration's emphasis on its phi
losophy— “based on respect for diversity and pluralism” (p. X ) : and
its uncritical acceptance of the historic character of our federal ?v?"eirs.
Although the report appropriate!*7 recognizes that it is necessary to
determine “the proper level of government to influence growth.’* its
ideology and political commitment do not provide an open mind in
making the determination.
The Report’s explanation of why the United States has not under
taken “forceful, comprehensive policies to control the process of
739
growth’5 (p. 30) as central governments in other nations have done is
in part pathetic. Understandably one reason is our inherited federal
system. But to state that “another important reason for lack of a
single dominant growth policy is the sheer size of our Nation” is little
short of laughable. Without agreeing with the form or substance such
central policy has taken in the People’s Republic of China or the
U.S.S.R. it is clear that sheer size has not prevented them from adopt
ing comprehensive national growth policies. Also subject to question
is the explicitly stated assumption that in order for “citizens to have
a major voice in determining policies . . . ” it is necessary to keep “gov
ernment close to the people/’ This is a mystical article of faith hardly
consistent with the political facts of life in the United States.
Do the minority groups in the United States have a greater voice
in Washington or in Alabama, Colorado, Arizona or Chicago? Is the
people’s voice in respect of conservation of natural resources, environ
mental degradation, organized crime, consumer exploitation, public
assistance, social security, automotive safety, special interest lobbying
better heard in State capitols and city halls or in Washington? To be
sure, there is much for State and local governments to do in behalf of
national growth but this Administration’s record is clearly one of
maximizing the role of local government 'as an article of faith in the
merits of the federal system in its 19th and 18th century form.
Implicit throughout the report in the Administration’s conviction
that a strong central government is in itself an evil and that the more
the Federal Government devolves upon State and local governments
the better off the Nation will be. This implicit assumption is a fine ex
ample of the razor sharp 19th and 18th century ideology and values
uncritically accepted by this Administration which fails to recognize
that the United States is today characterized by a 20th century demo
graphic and technological reality which has eroded many of the basic
tenets of historical agrarian America to which it still subscribes. Ex
amples of such 19th and 18th century values are manifest in a number
of explicit postures of this Administration such as the repetition of
the ethnocentric shibboleths that we must be “No. 1 ” ; that a “welfare
state” is a pejorative concept; that the right to bear arms is a funda
mental civil right; that day nurseries for working mothers are a threat
to the family; that a strong consumer protection agency in the Federal
Government would undermine the free enterprise system; that mili
tary force can resolve international conflicts of interest; that a balance
of power foreign policy is required; that the world-wide ring of mili
tary bases is essential for national security.
The Report does state that: “In some cases, the Federal Government
is the only body with the capability to assure balanced and orderly
growth” (p. 31). It goes on to say “this is especially true in the eco
nomic area” (p. 31). Is it not equally true in such social areas as civil
rights, public school education, equality of opportunity for minori
ties, adequate housing, resolution of the “urban crisis,” elimination of
organized crime, abolition of poverty, and investment in human re
sources, in general? Is the sorry role of state and local government
in these and other fundamental areas to be ignored in the interest of
the federal system tradition? Furthermore, although the Report rec
ognizes in a mild way the chaos that afflicts metropolitan areas and
its fragmented local government inherited from 18th century England,
740
it does not regard this as a serious enough problem to make it a matter
of national growth policy. It does include “revenue sharing” as a leg
islative initiative in recognition of the problem of virtual state and
municipal government insolvency. But it does not point to the issues,
especially in respect to the way in which state and city governments
are to be involved, that have stalled that legislation.
Finally, it is something less than enchanting to discover that this
Report has not a s’u^le reference to the Vietnam horror. Is it possible
that our Vietnam engagement has nothing to do with national growth ?
In general, the Report may be characterized as recognizing some
problematic aspects of national growth but avoiding even mention of
major problems, some of which threaten the viability of the nation.
Furthermore, its initiatives are without exception too little, too late
and too subordinated to the shackles of its 19th and 18th century
value system. Its proposals, including its “bold” ones, are more con
sonant with the Administration's “ Southern strategy,” frontier psy
chology, big business orientation, “strict constitutional construc
tionism” and romantic nostalgia for the good days of the 19th century
than with the reality of the 20 th century demographic and technologi
cal wTorld we have evolved.
On the technical side the Report evidences some obvious errors and
weaknesses. For example, the decimal point is wrongly placed in Table
2 (Natural Increase); it is naive to state that in respect of the birth
rate “there is no reason to believe that it will increase appreciably in
the 1970’s” (p. 6 ) ; it is amateurish to state that the increase in life
expectancy at birth “has been one factor in the rather dramatic de
cline in the death rate” (p. 6 ), a statement not unlike President
Ooolidge’s observation that the unemployment rate was high because
so many people were out of work: it is either wrong or confusing to
use “urbanized population” both in the sense used by the Bureau of
the Census and in other connotations (pp. 17,19, 20 ). Furthermore, it
is less than insightful not to recognize that the relatively low growth
rate of metropolitan areas with populations of two million or more
may be evidence of diseconomies of scale above that population level—
a proposition that requires investigation and that would have sig
nificant implications for national growth policy if true. Similarly, it is
a blind acceptance of the past that leads to such a conclusion as that
attributed to the President that “the growth which this nation will
inevitably experience in the coming decades will be healthy growth
only if it is balanced growth— and this means growth which is dis
tributed among both urban and rural areas” (p. 26). After two intercensal decades in which more than half of the counties of the nation
lost population, the facts would seem to warrant further research and
consideration rather than such a quick conclusion based on the eco
nomics and life style of the past.
It is ironic that an Administration obviously addicted to the past
has been the first required by law to look into the future and provide
biennial systematic Reports on National Growth. The Congress is to
be commended for passing such legislation and the President, for
not exercising his quick-draw veto power in signing it. But the required
report as a guide to national policy remains more of a hope for the
future than a significant tool for this Administration. Given the sense
of national priorities that this Administration has displayed by its
741
legislative proposals and executive vetoes it is perfectly clear that it
is and will remain oriented to the past not the future; and that the
only solace that those who have entered the 20th century can find at the
present time lies in the fact that this Administration can retard but
cannot prevent this nation entering the 20th century before the onset
of the 2 1 st.
Sooner or later, and the sooner the better, some administration will
set forth, after careful and comprehensive deliberation and wide
spread citizen participation, a set of national goals toward which
national growth policy can be directed. Until consensus is achieved
on such goals the writer, in summary of an earlier contribution for
a Congressional Committee 1 is listing such a set of proposed goals
that may well be considered as possible amendments to the Constitu
tion as an “Urban Bill of Rights.”
Every person in the United States is to have the right to :
1. Opportunity, freedom and security to enable him to achieve
optimal development;
2 . A physical, social and political setting for effective social
ization, including formal education, to enable him to acquire the
basic skills, the saleable skills and the civic skills to assume the
obligations and responsibilities as well as the rights of citizenship;
3. Opportunity for maximum length of life in good health;
4. An environment controlled in the interest of society, physical
and social, free from pollution and adverse population densities
and including adequate housing;
5. Opportunity for employment commensurate with his educa
tion and skill assuring him an adequate and uninterrupted income
flow, preferably for services performed;
6. Knowledge and means of limiting family size in a context
consistent with family, community, national and world welfare;
7. Equality and impartiality in the administration of justice in a
manner to protect the interests of society even while safeguarding
the interests of the person;
8. A system of governance, federal, state and local, consistent
with the realities of the metropolitan order and based on demo
cratic principles including representative government and major
ity rule;
9. Full access to the fruits of economic growth and the benefits
of science, technology and the arts ;
10 . Opportunity to live in a peaceful world in which all con
flicts of interest are resolved by adjudicative means, not physical
force including conflicts on the international as well as the domes
tic front. This means among other things the renouncement of war
as an instrument of national policy— even at the expense of sub
ordinating national sovereignty to international organizations
and forms of government.
Should the American people give consideration to such a set of goals
or develop a different set ? I f not these then to what goals should na
tional growth policy be directed ?
1 P h ilip M. H auser, “T w e n tie th C e n tu ry N a tiona l Goals in the D evelopm ent of H um a n
Resources,” U.S. Congress J o in t Econom ic Com mittee, Federal Programs for the Develop
ment of Human Resources. J o in t Econom ic Committee, V o l. 1, W ashington, D . C .: G o ve rn
m ent P rin tin g Office, 1968, pp. 3&-51.
REPORT ON NATIONAL GROWTH 1972: AN ASSESSMENT
(By Dr. Frank E. Horton, Dean for Advanced Studies,
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa)
Title V I I of the 1970 Housing and Urban Development Act required
the President to “utilize the capacity of his office” and other agencies
within the executive branch of the federal government to prepare a
biennial Report on Urban Growth. The stipulated purpose of this re
port was to “assist in the development of a national urban growth
policy.” The Report on National Growth does not claim to “enunciate”
such a policy, and as a consequence, fails to adequately “assist in the
development of a national urban growth policy.”
Prior to an assessment of the body of the Report, it is desirable to
focus on the meaning of “the twin objectives of balanced and orderly
growth,” since they appear to provide the driving force for the content
of the monograph. Balanced growth is defined as “growth which is
distributed among both urban and rural areas.” The important term
which is left only partially defined is growth. The President’s Report
refers to the distribution of growth without explicit definition of
whether or not the concern is with economic growth, population
growth, rapid conversion of land from less extensive to more intensive
uses or some combination of these. Given the road to formulate compre
hensive federal policies, it is exceedingly important to articulate the
basic indices of growth for it is this concept upon which a national
urban growth policy should focus and its potential impact be
evaluated.
Balanced growth refers not only to growth but also to the geographic
distribution of that growth between rural and urban areas and in rela
tion to the availabiliy and appropriate use of resources. There is little
question that rural areas require varying degrees of attention, but it
may be exceedingly unwise and inefficient to attempt to revitalize every
declining rural area in the country. The United States is an exceed
ingly urban nation with a resounding majority of its population resid
ing in cities and towns. As such urban and urbanizing areas should
receive urgent attention from the executive branch of the federal
government. The Congressional mandate recognized this fact as
evidenced by its request for a “national urban growth poplicy.”
Orderly growth, the second of the twin objectives, is given no defini
tion but it does include “ overcoming: the problems associated with past
growth and preventing their repetition in the future.” This term may
imply that chaotic growth has been the root cause of many of the
urban problems which exist today. Since the executive branch is re
sponsible for the coordinated action of federal agencies it would ap
pear important that an analysis of the impact of various agency actions
on urban growth be atempted. That is, to what extent does the federal
establishment contribute to “caotic growth” and alternatively what
(743)
744
federal policies can provide for orderly growth. There can be little
question that federal programs have affected the rate and location of
economic and population growth in the U.S.
The term orderly growth implies a set (or sets) of priorities which
order growth in a temporal and spatial sequence. That is, when and
where growth is to take place. However, the Re/port tells us that bal
anced growth deals only with where it should take place and only in
the vaguest geographic context. This question must be addressed ex
plicitly before it will be possible to formalize a policy of orderly urban
growth. The need for research to help identify goals and policies and
methods for implementing them is clearly necessary. It is interesting
to note that nowhere in the Report is there a call for needed basic and
applied research into numerous urban problems. The remainder of
this statement will discuss each of the chapters in the monograph.
CHAPTER 1---- POPULATION GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION
The stated purpose of this chapter is to “understand the forces that
are shaping the communities in which we live and work." Unfortunate
ly, the chapter is descriptive in nature and while it is a reasonably ac
curate description of population distribution and population shifts
from 1790 to 1970, no attempt has been made to define the relationship
between the described population shifts and past and existing federal
programs. That is, there is a lack of emphasis on the understanding
of population shifts. Clearly, such identification is necessary if the
executive branch is to focus on policy areas which affect population
distribution. Xo one would quarrel with the fact that federal policy
or the lack thereof has in fact been a causal factor in population dis
tribution and redistribution throughout the history of the United
States. A research program, focusing on the impact of these policies
on population distribution in the past few decades most likely would
uncover important policy tools which could be utilized to implement
national population and urban policies.
CHAPTER 2---- THE CHALLENGE OF BALANCE AND ORDERLY GROWTH
O f prime interest in this chapter is the call for the “ formulation of
a single comprehensive national growth policy.*’ However, the Report indicates that the policy should be that “government should ad
dress itself to alleviating these problems, and, at the same time, adopt
ing policies toward growth that will prevent their recurrence in the
future." While this is a laudable aim, it is sufficiently nebulous to
evade clear-cut policy definition. This chapter should have provided
a framework for the total report. It should have included a clearcut specification of current critical problems and future areas of con
cern, the articulation of explicit national goals with respect to them,
and a discussion related to policies and necessary implementation to
achieve the goals cited. The superficial treatment of problems and the
avoidance of any meaningful definition of national goals provides an
insufficient basis from which to proceed.
745
CHAPTER 3---- RECENT STATE AND LOCAL ACTIONS TO IN FLUENCE GROWTH
In Chapter 3, the Report claims that “the nature of growth in
America in the years ahead will depend primarily upon the scope and
nature of actions taken by state and local governments and upon
the countless decisions made by the tens of thousands of individuals
in business enterprises.” So long as the federal government does not
provide for the establishment of guidelines related to land utilization
and the incentive to adhere to them, there can be no coherent national
urban growth policy because local option in the control of land use
prevents it. Land must be treated as a national resource and almost
total freedom by private enterprise to use those resources only com
pounds the problem by preventing adherence to local growth policies
as well.
Scott Greer has noted that “the free movement of the factors of
production means that the economy, most basic in structuring the city,
is beyond local control; that in-out migration, most basic in creating
the cities human structure, is beyond local control; and finally, a cap
ital for new development and maintenance is also beyond local con
trol.” In order to avoid this impasse, the federal government must take
the initiative to outline acceptable and viable courses of action for
state and local governments. While the Report views state policies as
the “basic building blocks of national policy,” it should be noted that
a rational national growth policy can only be achieved if the federal
government molds and places these blocks into an appropriate
structure.
Much of this chapter is devoted to detailed descriptions of a variety
of state level programs. While such a review is informative, such state
actions should have been reviewed critically so as to provide an as
sessment of the utility of these actions, and ways in which the fed
eral establishment could provide positive inputs to programs which
warrant them.
CHAPTER 4---- ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIONS TO DEAL W IT H TH E CHALLENGES
OF GROWTH
This chapter briefly reviews the past programs of the federal gov
ernment since the 1980's. The report underscores the initial action of
the current administration in its creation of an urban affairs council.
It is unfortunate that this body has been in existence since January,
1969 with only minimal output to suggest that it has been effectively
carrying out its duties.
The heavy reliance on state and local governments to develop and
implement local growth policies leads to many unanswered questions.
Reliance on state and local governments to satisfy national growth
goals requires a certain degree of caution since existing federal policies,
existing local policies and/or the lack of such policies have in fact gen
erated many of the problems facing metropolitan areas. To expect that
local government can both define solutions and implement appropriate
change, even with revenue sharing, is questionable at best.
746
One of the areas of particular concern is urban transportation and
its role in implementing national urban growth policy. Transportation
improvements stimulate urban and suburban development leading to
urban sprawl, increase the value of land capriciously, and permit a
greater locational choice for human activities. However, it is clear
that transportation improvements may be either a blessing or a
scourge. Preoccupation with auto oriented transportation facilities can
certainly have deleterious affects on the environment and in the utiliza
tion of land resources. Successful mass transportation programs tend
to alleviate congestion, reduce environmental pollution, and given
appropriate planning related to the development of mass transporta
tion links could very well improve problems related to the horizontal
development of urban areas and to the more efficient utilization of land
resources. While the Report recognizes the need for urban mass trans
portation by underscoring the fact that over $2 billion have been allo
cated for mass transit, it is interesting to note that the cost of the Bay
Area Rapid Transit System (B A R TS) in the San Francisco region
alone will cost upwards of $1.5 billion.
It is true that the B ARTS program involves new technological
development and as such may have incurred costs over and above the
implementation of standard equipment. However, the need for the
application of new technology in mass transportation in order that it
may successfully compete with the auto requires the application of new
technology. Further, the availability of mass transit in and of itself
may not be sufficient. Legislative correlaries may be required to
reduce auto usage in certain metropolitan areas.
The role of housing in urban growth and development is not dis
cussed by the Report notes that “housing production and assistance
. . . (have been greatly expanded over the past three years to the
highest levels in our history” and that almost 25% of the 2.1 million
housing starts in 1971 are for low and moderate income families. How
ever, according to past projections, 25% of the 2.1 million units does
not begin to satisfy the need for housing in these income levels.
The lack of adequate housing for low and moderate income families
is a well recognized problem in which we are making some progress.
As progress continues, the emerging controversial issue focuses on
locational suitability. Obviously, racial discrimination tends to mani
fest itself in locational concentration and local reaction to the con
struction of low income housing has been negative at the least. While
the Report recognizes the federal governments commitment to ade
quate housing regardless of race, it fails to recognize the very real
problems associated wTith an importance of locational freedom and
opportunity in housing. The federal government and specifically the
executive branch must come to grips with the fact that the “housing
problem” is changing from a lack of housing to the adequacy of the
location of these housing units in relation to employment opportunities.
747
CHAPTER 5— ADMINISTRATION RECOMMENDATIONS TO TH E CONGRESS
The Report recognizes the problems associated with a variety of
categorical programs and their implementation in specific communi
ties. The establishment of a Department of Community Development
may or may not be an appropriate tool for the advancement and im
plementation of national urban policy and goals. The current organi
zational structure, although awkward and diffuse, suffers primarily
from the lack of carefully developed and clearly stated policy. Given
a lack of direction, bureaucratic efforts are often piece meal and in
some instances even conflict and may well have provided the basis for
the emerging urban problems of the 70’s. Restructuring of organiza
tions often serves useful purposes, but without clear-cut direction,
restructuring may only be a useless exercise.
A great deal is made of the concept of revenue sharing and its im
plementation. While all the facts, and figures are not available, one
thing is certain, the amount of funds available to metropolitan areas
will not be sufficient to adequately address major problem areas. Given
the pressing needs of states and communities, it is more likely that
such funds will be siphoned off into multiple problem areas to provide
short-run, stop-gap measures rather than being utilized to effectively
deal with the resolution of problems having long-run importance in
shaping metropolitan growth and development. Certainly monitoring
of the use of revenue sharing funds is appropriate in order to assess
the impact of such a program.
Proposed development of a national land use policy is appropriate
and necessary. However, a statement that such a policy should exist
smacks of rhetoric in the absence of explicit articulation. What are our
goals with respect to land utilization? What are we trying to accom
plish ? Is it basically a search for a conservative utilization of a limited
resource ? It would appear that the thrust of national land use policy
will be carried by the state. To be sure, states have varying objectives
which may or may not parallel the needs of the national society. Cer
tainly the implementation of policy will require the development of
new legislation to insure such policies are implemented. The federal
government must play a major role in the development of national
land use policy and work very closely with the state government in
order to insure the effective utilization of land resources. However,
the federal government must also define objectives of such a policy in
order to provide a coherent base for the development of state plans.
C O N C L U D IN G R E M A R K S
It should be clear from the previous comments, an over-riding con
cern of this revision is the lack of the development of national goals,
definition of policies to achieve such goals, and the apparent willing
ness to accept fairly trite solutions to numbing social, institutional,
748
and technological problems. Particularly disconcerting is a lack of a
willingness to define research priorities to help in the formulation and
implementation of goals. Urban growth and development is an ex
tremely complex process. Changes within urban systems are continu
ous and massive. Without a clear understanding of the social and
economic processes which operate within cities, lofty statements as
to the solution of existing problems may bear little resemblance to
the fundamental needs of an urban society. What is necessary is a
systematic analysis of conditions and the causal factors associated
with them. In truth, no policy stated at one point in time will ever
be able to address the existing concerns of urban inhabitants as well
as long range planning requirements. On the other hand, generaliza
tions regarding national planning issues will never supply the basic
elements for constructive change. Basic and applied research is so
obviously necessary in population and urban dynamics that to articu
late intermediate goals without a subset of those goals focusing on the
definition of specific research areas is to assume an understanding of a
complex and interrelated set of processess that currently is not at hand.
THE NEED FOR A NATIONAL GROWTH POLICY
(By Yernon E. Jordan, Jr., Executive Director, National Urban
League)
Mr. Chairman and members of this Subcommittee, my name is Ver
non E. Jordan, Jr., and I am the Executive Director of the National
Urban League. I am accompanied this morning by my colleague,
Glenn A . Claytor, Director of Housing for the National Urban
League.
The National Urban League is a professional, non-profit, non-parti
san community service organization governed by an interracial Board
of Trustees and founded in 1910 to secure equal opportunity for black
Americans and other minorities.
The League seeks solutions to problems of income, employment,
education, housing, health and civil rights for the masses of black and
brown Americans who want a better way of life. It recognizes that
any meaningful and significant changes in these problem areas rest
with changing the network of systems which produce black-white
disparities.
It works through local affiliates in 100 cities located in 37 States
and the District of Columbia, five regional offices, and a Washingtonbased Department of Government Affairs. These units are staffed by
some 2,000 persons, trained in the social sciences and related disci
plines, who conduct the day-to-day activities of the organization
throughout the country.
Strengthened by the efforts of more than 25,000 volunteers who bring
some expert knowledge and experience to the resolution of minority
problems, the National Urban League is unique as the only national
educational and community service agency which devotes its entire
resources to the use of social work and research techniques for bettering
the lives of the disadvantaged and for improving race relations.
The National Urban League and its affiliates represent the broadest
involvement in housing and urban development of any agency of its
type in the United States. One hundred and eighty-four full-time Pro
fessionals, in eighty-three local Urban Leagues, are engaged in one or
more of the activities of fair-housing, research, home ownership and
tenant counseling, and moderate-income housing production, or some
other housing and urban development effort.
O f the fifty-five Urban Leagues who have undertaken to provide
counseling services to home owners and tenants, twenty-three are un
der contract to H U D , through its Section 237 Counseling Program.
The National Office of the Urban League was recently named as sub
contractor for the Housing Allowance Experiment being conducted by
HUD. As you know, this demonstration is the test for direct housing
allowances. W e want to help set a course for allowances at the outset
so that this subsidy mechanism can receive a fair test. W e are not
strangers to H U D ’s interest-rate subsidy programs either.
(749)
750
Thirty-one Urban League affiliates have over ten thousand units o f
subsidized housing in various stages of development. In most cases,
we will provide management for the multiple-family buildings, or
provide assistance to tenants of other community groups who wish to
manage these units.
W e have also accomplished some of the basic housing research of
recent times. Most notable is our published study entitled “The Na
tional Survey of Housing Abandonment”. This study was undertaken
jointly by the National Urban League and the Center for Community
Change in 1971.
I f you have been following the hearings of Senator Hart’s Commit
tee on Anti-Trust and Monopoly Legislation, looking into the prac
tices of mortgage-lending and other related institutions in Boston and
New York, you will find vivid illustration of the process we describe
in our survey of abandonment. The processes described in that survey
bear heavily upon our present urban growth process. The process of
abandonment in the central city is both a cause and effect of our cur
rent irrational urban growth. Much of the older and still adequate
housing stock is doomed to abandonment or to urban renewal unless
we begin now to intervene in the process.
Urban renewal and abandonment create intense tenant-demand pres
sures on the next-to-oldest ring of housing. Demand pressures in the
next-to-oldest ring chase many of the residents of these areas out to
new areas, leaving the next-to-oldest to former residents of the re
newal and abandonment areas.
Builders build and financiers finance to accommodate the move out
ward to new developments. This results in withdrawal of financing
from the next-to-oldest ring, and places it in the orbit of renewal and
abandonment; and the process goes on and on.
Renewal activity cannot keep up with the expansion of territory left
to it. Abandonment occurs in ever-wider core areas of the central city.
The people who are left behind in this process tend to be those with
the least income, and an inordinate concentration of every known
social pathology occurs.
By the year 2000, less than thirty years from now, America will be a
nation of some 300 million persons. I f our present response to the na
tion's housing and urban growth problems continues, we can expect a
serious decline in the quality of life for all Americans.
Americans have become an urban people, and have exhibited an in
creasing preference to live within metropolitan areas. Since 1900, our
population has increased by over 100 % , while at the same time the
number of persons living in metropolitan areas increased by over
350%. In contrast to earlier times, most of our recent metropolitan
growth ha?? occurred not in the central cities but in the suburban rings.
Between 1960-1970, population in central cities, on the whole, grew
by about 1.3%. The population in suburban rings, however, increased
bv over 26%. Indeed, bv 1970, central cities had replaced non-metro
politan areas as the slowest growing portions of the country. The fact
that 70% of the country’s population lives on about 1 % of our total
land area testifies to the fact that our patterns of growth have been
chaotic and irrational. The primary tools used to control the use of
land were zoning and subdivision regulations. These tools, however
adequate when first initiated, have long since outlived their useful
751
ness and now stand as one of the primary barriers to orderly urban
growth and the provision of decent housing for all Americans.
In the period 1950-1959, we were producing approximately 1.5 mil
lion new non-farm housing units per year. During the period 19601969, however, production slipped to approximately 1.4 million units
per year. Not only has our production of housing been deficient, but
what we have produced has drastically increased in cost. Indeed, it is
now calculated that over 60% of all American families are unable to
afford the price of a new home; and if housing costs continue to in
crease faster than real incomes, we can expect an escalation in this
figure.
Except for some 500,000 units of federally subsidized housing,
almost no low to moderate income housing is being produced. This, m
spite of the avowed national goals of 26 million units needed for total
production for the decade 1968-78, and a goal of 6 million units of
low to moderate income units for the same period. Despite the fact
that these goals art? conservative, production has never reached these
minimum levels. In the last twelve months we have produced only 1.5
million total, and only five hundred thousand low to moderate income
units— a figure substantially below the annualized goal for the dec
ade 1968-1978, with no prospect for improvement in sight. Even the
presently proposed legislation does not offer substantial relief from
this dreary pattern of neglect of our housing and urban growth needs.
The picture is actually worse than cited above. When trying to
quantify our stock of sound housing, we have to account for units
which we lose, units which become unsound or go off the market for
other reasons. In the case of low and moderate income housing, the
area of greatest need, we are losing ground, not gaining.
There is enough evidence to conclude that we suffer a net loss of low
to moderate income units of housing in America yearly. Our studies
indicate that demolition and abandonment of housing in our large
cities probably exceeds the national yearly production of low and
moderate income units. In a seven-city study of abandonment, we
accounted for a yearly loss of over 100,000 units. Most, if not all, of
the units were in the low and moderate income range. Add to these
an annual destruction in these cities alone of over 26,000 units, due
to code enforcement, slum clearance, and highway construction, and
it is clear that we are losing ground in this important area.
O f all the elements which influence cost of construction, location,
and orderly urban growth, the one element which stands out as the key
is land. It is for that reason that my recommendations focus on land.
W e need an entirely new legislative approach.
Such an approach must be geared to the reality that orderly urban
growth and sufficient amounts of decent housing cannot occur under
our present system. W e need a national land-use and urban growth
policy, with a National Urban Growth Agency empowered to plan and
implement such a policy. W e must abandon our indirect, complex, and
largely ineffective approach, in favor of an approach which places the
problem in its true national perspective. W e must recognize the futil
ity of dealing with myriad small units of government which lack the
resources, the willingness, or even the comprehension of the problem
of urban growth.
752
TIiere are thousands of overlapping, competitive, narrowly provin
cial, and even hostile jurisdictions who are unwilling to deal with
such problems as decent housing for the poor and low-income families.
These smaller jurisdictions are the least logical place for decisions of
such national import. W e need to begin to view land as a national
resource. I am not suggesting that all land be removed from the pri
vate market. On the contrary, I am suggesting that a small percent
of total developable land be set aside for the planned use of land for
urban growth, and that such land be acquired in advance of need.
History tells us that the use of land as an instrument of national
policy is not new. The federal government is already one of the largest
land-holders in the nation. Land has been set aside for defense, parks
and other federal needs. Land has been regulated, sold, and even given
away, by the federal government for homesteaders and railroads for
example. The power to acquire land through eminent domain is a
concept of long standing. What we need to do is to further adjust the
competing needs of the nation for developable land. Under present
speculative policies, the price of land increases on an average of 15%
a year; a cost ultimately borne by the consumers of housing. In lame
part, that speculative cost is occasioned b}^ value added by public
improvements.
A National Urban Growth Agency as I have described should have
the power to acquire land in advance of need. Such a land-banking
phenomena could have the greatest impact in less developed areas
standing in the line of potential urban growth. By rationally plan
ning the improvement and development which must inevitably occur,
such an agency could maximize the opportunities to create sound and
balanced communities, and adjust the competing needs for residential,
commercial, and industrial uses.
There is no shortage of models. We need only to look to the Euro
pean experience of planned communities. A National Urban Growth
Agency at the federal level should have broad power to act as a houser
of last resort. It should have, as its mandate, both a planning func
tion and an implementing function to act where State or other gov
ernmental units are unwilling or unable to respond to such a plan. It
should have the power to sell bonds and to build directly, using con
ventional public funds. It should have the power of eminent domain
and the power to override local zoning. It should have adequate fund
ing for operations and should probably be regionalized. It should seek
to cooperate with existing units of government but be mandated to
act where such units fail to perform.
We must begin now, as we are already behind— nothing short of this
type of approach will suffice. We have had enough banclaids on what
amounts to a cancer. We lack neither the technology, financial re
sources, nor the business acumen to house all Americans adequately
and to provide for future generations. What we need now is the politi
cal courage to create the tools necessary to perform the task in front
of us.
“REPORT ON NATIONAL GROWTH 1972” : A COMMENT
(By Robert E. Merriam, Chairman, Advisory Commission on
Intergovernmental Relations)
The ACIR , as you know, vigorously supported Part A of Title V I I
of this legislation. Its main provisions after all closely parallel those
incorporated in Title I of H.R. 13217 and S. 3228 (91st Congress,
sponsored by Representatives Dwyer and Fountain, and Senator
Muskie, respectively)— measures that the Commission staff helped to
draft pursuant to basic recommendations adopted in our 1968 report
on Urban and Rural America: Policies for Future Growth. In that
landmark report, the following recommendations were adopted:
T o h e lp a s s u re th e f u l l a n d w is e a p p lic a tio n o f a ll g o v e r n m e n t a l re s o u rc e s
c o n s o n a n t w i t h th e e c o n o m ic a n d s o c ia l h e a lth o f b o th r u r a l a n d u r b a n a re a s a n d
o f th e N a t io n as a w h o le , th e C o m m is s io n re c o m m e n d s th e d e v e lo p m e n t o f a
n a t io n a l p o lic y in c o r p o r a t in g so c ia l, e c o n o m ic , a n d o th e r c o n s id e ra tio n s to g u id e
sp e cific d e c is io n s a t th e n a t io n a l le v e l w h ic h a ffe c t th e p a tte rn s o f u r b a n g r o w t h .
T h e C o m m is s io n re c o m m e n d s t h a t th e P r e s id e n t a n d th e C o n g re s s a s s ig n e x
e c u tiv e r e s p o n s ib ilit y f o r th is ta s k to a n a p p r o p r ia t e e x e c u t iv e a g e n c y. T h e C o m
m is s io n a ls o re c o m m e n d s t h a t th e C o n g re s s p r o v id e w i t h i n it s s t a n d in g c o m m itte e
s t r u c t u r e a m e a n s to a s s u re c o n t in u in g s y s te m a tic r e v ie w a n d s t u d y o f th e p r o g
re ss t o w a r d su c h a n a tio n a l p o lic y .
T h e C o m m is s io n f u r t h e r re c o m m e n d s t h a t th e e x e c u t iv e a n d le g is la t iv e
b ra n c h e s , in th e f o r m u la t io n o f th e n a tio n a l p o lic y , c o n s u lt w i t h a n d ta k e in t o
a c c o u n t th e v ie w s o f S ta te a n d lo c a l g o v e rn m e n ts . . . .
The adoption of these policy positions prompted the drafting of the
proposed “Balanced Urbanization Policy and Planning Act of 1969”
(H.R. 13217 and S. 3228) and the endorsement we subsequently ac
corded to Title I of H.R. 16647 and S. 3640 (91st Congress, Repre
sentative Ashley and others, and Senator Sparkman, respectively).
In short, we supported Title V II of the Housing and Urban Devel
opment Act of 1970 and continue to believe that it constitutes a sig
nificant first step in launching a process at the national level that will
begin to identify and grapple with the dynamics of urban growth and
to hammer out the components of a conscious and concerted national
policy.
THE CON TIN UING IMBALANCES
Nothing has transpired since 1968 to suggest that the reasons prompt
ing the Commission's sanctioning of a national policy are any less
valid now than they were then. I f anything, the rationale for such a
policy or policies would appear to be stronger now than it was four
years ago. Witness the various findings highlighted in the 1970 Census
and in other surveys and studies released in 1971 and early 1972, in
cluding the Report on National Growth and the Report of the Com
mission on Population Growth and the American Future. These reveal
that with regard to recent and future trends of population growth and
distribution and of economic development . . . .
(753)
Location of recent population growth
Metropolitan areas (SM SA’s) as a group continue to account for the
bulk of the Nation’s growth, experiencing an overall 16.6% increase
in population during the sixties and numbering 243 in 1970 and 263
by 1972.
Within these areas, 80% of the total population increase during the
last decade occurred in the suburbs— especially those on the urban
fringe and less than 20% in the central cities: and when growth by
annexation is excluded the central city rate slips to four percent of the
total hike in metropolitan population.
Total metropolitan population growth was 26 million with about
one-third coming from the territorial expansion of existing urban
complexes and from the emergence of other communities into urban
status and two-thirds the result of population growth within urban
areas having constant boundaries.
The giant urban areas (one million plus) experienced the greatest
increase (39%) between 1960 and 1970 and those in the 250,000 to one
million bracket only slightly less growth (34% ).
Regionally, metropolitan areas in the South and West enjoyed
greater than national average SM SA growth for practically all size
categories, while those in the North Central and especially the North
eastern regions had less than average hikes for all SM SA sizes.
Migration and natural growth (1960-1970)
Tlie sixties witnessed dramatic changes in migration patterns with
the Middle Atlantic States picking up only 9,000 persons as a net
gain from migration, the East North Central States actually losing
150,000, New England gaining by 300,000, the exodus from the East
South Central region tapering off somewhat, and the South Atlantic
States more than doubling their immigration total for the fifties
(reaching 1.3 million). Not so unusual was the continued migration to
the Pacific Coast and Southwestern States (though this was slowing
down at the end of the decade for California) and the continuing out
migration from the West North Central group.
Within metropolitan areas (using 1960 boundaries), 74% of the
growth was natural increase and 26% was from net migration gains.
In terms of race, there was a net- movement of whites out of the
North, to the West and South, while blacks moved from the South
(1.4 million and chiefly from the non-metropolitan areas) to the West
and North; the net effect was an exchange of population between
South and North and the West undergoing an in-migration of both
whites and blacks.
Within metropolitan areas, the black population of central cities
grew by 3.2 million during the sixties, while the white exodus from
these same cities accounted for a 600,000 drop from the 1960 figure for
this population group; in the suburbs, on the other hand, the white
population experienced a 15.5 million jump, while the black populace
of these jurisdictions grew by only 800,000 with two out of every three
of these new black suburbanites located in one of the 12 largest
SM SA ’s.
Within rural America, the population fell to 26% of the total by
1970, down from 30% in 1960, and the number on farms dropped from
15 to less than 10 million or 18% of our total rural citizenry and five
percent of the total population.
755
Disparities
Comparisons between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas con
tinue to show rural America far behind in population growth, edu
cational and health facilities, housing and income levels. In 1970,
13.8% of non-metropolitan families were below the official poverty
level compared with 7.9% of the metropolitan families; the median
income of the former was $2,000 less than that of the latter; the pro
portion of high school and college graduates in the rural population
was smaller; fewer medical and dental personnel per one thousand of
population were found in such areas; and the incidence of substandard
housing was three times higher than the metropolitan rate.
Socio-economic comparisons (using 1970 Census data) among juris
dictions within the 72 largest metropolitan areas reveal that 41 of the
72 central city areas experienced an actual decline in their white popu
lation and all but three of these cities saw a proportionate hike in their
non-white population; that 67 of the 72 outside central city areas were
more than 90% white; that on the average, 11% of the central city
population was 65 or over, compared to a suburban figure of 8% ; that
the average central city household income wras $10,211, contrasted with
the suburbs’ $11,728; that these central cities had 42% more low in
come households and 20% fewer high income households than their
respective suburbs; that the median value of city owner-occupied
housing was $16,700, while the suburban median value was $19,800;
and that the crime rates in all but one of the 72 core cities exceeded and
generally were double those of their surrounding jurisdictions.
Fiscal comparisons among metropolitan jurisdictions in these 72
SM SA’s show that per capita central city expenditures on the average
exceeded those of suburban jurisdictions by more than $150 in 1970,
with the gap greater in the Northeast and Midwest and lesser in the
South and West; that central city noneducational outlays generally
were double those of their suburbs; that central city per capita educa
tional expenditures generally were 85% of the suburban level; that
suburbs on the average concentrated 50-60% of their budgets on
schools compared to the cities’ 33-38% ; that per capita taxes in 1970
were 30% higher in central cities, w7ith the differential being greatest
in Midwestern and Southern SM SA’s ; that central cities did receive,
on the average 16% more per capita intergovernmental aid than their
suburbs in 1970; that in terms of State aid and State administered
Federal aid, however, in 37 of the 72 SM SA’s the suburbs received pro
portionately more, while direct Federal aid was higher in all but two
of the central cities; that with educational aid, 61 of the central cities
received less on a per capita basis than their suburbs; and that aid
generally accounts for 35-40% of suburban budgets, compared to
27-35% for the central cities.
Local and areawide governmental trends
The dispersion of power and responsibility in all but a handful of
our metropolitan areas (SMSAs) is greater today than it was a decade
ago, thanks to the growth in the number of special districts (more than
8,000 in SM SA ’s compared with some 5,400 in 1962) and to disparate
Federal-State substate regional efforts in the law enforcement, health
planning, manpower, poverty and air pollution areas— and despite
the growing need for accountable areawide vehicles that can plan.
program and administer functions requiring’ multi jurisdictional
handling.
In a majority of the 114 single-county metropolitan areas, the county
has not assumed, or been empowered to assume, the role of an active
areawide government performing various municipal-type services 011
a regional basis.
Overall, half of our counties lost population during the sixties, all
of it in rural areas, but few efforts have been made to strengthen or
consolidate these eroding local governments. The emergence of multi
county planning and development districts in certain States, however,
has constituted a kind of Federal and State response to rural govern
mental problems.
State and Federal responses
A majority of the States have not used their legal, program, admin
istrative and fiscal powers to alleviate city agonies, to reduce citysuburban disparities, to simplify the meandering jurisdictional map
of most metropolitan areas, to strengthen rural counties or to curb
anarchic land-use practices.
State tax collections increased by more than 1.65 percent between
1959 and 1969; 450 new taxes or higher rates were enacted; and State
aid to localities nearly tripled during the sixties. But only half of
the States are making high or even moderate use of a personal income
tax; central cities generally have received a disproportionately smaller
share of State aid than have suburbs and rural areas; and a majority
of States still do not involve themselves fiscally or administratively in
urban development programs.
One major Federal response to the urban crisis during the past dec
ade was a near explosion in the grant-in-aid system with the monies
increasing fourfold, the number by at least 840 new programs and the
urban sector funds by 258 percent. Yet other trends accompanying this
extraordinary development— the varying administrative requirements
and formulas in the grants, their duplication, numerous eligible re
cipients, their heavy reliance on the project approach and their ex
pansion of middle management discretion and influence— resulted in
problems of program coordination and top management control at
nearly all levels.
The Federal Government lias sought to strengthen the multijurisdictional focus of its grant-aided efforts with procedures requiring re
view and comment by State and areawide officials on certain applica
tions. These procedures, contained in Office of Management and
Budget Circular A-95, stem from Section 204 of the Metropolitan
Development Act of 1966 (P.L. 89-754) and the Intergovernmental
Cooperation Act of 1968 (P.L. 90-577) and cover over 100 Federal
grants. Other Federal areawide initiatives include the 701 planning
assistance program, economic development districts and at least 11
areawide planning requirements. Nevertheless, the Department of
Agriculture, Bureau of Public Eoads, Federal Housing Administra
tion, Defense Department, and National Aeronautics and Space Ad
ministration have not always considered the economic, migrational,
and locational implications of their operations; and the substate re
gional efforts of the Partnership for Health, Safe Streets, manpower,
air pollution and certain other programs have actually added to the
pattern of proliferation at the metropolitan and multicounty levels.
757
Future projections
Approximately 71% of our population was metropolitan in 1970;
by the year 2000, the proportion is slated to be 85%.
I f our population grows at the rate of two children per family, pro
jections based on recent trends suggest a metropolitan populat ion of 225
million by the end of the century or the addition of 81 million to the
1970 metropolitan population of 144 million.
More than four out of every ten Americans in 1970 lived in metro
politan areas of a million or more; by 2000, and assuming a continua
tion of present trends, more than six of every ten will be residing in 44
to 50 of these giant urban complexes.
Research by the Commission on Population Growth suggests that
even if all of the urban areas in the 10,000-350,000 bracket, which en
joyed higher than average growth rates during the sixties, were to
grow by 30% over the next three decades, they would only absorb
approximately 10 million of the growth that otherwise is expected to
occur in the largest SM SA’s (using the two child projection). More
over, most of these areas are now or would be by the year 2000 near or
within urban regions.
T H E N E E D FO R A C O H E R E N T P O L IC Y
These various findings suggest basic cleavages— conflicts, if you
will— in our governmental and social systems. The causes of these
cleavages can be found in metropolitan areas that are fragmented in
all but a handful of instances; in growing fiscal, social and racial dis
parities among the local jurisdictions in these areas; in widening popu
lation, economic and opportunity gaps between urban and rural Amer
ica; in growing but uneven State involvement in local and substate re
gional affairs despite an increasing need for more direct State leader
ship and fiscal commitment to a range of local and areawide jurisdic
tional and servicing goals; in a multiplication of Federal assistance
programs with a parallel proliferation of management difficulties: in
the continuing ambivalence of the Federal Government on the question
of what its real role is in our Nation's metropolitan areas; and in the
prospect of a future population growth that is mostly slated for exist
ing metropolitan areas.
These are challenges that this generation of policy-makers can not
ignore and they help explain why more and more people are calling
for an articulate national urban growth policy with the Federal, State
and local governments, along with the private sector, joining in a con
certed effort to mitigate certain adverse effects of current and projected
urbanization trends. Such was the basic position taken by the Advisory
Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in its 1968 report on
Urban and Rural America: Policies for Future Growth.
T H E B A S IC A C IR P O S I T I O N
In deliberating on that report, the Commission weighed the pros
and cons of urging such a policy and concluded that “on balance a na
tional policy to deal with urban growth would be desirable.” It stressed
the diseconomies of scale involved in continued urban concentration,
the locational mismatch of jobs and people, the connection of urban
and rural poverty problems, and urban sprawl. It took special note
758
of the effect of these developments 011 the declining health and vitality
of many of our largest cities. The Commission recognized that urbani
zation, in effect, is the outgrowth of countless public and private sector
decisions. But it also recognized that certain Federal legislation— in
some cases, going back to the thirties— has exerted a significant in
fluence on the direction of urban and economic growth: suburban de
velopment has been subsidized, central city rebuilding has been directly
or indirectly supported, the farm economy has been under varying de
grees of governmental regulations and subsidy, and depressed areas
and regions have been given various forms of support. Not to be over
looked are the patterns of DOD and N A SA contract awards and instal
lations. Moreover, the critical role of State and local governments
was fully understood, given their direct responsibility for influencing
(or failing to influence) the location of industry and people through
control over land use and their effect on community environment,
which increasingly conditions site location decisions. For all these rea
sons, the Commission concluded that a national policy was necessary
and desirable in preserving and strengthening the American federal
system. More precisely, it called for “immediate establishment of a
national policy for guiding the location and character of future urban
ization involving Federal, State, and local governments in collabora
tion with the private sector of the national economy.” The basic goal
of such a policy would be “influencing the movement of population and
economic growth among different types of communities in various ways
so as to achieve generally a greater degree of population decentraliza
tion throughout the country and a greater degree of population dis
persion within metropolitan areas.”
T H E N E E D F O R A P R O C ES S
A t both the Federal and State levels, the Commission focused on
developing the organization and procedures for formulating and im
plementing growth policies. Hence, our focus on Title V I I of the
Housing and Urban Development Act of 1970 and on developing mech
anisms that will provide a framework within which relevant pol
icy issues can be decided and conflicting departmental decisions and
proposed actions resolved. A t the present, no real attempt is made to
mesh various Federal agency decisions having an impact on urban
growth, whether they relate to the location of Federal installation and
projects, the geographic location of recipients of Federal contracts,
the granting of tax and other incentives, or the approval of grant-inaid assistance for a wide variety of projects.
A t the State level, the Commission also stressed certain institutional
and procedural reforms, including the coordination by an appropriate
State a g e n c y of State, multi-countv, metropolitan and local planning,
and relating such planning to regional and national considerations;
conformity of programs and projects of State agencies to the State
urbanization plant; and formal review by an appropriate State agency
for conformance with the State plan of metropolitan area and multicounty plans and of those local comprehensive plans, implementing or
dinances. and projects having an impact outside the jurisdiction’s
borders. The Commission recommended that multi-county planning
agencies be assigned responsibility to review applications for Federal
759
or State physical development project grants in nonmetropolitan as
well as metropolitan areas, and that the State legislatures provide
within their standing committee structure a means to assure continu
ing, systematic review and study of the progress toward a State policy
dealing with urban growth.
The Commission also urged Congress and the President to reassess
the policies and structure of existing and proposed Federal-multistate
economic development commissions as they affect the geographic dis
tribution of economic and population growth and the Public Works
Committees of the Congress are grappling with this issue at the present
time in their reassessment of the Title V commissions established pur
suant to the Public Works and Economic Development Act of 1965.
In these various ways, the Commission recognized that the develop
ment of a national policy on urban growth, involving the various levels,,
is as much a matter of beefing up and redirecting existing govern
mental institutions and mechanisms and of reorienting and coordinat
ing existing program efforts in light of certain urban growth goals,
as it is a question of launching new programs.
S O M E S P E C IF IC P R O G R A M C O M P O N E N T S
This is not to say that the Commission ignored the latter problem.
They did not. In the 1968 report, a number of options were cited in
Chapter V I for consideration by policy-makers in the economic, hu
man resources, physical development and land use areas. A partial
checklist of these proposals is included as an appendix to this state
ment. These still merit attention, since most of them have yet to be en
acted. A ll of the State-oriented proposals, it might be noted, are set
forth in model draft bills contained in our 1970 Cumulative A C IR
State Legislative Program.
R E C E N T D E VELO P M EN TS
But what has happened since the issuance of this ACIR. report in
1968?
During the period 1968-1970, various developments occurred that
suggest that this A C IR report did have an impact and that various
decision-makers and public bodies believe that balanced growth is or
should be at the top of the Nation’s domestic priority agenda. Witness
the following:
The National Committee on Urban Growth Policy, organized in the
fall of 1968 and jointly sponsored by the National Association of
Counties, the National League of Cities, the United States Conference
of Mayors and Urban America, Inc., concluded that impending urban
growth represented a threat to cities, suburbs, and rural communities
alike. The Committee defined the threat as successive urban crises
which destroy the very fabric of society. In its report, it called for a
national urban growth, policy and a new mechanism in the executive
branch to serve as a focal point on matters dealing with urban growth
and recommended that the Executive Branch and the Congress formu
late a national policy designed to coordinate and guide a variety of
programs which would insure a more rational pattern of urban growth.
One of the first acts of the Nixon Administration was the signing
81-745— 72— pt. 2-------14
760
\yv the President on January 23,1969 of an Executive Order establish
ing a Council for Urban Affairs with functions which included, among
others, actions to “— insure that policies concerning urban affairs shall
extend to the relations of urban, suburban and rural areas, to pro
grams affecting them, and to the movement of population between
them.** The Urban Affairs Council was later included in the Domestic
Council established July 1,1970.
In May I960, Daniel P. Moynihan. then Assistant to the President
for Urban Affairs, pointed out in a definitive statement that the bur
geoning of domestic programs— from 45 to 435 in the eight years from
I960 to 1968— tended to fractionate, not solve, the urban problem and
that a coherent response in terms of a national urban policy was re
quired to meet the crisis. Moynihan called upon the Federal estab
lishment to become sensitive to its “hidden,” sometimes conflicting pol
icies implicit in the many urban programs and defined the fundamen
tals of a broad urban policy ranging from urgent efforts to overcome
the poverty and social isolation of minority groups in cities to correc
tive action against destructive migrational patterns.
Three organizations representing local general purpose units of
government— the National Association of Counties, the National
League of Cities, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors— adopted policy
resolutions in 1969 urging development of a national urbanization
policy. The thrust of these policy statements recognized that growth
and social disarrangement had caused severe national problems; they
called for a broad-gauged and concentrated attack by all levels of
government.
President Nixon in his State of the Union Message of January 22,
1970, noted the claim raised by some that a “ fundamental contradic
tion had arisen between economic growth and the quality of life, so
that to have one we must forsake the other” ; he rejected this argu
ment with a call for the development of a national growth policy.
“Our purpose,” he stated, “will he to find those means by which Fed
eral. State, and local governments can influence the coui-se of urban
settlement and growth so as to positively affect the quality of Ameri
can life.”
In Julv 1970, the Administration's National Goals Research Staff
submitted a report to the President entitled, “Toward Balanced
Growth: Quantity and Quality.** While it basically sought to define
various public issues, to analyze the debates over them, and to probe
alternative sets of consequences, the report also had a particular
theme— “that of seeking means by which the country can find preferred
wavs of growth and development.** The report concluded that an
explicit growth policy is desirable, but cautioned that what will emerge
will be a “ package of policies consistent with one another,” each geared
to meeting one or more national objectives, and each resulting from
decisions of governments and the people.
The National Governors* Conference in mid 1970 adopted a series of
policies dealing with national urban growth. These wide-ranging poli
cies covered 17 different areas dealing with growth related problems.
One labeled, “The National Population Growth and Distribution
Policy,** underscored the “rural-urban balance of needs and regional
potentials.”
761
In August 1070, the Council on Environmental Quality in its First
Annual Report recognized the basic relationships between national
growth, land use and the quality of the environment. The Council
urged action to begin shaping a national land use policy. The Adminis
tration sought to carry out this recommendation by introducing a Na
tional Land-Use Policy Act of 1971, now under consideration by the
92nd Congress.
The Agricultural Act of 1970 took the first steps toward establish
ing the principle of rural-urban balance in the provision of govern
ment services. Federal executive agencies are directed by the Act to
establish procedures for locating new facilities in areas of lower popu
lation density.
The 1970 Federal-Aid Highway Act recognized the need to demon
strate the effect of highway improvements on economic growth cen
ters. A provision of this Act may set a precedent for establishment of
new criteria which reflect growth effect in highway development.
Finally, in 1970 Title V II of the Housing and Urban Development
Act of that year expanded significantly HUD's initial “New Commu
nities** legislation and launched the process which produced the report
which is the subject of these hearings.
Despite these developments, considerable ambiguity still surrounds
the subject of urban growth and the approach to hammering out policy
components— not to mention the development of a real process for
hammering out these components. Nothing perhaps reveals these
trends as clearly as a chronicle of Federal and State efforts in this
area during the year 1971 :
Pursuant to the Agriculture Act of 1970 (P.L. 91-524), the Presi
dent on March 1 submitted the first report on Federal efforts to provide
rural development assistance. The report cited the ways that the
Administration's new package of domestic legislation would aid rural
America.
As required under this Act. the Secretaries of Agriculture and Hous
ing and Urban Development (H U D ) identified the assistance provided
non-metropolitan planning districts. Their report showed that 38
States had delineated substate planning and development districts,
$3.6 million in H U D comprehensive planning assistance grants had
been disbursed to 155 non-metropolitan districts during Fiscal Year
1971 and about three times this amount had been received under other
Foderal programs.
In his second manpower message to Congress, the President on
April 7 set forth a number of policy recommendations to surmount
rural manpower dilemmas including: relocation, income maintenance,
expanding rural job opportunities and improving the functioning of
the rural labor market.
Early in the year, a new Subcommittee on Rural Development was
established within the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
It saw active service during the remaining months as numerous rural
development bills were exposed to hearings.
The Farm Credit Act of 1971 (P.L. 92-181), passed by Congress
and signed by the President late in the year, provides for an updating
and moderate expansion of the cooperative farm credit system.
762
The Comprehensive Health Manpower Training Act of 1971 (P.L.
92-157) includes incentives directed toward improving the availability
of health personnel in rural and ghetto areas.
The Economic Opportunity Amendments of 1971 (S. 2007). as
vetoed by the President in early December, contained the controversial
child care program. In addition, they would have combined special
impact raid rural loan programs into an innovative community eco
nomic development program.
The President’s National Land-ITse Policy bill (S. 992) and Senator
Jackson’s proposed National Land and Water Eesources Act (S. 632)
were subjected to Senate hearings. Both would assist States in taking
the initiative in comprehensive planning, encourage or require State
land-use control to implement planning decisions and stipulate Federal
review of State planning endeavors as a condition to further planning
grants.
Draft regulations relating to the new Community Development
Corporation, set up by the 1970 Housing and Urban Development Act
(P.L. 91-609), were issued in July and six new community projects
had received Federal pledges of assistance by the end of the year.
As a step to improve the housing supply, the Department of Hous
ing and Urban Development launched a campaign to upgrade and
modernize building codes which, in many jurisdictions, prohibit
the use of new building materials and factory-built housing and thus
limit new approaches to meet housing needs. By the end of December,
20 States had enacted statewide codes for industrialized housing which
supersede local codes. H U D set an end-of-year deadline for codo im
provement in certain cities, some of which had been told that they
faced the loss of urban renewal grants for noncompliance.
A ll of the three major bills relating to existing central city re
newal and metropolitan development were probed in House and Senate
Banking and Currency Committee hearings, but no final action was
taken in either body.
Senate hearings were held on the proposed National Coastal and
Estuarine Zone Management measure in July, but Senate floor action
was not expected until 1972.
The Appalachia and Title V regional development commission pro
grams were renewed for four and twTo years, respectively. The measure
included a small, accelerated public works program.
The implication of unplanned and uncontrolled development gen
erated various efforts at the State level in 1971 to limit or control
growth.
The governor of Oregon called for zero growth in his State. Both
seriously and jokingly, he asked visitors not to take up residence in
Oregon. Hawaii’s commission on population was in the process of
drafting a report for submission to the legislature in 1972 that will
deal with the distribution and stabilization of population growth.
California adopted the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s prelimi
nary plan that seeks to set a population limit of 220,000 for the California-Nevada Lake Tahoe region.
The Florida legislature abolished the entire million-dollar promo
tional budget of the State’s commerce department while, in Colorado,
the governor publicly opposed further State promotion of develop
ment east of the Rockies and urged the channeling of industry to lessdeveloped regions.
763
In a potentially far-reaching measure, Texas enacted a broad res
olution which established an official policy position on urban growth
and development. Policies dealing with environmental quality, im
proving individual opportunities, enhancing community development
and strengthening local government are included in this guide for State
action on urban problems. State agencies are required to report to the
governor by January 1973 on policy implementation progress.
The New York legislature authorized the State to zone three million
acres of farmland into agricultural districts that will be protected
from “incompatible development.” In Connecticut, however, a bill
to set up an urban development corporation with the power of over
riding local zoning laws died in committee.
Colorado passed a land-use act which calls for the establishment of
county planning commissions by July 1972 and provides that regula
tions for all land within the unincorporated areas of a county be
adopted and implemented by the same date. The State land-use com
mission was directed to submit a land-use plan to the Colorado legis
lature by 1973 and to define “critical” conservation and recreation
areas for State regulation. The legislature also empowered the com
mission to review local planning decisions and, with the governor’s
approval, to intervene against those that are not consistent with State
plans and regulations.
Several other States attempted to strengthen controls on land use
by creating new State land-use commissions or broadening the powers
of existing commissions.
Alaska created a State-Federal natural resource and land-use plan
ning commission.
Washington set up a State land planning commission.
Wisconsin established a State land resources committee to develop
a comprehensive State land-use policy.
A special commission on land use was formed in Michigan to study
the problems of land abuse and had submitted its recommendations
to the governor by the end of the year.
In Maine, the land-use commission became responsible for 42 percent
of the State’s land— a significant increase from the previous two
percent.
North Carolina initiated a comprehensive land-use study and Alaska
entered into an agreement with the Federal government authorizing
a land-use study of 200 million acres in the northern part of the
State.
Five States moved to protect endangered shorelines. Delaware
enacted a controversial coastal zoning law that prohibits all heavy
industry within two miles of the sea coast. The governor of Oregon
put a stop to all construction along the 'State’s coast which might
damage estuaries. Texas authorized the interagency natural resources
planning council to promote cooperation and regulate shoreline devel
opment. Washington passed a shoreline management act. North Caro
lina enacted stricter regulations to protect beach and coastal areas.
In attempting to assess the meaning of these diverse State and
Federal actions, certain tentative conclusions may be reached. The
variety of Washington level efforts highlights the confusion facing
policv-makers seeking to devise a national urban growth strategy
on other than a piecemeal and “hit the pressure points” basis. It also
764
underscores the tacit acceptance by both the executive and legislative
branches of the incremental approach to developing such a strategy.
A t the same time, one cannot help wonder whether anybody in either
branch is attempting to ascertain how these diverse initiatives inter
relate and whether they really add up to a consistent set of policy
decisions, as called for in the Report of the President's National Goals
Research staff.
The State level actions in 1971, while equally and not unexpectedly
diverse, indicated far greater awareness of the problems associated
with growth than was the case heretofore. The net effect of these
various State actions should demolish the myth that the States are
incapable of moving on this front. A cluster of practical political
considerations have emerged that make State action— not just a possi
bility— but a likelihood. The environmental thrust is beginning to
highlight the full implications of not reserving significant Jand-use
powers to themselves. The diseconomies of unplanned growth are
confronting various local jurisdictions with the prospect of current or
future budget deficits: and the impact of certain Federal efforts,
especially in the environmental field, is beginning to be felt.
TH E PRESENT
Turning to the Report on National Growth, it should be noted at
the outset that the ACIR late last summer was asked by Domestic
Council staff to help provide factual background data on recent State,
local and private activities, as well as on interstate developments
relating to urban growth, and to provide statistical data on metropoli
tan disparities. To render the assistance in these areas, the Commis
sion procured the services of three consultants. In addition, at its
December 17, 1971 meeting, the Commission was provided with a
summary account by Secretary Romney of the draft report then being
considered by the Domestic Council. A free-wheeling discussion fol
lowed the presentation by the Secretary.
W e find in this report a good analysis of population growth and
distribution trends. The problems associated with growth are suc
cinctly stated and recent State, local and multistate activities are
skillfully chronicled. Several of the actions taken by the Administra
tion (and cited in Chapter IV ) had been basic components of ACIR'S
earlier action agenda, including decentralization of decision-making
authority in grant programs, streamlining grant administration, estab
lishing; uniform regional boundaries for Federal domestic agencies
and departments, new’ community assistance, simplifying planning
requirements, and the A-95 review procedure. Moreover, certain of
the legislative proposals set forth in the report’s final chapter have
been integral features of our program for Federal action for nearly
five years, especially revenue sharing, welfare reform (we support full
Federal takeover of the financing), and grant consolidation.
Many of the underlying assumptions of this report are sound and
basically reflective of positions taken by the A C IR in its 1968 report.
Defining the goals of a national growth policy does necessitate “search
ing consideration of our national objectives and priorities” and this
task does become “increasingly difficult as we move closer to specific
goals.” The problems associated with growth do cover “many of the
most intractable social and governmental concerns of this country,”
as the chronicle of cleavages at the beginning of this statement sug
gests. Growth patterns are conditioned by “countless decisions made
by individuals, families, and businesses” and these “decisions them
selves can not be dictated” under our democratic system. We do have
a “ federal system, with shared powers'' and it obviously is not possible
for the “highest level of government to design policies for develop
ment that can operate successfully in all parts of the Nation.”
At the same time, as the report states, “in some cases, the Federal
Government is the only body with the capability to assure balanced
and orderly growth,” as in the fiscal and monetary policy areas. And
there are other areas where the national government has already taken
a leading role, as in the environmental, economic development, 1lous
ing, and transportation fields. The report also notes that the character
of future growth in America “will depend primarily upon the scope
and nature of actions taken by State and local governments and upon
countless decisions made by . . . individuals and business enter
prises . . . that are involved in the planning, building, and servicing
of our burgeoning urban and rural communities and neighborhoods.”
Few can (loubt this, and our 1968 report stressed the wholly inter
governmental nature of any effort to develop a national growth
strategy.
But having said all this, certain basic questions still must be faced:
I)o we want an even greater concentration of people in our large
metropolitan centers and the attendant higher cost of public and pri
vate consumption ?
Do we sanction the addition of even more fuel to the already incen
diary conditions in our central city ghettos ?
Do we endorse a widening of the gap between the eroding economies
of our central cities and the expanding economies of most of their
surrounding neighbors ?
Can we condone a widening of the economic, educational, and health
gaps between rural and urban America ?
Do we really favor continuing the helter-skelter consumption of
land on the urban fringe?
Do we actually intend to bind future generations of Americans to
the same style of urban life that currently prevails?
Most of us would respond with a resounding “ 110” to the bulk of
these propositions. But this only provides us with a rationale for and
indirectly with the broad goals of a national urban growth policy.
Questions of feasibility, method, and instrumentalities still remain
and these are the knotty problems with which urban growth enthu
siasts must fully come to grips:
Is it feasible, within the Executive Branch, to achieve a better
coordination of those basic direct Federal and grant aided efforts
which affect the geographic location of p e o p l e and economic activities ?
Is Congress capable of developing a genuine oversight role with
regard to the various ongoing efforts of the Federal Government that
condition urban development?
Can a resources allocation strategy— even broadly defined— be de
vised that actually differentiates between areas and communities that
are likely to grow and those that are not?
766
Can a broad underlying geographic strategy be developed jointly
by Federal and State governments and adhered to in their program
efforts ?
Can the many existing Federal-multistate commissions, especially
in the economic development area (now eight), assume any real role
in providing answers to the two questions immediately above ?
Does the strong popular push for action on the environmental front
have any implications for urban growth policy development at both
the Federal and State or for the seven Title I I river basin commissions
established pursuant to the Water Resources Planning Act of 1965?
Do the hundreds of areawide and multi-county bodies and mecha
nisms established over the past seven years in both rural and urban
America, pursuant to Federal and State initiatives, constitute a kind
of program and management response to urban growth by policy
makers at these higher levels ?
Does the Federal Government, as one of the prime movers in metro
politan areas, have any responsibility for attempting to consolidate
the areawide planning requirements and the areawide districts and
bodies that have been spawned as a consequence of Federal grant leg
islation and administrative regulations ?
Can the States carve out a role in grappling with the tough jurisdic
tional, program, and political questions raised by the expansion of
special districts? Do the substate districting systems within the 42
States having them constitute a help or a hindrance in coping with
the spillover, multijurisdictional problems generated by galloping
urbanization and, in some cases, by stifling population sparsity?
In terms of governmental functions, especially those deemed local
heretofore, must these functions be administered by a single level of
government or are any of them susceptible to being subdivided and,
in effect, administered on a two-level basis ?
Can the general governments of the system and their politically ac
countable decision-makers actually achieve any real control over and
coordination of the fractionated efforts of program specialists and
technicians and their interest group and citizen allies, given the latter’s drive for special and single agencies, special districts, and com
prehensive but essentially single purpose planning bodies at the substate and multistate levels ?
Can popular confidence in the multilevel electoral process of this
Nation be restored if elected officials, in turn, have little control over
administrators and governmental bodies operating within their re
spective geographic jurisdictions or if the voters themselves have no
direct access to the mushrooming number of decision makers at the
areawide and multicounty level ?
These are some of the broadly systemic questions on which the real
fate of a balanced urban growth policy and process hangs. These are
some of the crucial issues with which this Subcommittee and future
national growth reports must wrestle. Easy answers can be found for
none of them. But to ignore them is to leave urban strategy in the
realm of rhetoric, and governmental action on the basis of wholly
fragmented program and planning efforts. W e reject this option. W e
have more confidence in the federal system and the ultimate judgment
of the American people than that. Moreover, as we pointed out earlier,
there are promising signs— at all levels really— that a process can be
hammered out, that controversial program components can be enacted,
that none of the participants in the system are really unaware of the
dimensions of the urban growth challenge.
W e face a basic problem of linkages—between and among the levels
of government, between and among elected officials and the adminis
trators, between rural and urban problems, between public and private
sector actions, and between and among the several electorates that
constitute the great American public.
The public itself, if recent opinion polls are any guide, is deeply
divided on many of the issues that directly bear on resolving urban
growth policy questions, but less divided on others. Meanwhile, ur
banization gallops on and disparate governmental actions continue to
serve as a basic factor sustaining the pace.
Given this set of difficult circumstances, we commend the Subcom
mittee! for its leadership in probing this basic item on the Nation’s top
priority agenda and appreciate this opportunity to submit a state
ment for your hearing record.
Sincerely yours,
R o b e r t E. M e r r i a m , Ohairman.
A p p e n d ix
PARTIAL CHECKLIST OF POSSIBLE FEDERAL AND STATE ACTIONS TO IMPLEMENT
URBAN GROWTH POLICIES
(Based on proposals adopted by tlie Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental
Relations)
I. National Action to Further Urban Growth Policy
A. Influencing Industrial Location
1. Enactment of legislation by Congress to provide Federal incentives
for business or industrial location:
(a ) Tax incentives
(b) Below^ niarket rate loans
(c) Direct payments
2. Enactment of Federal legislation to provide a percentage preference
on the awTard of public contracts to labor surplus and other
areas.
3. Promulgation by the President of criteria for location of Federal
buildings and facilities.
B. Influencing Population Movement
1. Establishment of a Federal-State Matching Program of resettle
ment allowances for low-income persons migrating from labor
surplus areas.
2. Provision of additional Federal funds for on-the-job allowances
for employers in labor surplus areas.
3. Expansion of the Federal-State employment service program and
establishment of a nationwide computerized job information
system providing data on job vacancies, skills, and
availabilities.
4. Enactment of Federal legislation to eliminate or reduce the migrational influence of interstate variations in public assistance
standards and benefits.
5. Expansion and adequate funding of voluntary programs of family
planning for low-income persons.
C. Large-Scale Urban and New’ Community Development
1. Federal low interest loans and capital grants to State and local
governments for land acquisition to accommodate future urban
growth.
2. Direct Federal involvement.
(a) Mixed, public-private land development corporation char
tered by Congress.
(b) Creation by Congress of a national urban development
agency or authorizing HUD to acquire, hold, improve
and dispose of land for urban development, or alter
natively. authorize HUD to undertake an experimental
new community building program on federally ow’ned
lands.
3. Financial assistance and incentives for new community develop
ment.
(a) Federal assistance, under certain conditions, to private de
velopers consisting of low interest loans and tax
incentives.
(768)
769
II. State Action to Further Urban Growth Policy
A. Influencing Industrial Location
1. Enactment of State legislation authorizing establishment of State
and regional industrial credit facilities as means of providing
additional sources of credit for desired urban development.
2. Enactment of State legislation to authorize preference under speci
fied conditions in the award of public contracts.
3. Establishment of policies for locating public buildings, activities,
and facilities.
B. Large-scale Urban and New Community Development
1. Enactment of State legislation to provide for chartering of State
and local land development agencies.
2. State or regional acquisition of lands for future developmental
purposes.
3. Provision of State property tax deferral for new community
development.
C. Other Intergovernmental Measures for More Orderly Urban Devel
opment
1. Strengthen local government.
(a) Structure
(1) Facilitate county consolidation in rural areas.
(2) Authorization for metropolitan planning agencies.
(3) Multi-purpose planning and development agencies
in non-metropolitan areas.
(4) Metropolitan functional authorities.
(5) Special county subordinate service districts.
(6) Authorization of optional forms of municipal and
county governments.
(b) Powers
(1) Transfer of functions.
(2) Interlocal agreements.
(3) Liberalized annexation powers, including annexa
tion of non-contiguous areas for new community
development.
(4) Extra-territorial control of planning, zoning, and
subdivision regulations.
(5) Constitutional provision of residual powers for cer
tain local governments.
2. Mechanisms for guiding and regulating urban growth by bringing
planning efforts and development controls into closer harmony.
(a) County or regional agency review of actions taken by small
communities having areawide impact.
(b) Direct county or regional agency exercise of land-use con
trols within newly created communities until they
reach a certain population size.
(c) Required integration of sewer and w^ater planning and de
velopment on areawide basis consistent with growth
needs.
(d) Exercise by State agency of development controls over high
way interchanges and rights-of-way where local con
trols are inadequate or non-existent.
(e) Enactment of State legislation to authorize new types of
local development ordinances and regulations includ
ing meaningful official map powers, mandatory dedica
tion— or a cash payment in lieu of such dedication—
of public facility sites, and broad general land-use
standards to replace certain rigid conventional zoning
standards (floating zones, planned unit development).
N A T IO N A L AND U R BAN GROWTH POLICY
(B y
Henry B. Schechter, Senior Specialist in Housing, The Library
of Congress)
B A C K G R O U N D O F T H E R E P O R T O N N A T I O N A L G R O W T H , 1972
In Title Y I I of the Housing and Urban Development Act, the
Congress enacted legislation which called for the Development of a
National Urban Growth Policy. It noted that migration and changes
in population distribution had created an imbalance between needs
and resources which seriously threatened our physical environment;
and that conflicting Federal programs had frequently resulted in un
desirable and costly patterns of urban development; and declared
that, “the Federal government, consistent with the responsibilities of
State and local government and the private sector, must assume re
sponsibility for thedevelopment of a national urban growth policy
which shall incorporate social, economic and other appropriate
factors.”
To assist in the development of a National Urban Growth Policy,
the Congress directed that the President transmit to the Congress a
biennial report on urban growth, with the first report to be transmitted
in February 1972. During that month, President Nixon submitted a
“Report ,on National Growth, 1972” to the Congress. The change in
title, indicating a change in scope was explained by the following
paragraph in the introduction to the Report.
This report has been prepared in response to that act. The statutory findings
and the overall objectives which led to that requirement suggest, however, that
the tenn “national urban growth policy” is too narrow. Instead, this report will
use the term “national growth policy,” recognizing that rural and urban com
munity development are inseparably linked. It is important to realize that urban
growth problems cannot be discussed in a useful and intelligent manner without
discussing rural growth as well. And it is also important to note that citizens
residing in our rural areas are confronted with problems no less pressing and no
less deserving of national attention than those of our citizens who are afflicted
by what is generally described as “the urban crisis.”
Probably the foregoing change is more one of form than of sub
stance. About 74 percent of the nation’s population now resides in
urban areas. A significant rural to urban migration continues. The ex
tension of energy lines and communications channels to rural areas,
widespread automobile ownership and highway networks, and an in
creasing “industrialization” of agriculture have blurred the distinction
between urban and rural. Urban growth policies, therefore, would af
fect national growth because they would affect the great majority of
the population who are in urban areas, and, in a complementary fash
ion, affect the resources available to, and the growth of, the rest of
the country. Furthermore, there is an increasing tendency for Federal
urban programs to be extended to rural areas, or for separate counter
part programs to be created (e.g. housing, water and sewer grants,
(77 1 )
772
etc.) so that growth policies underlying such programs are applicable
to the entire nation.
In enacting the 1970 urban growth legislation, the Congress was not
unaware of the inseparable relationships of urban and rural growth. In
the Findings and Declaration of Policy of that statute it stated:
The Congress finds that the rapid growth of urban population and uneven
expansion of urban development in the United States, together with a decline in
farm population, slower growth in rural areas, and migration to the cities, has
created an inbalance between the Nation's needs and resources and seriously
threatens our physical environment, and that the economic and social develop
ment of the Nation, the proper conservation of our natural resources, and the
achievement of satisfactory living standards depend upon the sound, orderly,
and more balanced development, of all areas of the Nation.
The 1970 legislation, thus, was addressed to the “more balanced de
velopment of all areas of the Nation” which encompasses and goes be
yond the “national growth” concept, inherent in the title of the first re
port submitted to the Congress in 1972.
The 1970 legislation also specified that the following should be in
cluded in the biennial report to the Congress:
(1) information and statistics describing characteristics of
urban growth and identifying significant trends and develop
ments ;
(2) a summary of significant problems facing the United States
as a result of growth trends and developments;
(3) an evaluation of progress and effectiveness of Federal pro
grams designed to meet such problems and carry out national
urban growth policy;
(4) an assessment of the policies and structure of existing and
proposed interstate planning and development affecting such
policy;
(5) a review of State, local and private policies, plans and pro
grams relevant to such policy;
(6) current and foreseeable needs in the areas served by poli
cies, plans and programs designed to carry out such policy, and
the steps being taken to meet such needs; and
(7) recommendations for programs and policies for carrying
out such policy, including such legislation and administrative ac
tions as may be deemed necessary and desirable.
P O P U L A T IO N G R O W TH
Perhaps the most extensive treatment in the Report was given to
data that would come under the first of the foregoing items, namely, in
formation and statistics describing growth. It was “growth” in a lim
ited sense, however, in that the one-third of the report, or 24 pages,
was devoted to data on population growth and distribution. Various
tables and maps traced the national population growth and distribu
tion from 1790 to 1970. Birth and death rates and migration patterns
by race, rural to urban shifts and metropolitan growth were all de
scribed to provide some basic information.
There was no analysis, however, of growth rates and distribution
of population in relation to resources available to accommodate the
population. Such relationships between numbers of people and avail
able resources would seem to be a sine qua non of any report concerned
with population growth and “an imbalance between the Nation’s needs
and resources” (one of the findings of the Congress). The question of
population growth rates, and policies or the lack of policies affecting
such growth rates, had been explored by the President’s Commission
011 Population Growth and the American Future. In its report, Popu
lation and the American Future, the Commission called for a definite
population policy in line with its feeling that population growth in
the United States should be slowed or stopped. It concluded that many
of the nation’s population problems could be solved by preventing the
birth of unwanted children. The Commission recommended the libera
tion of abortion labs and the provision of quality day care for all fam
ilies who wished it. A basic policy relationship for the economy and
society is inherent in the preceding sentence, namely, a slowdown of
population growth and a higher standard of living (day care, in this
instance) for the population members. The nature of such relation
ships, and the effects of alternati ve policies and programs which might
be adopted, are deserving of analysis under the Congressional directive
regarding the inclusion of significant problems facing the United
States as a result of growth trends and developments. To ignore the
question of the population growth rate constitutes a policy decision
of non-intervention with regard to factors affecting present trends.
G R O W T H P R O B L E M S A N D P O L IC IE S
Problems associated with growth were briefly discussed in the Report
on National Growth 1972, under five main headings: (1) the decline
of rural areas and small towns; (2) the changing role of the central
city; (3) racial and economic concentration; (4) environmental and
transportation effects; and (5) rising land costs.
The limited descriptive discussion of these five problem areas is
followed by a few pages of discussion under the heading: “Formula
tion of a Single Comprehensive National Growth Policy: Obstacles
and Issues.” The complexity of growth problems and the difficulty of
developing a comprehensive growth policy is pointed out. It is then
reasoned that with our federal system of government, the vast size
of the country and the many decisions having local significance, such
as on tax levies, public facilities installations and zoning, fall within
the province of State and local government. One stated conclusion
in the Report is that :
Accordingly, it is not feasible for the highest level of government to design
policies for development that can operate successfully in all parts of the Nation.
The Federal government has designed many policies affecting the
growth of the Nation, however, although some of these policies may
be an inadvertent by-product of programs that were designed to meet
particular needs. Thus, the Federal influence upon the distribution
of new additions to the housing supply, or the preservation of the exist
ing housing supply, which will affect population densities, and a va
riety of infrastructure improvements in localities, has been influenced
by Federal housing, highway and community facilities programs and
policies— or non-policies— and Federal tax policies. There are two
paragraphs in the Report on housing production and equal opportu
nity in housing. There are also some passing references to housing
in a discussion of land costs and in a listing of State legislative devel
774
opments with respect to housing and community development. There
is 110 discussion, however, of the very significant Federal influence
over the location of housing and growth patterns. In fact, many of
the State programs are largely dependent upon Federal housing sub
sidies to support a significant program volume. There is no attempt
to assess the influence of Federally assisted housing and highway pro
grams upon the location of new housing and the consequent effects
upon water and sewer facilities needs, upon commutation patterns
and mass transit needs, upon open space needs or upon air and water
pollution.
Air and water pollution are noted in the Report as good examples
of national problems. There has to be a recognition, however, of the
interrelationships with other conditions and programs which give rise
to such problems. In the absence of new or modified policies, present
development trends and growth patterns may well continue, aided by
present Federal programs. Such a course would lead to more and larger
metropolitan areas, and the joining of these areas to form even greater
agglomerations of people in a few densely occupied regions of the
country. Such patterns of development will mean greater traffic prob
lems, greater air-pollution, greater problems of energy peak loads,
waste disposal, water supply and sewage collection. It means greater
per-capita public expenditures for health, police, fire and sanitation
services, whose costs increase in very large, densely populated areas.
There is a need to recognize that the effects of Federal programs
which develop in the absence of positive policies, represent, by de
fault, the adoption of policies favoring the results obtained. In the
absence of guiding policies, Federal programs are designed to accom
modate millions of uncoordinated individual personal and community
responses to the aggravated problems of everyday living. In an in
creasingly technologically complex and interdependent society, these
individual decisions affect the lives of many other people and com
munities, and add to the social overhead costs of the Nation.
A prime example is the collective effect of individual decisions by
millions of families to purchase suburban homes with governmentinsured mortgages and to become daily commuters who drive auto
mobiles over Federally-assisted highways for their journey to work.
The results include increased air pollution, time losses in congested
traffic, auto accidents and high insurance rates, more road construc
tion and maintenance. Over $84 billion a year, or 10 percent of the
national income is being spent on user-operated transportation. Con
sideration might be given to modifications of Federal policies and
programs to encourage the building of residences in such spatial rela
tionships to employment and shopping centers, educational and health
facilities that daily travel requirements would be reduced. Greater
emphasis on policies to encourage and investments in programs to
devise more and better mass transit systems might also yield benefits
in excess of costs, and facilitate the implementation of policies to
promote better spatial relationships.
Another example of a lack of positive policy formulation is in
allowing the development of flood-prone and earthquake prone land,
and then implementing a disaster relief policy. The latter was illus
trated most recently by enactment of a $1.6 billion authorization for
relief of property owners who had suffered flood damages in Hurri-
775
•cane Agnes, and earlier in 1972 in floods in South Dakota. Hundreds
of lives also were lost in those floods, for which there can be no post
facto relief. The magnitude of Federal expenditures, as well as the
increasing frequency of such disasters, makes the natural disaster
problem a national problem.
In February 1971, an earthquake in the Los Angeles area caused the
collapse of a Veterans Administration hospital and of a county hos
pital, causing the death of 64 people, in addition to damaging thou
sands of homes. In earlier earthquakes (e.g. Alaska in 1964) and hur
ricanes (e.g. Betsy in 1965), thousands of homes financed with govern
ment-insured mortgages have been lost because insufficient foresight
was exercised in the use of earthquake prone and flood lands. Down
stream flood potential is being increased through upstream urban de
velopment and the covering of land which results in increased runoff.
Instead of developing more effective land use policies and programs
tied to prepaid insurance— subsidized if necessary— to forestall the
loss of lives and billions of dollars of property damage, a policy of
after-the-fact disaster relief has tended to blunt the need for individ
ual precaution and preventive public measures. (A start toward a dam
age prevention policy is included in the community land use regulation
requirements for participation under the national flood insurance pro
gram, but the date for compliance with that requirement was changed
from December 31,1971 to December 31,1973 by an amendment passed
in 1971.)
S TA TE A N D LO C A L G O V E R N M E N T R O LE
A significant proportion of the Report on National Growth in 1972
is devoted to the role of State and local governments in various plan
ning development activities. There are brief descriptions of the in
dividual activities, some engendered by Federal legislation, many sup
ported by Federal programs. They are adequately described. In a sense,
this may fulfill the Congressional request for “a review” of such ac
tivities. It would be more useful, however, if there had been more
evaluation. Thus, the “A -9 5 ” application review process by an areawide metropolitan or regional planning agency as a prerequisite for
certain Federal grants, required under Section 204 of the Demonstra
tion Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966, is adequately
described. It is judged, in the Report, to be “a useful instrument for
increasing interlocal cooperation in metropolitan areas and for helping
formulate and implement National, State and local growth policies.”
There is no evidence presented, however, of its effectiveness in bring
ing about improvements in efficiency or quality of services, although
the Office of Management and Budget has gathered such information.
Similarly, on the question of the development of multipurpose dis
tricts and councils, there is some listing, some description. There is no
measure of achievement, of success or failure, of the effects upon guid
ing development and preserving the environment.
Techniques for appropriate evaluation may have to be developed
for many programs. Evaluation in terms of substantive results would
be valuable, however, as well as evaluations in terms of legislative
measures adopted or governmental reorganizations effected. Although
the latter are necessary steps, the payoff is in terms of quality and
quantity and costs of services, they have to be analyzed first, however,
81- 745— 72— &L 2 ------ 15
including the costs that are increased as a result of the current pattern
of growth in metropolitan areas. Irrational cross commuting, with
blue collar workers going out of the central cities to the suburbs, and
white collar workers coming in from the suburbs to the cities every day.
adds tremendously to the need for roadway and mass transit capital
requirements, as well as to transportation operating costs.
Questions of optimum population size for economy and effective ad
ministration of services have to be clarified as a basis for appropriate
policies. Larger central cities have lower per capita costs of sewage
treatment, electricity and gas, but higher per capita costs of school ad
ministration and fire protection. Conversely, there are diseconomies in
many small political jurisdictions in the provision of public services,
such as sewer and water, gas and electricity. There is also duplication of
administrative overhead in the hundreds of local governmental bodies.
Mounting costs of local government have been reflected in sharply
rising local taxes which fall primarily upon residential owners and
renters; local property taxes rose from $23 billion in 1965 to an esti
mated $38 billion in 1*970, or about 60 percent in five years.
Even that increase has been insufficient to meet the costs of local
services. States have been called upon to assume greater responsi
bility for public service costs and have had to impose income taxes
and sales taxes. The Federal Government also has had to increase its
grants to States and local governments for various community facili
ties, adding to Federal budgetary deficits and inflationary pressures.
Revenue sharing transfers some of the costs to another level of Gov
ernment, but does not attack the conditions which increase the costs.
Whether the taxes to be paid for necessary services continue to
rise sharply will depend in large part on policies, plans, and programs
that will affect growth, taxes and patterns in the future. In a study
of State and local public facility needs made in the micl-1960’s, it was
estimated that in the decade 1966-75, about $500 billion in capital
outlays for public facilities would be required. This included $328 bil
lion bv State and local governments, for facilities to provide such
services as sewer and water, education, health, recreation and culture,
and public buildings. The additional expenditures would be by private
organizations, for gas and electric, health, transportation and other
service facilities.
These required dollar expenditures will undoubtedly be greater
during the current decade because of cost increases, and because perperson consumption of services has increased. Energy and water have
to be brought from greater distances to serve greater population con
centrations in establishing metropolitan areas. Within the metro
politan areas, longer distribution lines are needed to reach outlying
low density areas. Transportation frictions have increased. The mag
nitudes of waste disposal have grown, and wastes have to be hauled
greater distances and treated more carefully. Anti-pollution controls
have to be exercised more rigorously.
Most of the above service functions have to be performed at the
local level, some under State-regulated programs. However, the prob
lems to be dealt with are widespread, are often aggravated through
development encouraged by Federally-supported programs (e.g. high
ways), and also often required Federal support for required services
(e.g. water and sewer). There is a definite Federal interest, therefore,
in continual, study of how State and local governments are carrying
out such functions, and how Federal support for various programs
could encourage more rational spatial development relationships, to
permit the provision of necessary services in a more efficient manner.
C U R R E N T A N D F O R E S E E A B L E N E E D S A N D R E C O M M E N D A T IO N S
As presented earlier in this paper, the 1970 statute enacted by the
Congress specifically directs that the biennial reports on growth policy
should include current and foreseeable needs in areas served by
[growth] policies, plans and programs to carry out such policies, and
recommendations for programs and policies, including new legisla
tion. The last two chapters of the Report on Xational Growth 1972
are addressed to the most important element of that Congressional
directive.
One chapter reviews the administrative and program initiatives
taken in recent years. These include reorganization and decentraliza
tion efforts within the Federal government and increases in dollar
expenditure amounts and Federal grant programs for rural develop
ment and highways. In connection with the highw7ay program, it is
mentioned that 1970 legislation modified the Federal program to per
mit more assistance for urban mass transit. There is also mention of
the fact that Section 102 (2) (C) of the National Environmental Policy
Act, requiring Federal agencies to issue, for public comment, detailed
statements as to the environmental impact of proposed actions, has
been implemented. There are similar brief descriptions (of a few
paragraphs) of programs, regulations, or activity volume with regard
to housing, new community assistance, planning requirements, Fed
eral property insurance programs and model cities planned variations.
There is a dearth of analysis, however, as to how the program activi
ties relate to growth needs, or how they are shaping the patterns and
quality of growth.
Finally, the last chapter of the Report dwells primarily on the
major legislative proposals that the Administration has submitted to
the Congress over the past two or three years. They include major
proposals for reorganization, revenue sharing— general and different
types of special revenue sharing— welfare reform, etc. Some of the
proposals, such as for expanded rural credit, planning and manage
ment assistance to State and local governments, national lands use
policy and powerplant siting legislation, have a bearing upon national
growth policies. However, they are not presented in any interrelated
manner that would bespeak coordination relative to balanced national
growth.
There are interrelationships between the patterns of land use, the
geographic location of energy generation, utilization of technological
advances, economic opportunity, population density and the distribu
tive utilization of available resources which are all a part of “national
growth55, and affect the future health and welfare of the country. The
concentration of population in limited areas of the country is supported
by Federal approval or limitation of energy generating plants. Federal
procurement and Federal support of research and development. The
concentrations of activity add to regional economic vulnerability
778
which, in turn, has impact on national economic growth and stability
(e.g. aerospace unemployment in California).
In the less-than-three decades remaining in this century, the popula
tion of the country may increase by 75 to 100 million people. As ever
before, the increasing population will be drawn to the areas which offer
economic opportunity and the amenities of modern life. I f present
trends continue, that will mean that practically all of the increase in
population will be concentrated in the regions which already contain
the megalopolises stretching for hundreds of miles in continuous high
density belts.
On November 4,1971, it was announced that 20 areas had been added
to the list of standard metropolitan areas because they had grown to the
requisite minimum population size. A ll twenty were in States that
bordered either the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, "the Gulf of Mexico or
the Great Lakes. I f there is a continuation of past national policies, or
lack of policies, to guide growth, the trends toward environmental,
economic and social difficulties may very well continue.
NEED FOR IMPROVED MACHINERY TO DEVELOP GROWTH POLICIES
To counteract such trends, in line with the thrust of the 1970 legis
lation, there is a need to develop policies based on in-depth analysis of
all of the significant factors affecting growth and their interrelation
ships. The effort would benefit by being done within a much broader
and more detached framework than the present development of policies
emanating from agencies which administer particular programs. The
origin of policies under such auspices are likely to be limited in scope
and produce a host of programs which often operate at cross purposes.
National growth policies can be developed within a broad framework,
with knowledge of, but organizational detachment from ongoing pro
grams. A biennial report on National Growth can serve as the vehicle
for such analysis and policy and program recommendations. There is a
need for definite identification or creation of an appropriate study and
analysis unit within Government— qualified, and yet with the right
degree of detachment, and with adequate staff and time— to do the
necessary work.
The Report on National Growth 1972 was prepared by the staff and
members of a Domestic Council Committee on National Growth. The
report was summarized in a New York Times editorial of March 29,
1972 which said that the document “spends 74 pages explaining that
the Federal government really cannot do much of anything about
urban problems or suburban growth.” A much more comprehensive
and analytic report than was prepared in 1972 would have to be pre
pared in 1974 if it is to be fully responsive to the specific requirements
of Title Y I I of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1970.
There also may be a need to go beyond the existing legislation in
considering the machinery of policy formulation. There are diverse
points of view which should be reconciled at the policy formulation
stage in order to avoid conflicts of policy at a later date. A current con
flict of policy arises, for example, between those concerned with eco
logical protection and those concerned with land-use development.
There may also be different policy orientations on many subjects
between industry and labor organizations, between farm and urban
interests, and between different levels of government. An organiza
tional mechanism to absorb and analyze the various policy orientations,
and to make available to the Congress, the Executive Branch, and the
general public the costs and benefits of alternative policies, could
provide a useful service for those who are engaged in policy
formulation.
U R B AN
H O U SIN G : A N A IV E AN D PAROCHIAL
PROM A M ID W E STER N IVO R Y T O W E R 1
V IE W
(By Leo F. Schnore, University of Wisconsin (Madison))
I. I
n t r o d u c t io n
I A . A B R IE F D IS C L A IM E R
I must begin with a caveat. I have very rarely worked directly with
housing data in my own research on urban and metropolitan areas
in America over the past twenty years. As a consequence, most of my
knowledge of the topic is second-hand at best. A t worst, it is dis
torted by my ignorance of the salient facts, my incomplete awareness
of research already accomplished, and my possibly warped view of
research needs. Nevertheless, the temptation offered by the invitation
to comment on housing in the United States for this Subcommittee
proved too seductive for resistance. It is rare for a “pure” researcher
to have the opportunity to help shape the issues for a Congressional
committee. This is apparently a privilege ordinarily reserved for
influential “ folks back home” and for reporters and editors of the
New York Times and the Washington Post.
IB . M A O R O -E C O L O G Y V E R S U S M IC R O -E C O L O G Y
I am a demographer-ecologist, and my view of the world is shaped
by the perspective of these two subfields of social science. I shall pro1 Acknow ledgm ents are in order. I am indebted to a num ber of in d ivid u a ls fo r va rio u s
kinds of help in w ritin g this essay. A t the Center fo r A dvanced S tu d y in the B eh a viora l
Sciences, w here I began the w ork, I profited from discussions w ith the late B e rt Boothe
(clinical psychologist, N a tiona l In s titu te o f M ental H e a lth ). N a th a n G la zer ( H a rva rd
sociologist) and P h ilip G. Zim bardo (S tan ford social psychologist). A fte r m y re tu rn to
the U n iv e rs ity of W isconsin, m an y colleagues helped me. A t th e W isconsin S u rve y
Research L a b o ra to ry, I w as aided b y H a r r y Sharp (sociologist and D irector) and
Charles P a lit (statistician and Associate D ire c to r). A t the In s titu te fo r Research on
P o ve rty, I w as helped b y tw o sociologists— R obert R. A lfo rd and D a v id Elesh. In the
Center fo r D em ography and Ecology, I w as assisted b y G lenn V . F u g u itt (ru ra l sociologist
and dem ographer). K a r l E . Taeu ber (sociologist and dem ographer), H a l H . W insborough
(sociologist and dem ographer) and Jam es A . Sweet (socioligst and dem ographer). A t
the end of J u ly , I attended a B erkeley conference called b y the N a tio n a l A cadem y of
Sciences— N a tiona l Academ y of E ngineerin g, C om m ittee on P ub lic E n g in e e rin g P olic y,
designed to assist the N a tiona l Science Fou n d a tion in th e ir m ission to set research
priorities fo r the p rogram entitled Research A pplied to N a tion a l Needs ( R A N N ) . I
benefitted grea tly fro m the ora l and w ritte n contributions of the entire panel on Com
m u n ity Developm ent, and especially those o f W illia n Alonso (urban p la nn er and economist,
U n iv e rs ity of C a liforn ia at B erkeley), Jam es D. C ow hig (P rogram M anager, D ivis io n of
Social System s and H u m a n Resources, N S F - R A N N ) , W illia m G a rrison (geographer,
U n iv e rs ity of P itts b u rg h ), Ju liu s M argolis (economist, U n iv e rs ity of P enn sylva nia , and
r>irentor of th*4 Fels Center^. W ilb e r A. Steger (President, C O N S A D C orporation. P itts
b urgh ). and W illia m L . C. W heaton (Dean, School of E n viro n m e n ta l Design, U n iv e rs ity
of C aliforn ia at B erkeley). A t the risk of plagiarism , I have d ra w n fre e ly upon th e ir ideas.
I m ust insert the usual d isclaim er: A lth o u g h I benefitted g re a tly fro m conversations
w ith these men, and from reading th e ir w ritin g s, th ey are not to be held responsible fo r
m y interpretations and opinions. P a rt of the w o rk on th is essay w as supported b y the
N a tiona l Science Fou n d a tion under the term s o f G ra n t N u m ber GS-35306. P a t Blai?
typed and edited the entire m anuscript, w ith the assistance of K a th y D enny. F in a lly. I
m ust acknowledge m y indebtedness to m y parents, m y m ost influ en tia l continuing con
tacts w ith the real w o rld outside the ‘‘iv o r y tow er.”
(781)
eeed by organizing the discussion in two ways— by distinguishing (A )
macro-ecology from (B) micro-ecology, and discussing housing as a
nested series, starting with (1) the dwelling place, moving on to (2)
the neighborhood as a congeries of dwellings and related establish
ments and institutions (workplaces, churches, schools, etc.), and finish
ing with (3) the community at large, especially the metropolitan
area consisting of the great city together with its suburbs, satellites,
and “rural-urban fringe.”
Ecologists sometimes distinguish two separate enterprises: (a)
“synecology,” or the study of the population in its environment verms
(b) “autecology,” or the study of the individual organism in its en
vironmental setting. (Hawley, 1950) This distinction need not detain
us here. The discussion that follows will range freely between purely
ecological and demographic interests, on the one hand, and essentially
social-psychological concerns, on the other. In short, I will step out
of my ordinary role as a “synecologist” and adopt the stance of the
economists and social psychologists, discussing the producers and con
sumers who supply and demand housing as individuals with particular
tastes, wants, and felt needs— as what I call “skin-bounded systems” ;
more plainly, I will talk about people who make residential “choices”
within the constraints imposed by their social and economic situations,
the condition of the housing marketj the technological state of the
arts, and the larger environmental setting to which they are necessarily
responsive. (See Foote, et al., 1960.)
IC . E X P E R I E N C E A N D P E R S P E C T I V E
Much of the naivete of this essay must be traced to my lack of back
ground in all of the relevant social sciences. I was rather narrowly
trained (at Miami University [Ohio] and at the University of Michi
gan) as a sociologist and (as a minor field) social anthropologist. Over
the years, without much formal guidance, I have since achieved a
smattering of knowledge in urban economics, urban politics, and urban
history. Like many “self-taught men,” however, I had an inferior
teacher. The discipline afforded by course work, field study, and di
rected reading was missing, and I have tended to roam rather freely
through the literature of these three fields, with a rather eclectic
approach.
II.
A
c c o m p l is h e d
R esearch
by
S o c ia l S c ie n t is t s
W e shall now undertake a survey of research that has already been
accomplished in the social sciences. The period emphasized in 19601969. This review does not pretend to be complete, even for that brief
interval of time. It is a highly selective review, taking up only those
completed studies which seem to have important implications for
future research and policy formulation, especially those bearing on
the development of a national growth policy.
iia
.
m ic r o -ec o l o g y
I have argued elsewhere (Schnore, 1965, Chapter 2) that one can
conceive of “micro-ecological” efforts by sociologists. This mode of
study has been brought to the fore by a limited number of research
oriented social scientists, who take small units of analysis— such ^as
households and neighborhood groupings— as the focus of their in
quiries.
IIA.1. The Dwelling
The dwelling place itself, and the individual household, sometimes
are subjected to research by social scientists. The most enlightening in
troduction to the topic, despite its early date, is the 1948 discussion by
Robert K. Merton on the social-psychology of housing. (Merton, 1948,
reprinted in 1966) Merton argues that the difficulties of housing re
search by social psychologists “arise largely from two basic social facts:
first, the social institution of housing is undergoing important changes,
and second, housing involves the economic interests and social senti
ments of important skill-groups and power-groups in American so
ciety.” (p. 2 1 ) Merton goes on to review a number of hazards of re
search on housing. One is the hazard of “institutional cross-fire.” As
he contends:
Housing is a social institution undergoing relatively rapid change. . . . The
social psychologist bent upon entering into housing research, therefore, must
know that he is forsaking the relative calm and peace of his academic labora
tory for the strife and embroilments of the institutional battlefield. What is more,
belonging to neither army, the social psychologist must be prepared to be caught
in a heavy cross fire. Little if any of his research work will be taken for what
he intends it to b e: scientific analyses of the social-psychological consequences
of alternative policies in housing, (p. 21)
Still other hazards include those of competing research demands,
those of urgency, and those of sterile empiricism. As for competing
research demands, Merton argues that “ Since so much research requires
to be done, and there are, as yet, so few to do it, the social psychologist,
who would gear his research to the pragmatic needs of the field finds
himself called upon to spin from one problem to another in an in
evitably hopeless quest to have his researches be something to all
housing men.” (p. 23)
The hazard of urgency according to Merton, is one that is hard to
avoid, given the situation provided by the real world around us:
The pressures for turning out results are insistent, sustained, and entirely
understandable. Legislation on public housing is pending. Private housing de
velopments are being built. Urban redevelopment is proceeding. All these are
large-scale and long-term commitments. I f you, the social psychologist, are
worthy of your status in society, let us have your findings now, when they are
needed, not in the indefinite future, when they will tell us only what we have
learned through trial and error. The social psychologist must be prepared for an
unyielding pressure, from all sides, to produce results, long before he is in a
position to have warranted, adequately grounded results. Else, he will be subject
to the charge that he fiddles with statistical tabulations and experimental de
signs while the home-planner yearns, (p. 24)
Meiton goes on to argue that this difference between sheer empiri
cism and scientific research is not properly understood nor widely rec
ognized in the field of housing any more than it is in other spheres.
Entering this field the social psychologist must be immunized against the ten
dency toward mistaking actuarial and wholly empiricist findings for research
on relations between identified variables of psychology and sociology. For he
cannot expect the practitioners in housing to be interested in these theoretic
explorations, any more than victims of malaria pressed for advances beyond the
empirical use of quinine . . . One may venture the guess that only when a con
siderable fund of theoreitcal knowledge is available for application will toughminded practitioners come to see that sheer empiricism does not provide reliable
answers even to immediate limited problems.
Xor is this empiricist trend in housing research merely a response to practi
tioners’ concern with immediately applicable findings. It is sometimes a conse
quence of social scientists being wholly concerned with meticulous methodo
logical designs, often comprising ingenious controlled experiment, and failing
to clarify theoretically the variables dealth with in the research. Several metho
dologically sharp and precise researches in the social psychology of housing
suffer from any visible concern with theoretical and substantive content, (pp.
24-25; italics in original)
Merton concludes his review of research in the housing area by
urging that “the social psychologist at work in this field [must] not
take the easy and empty path of quick empiricist findings rather than
the more difficult and ultimately more productive path of empirical
research oriented toward basic theory.” (p. 25)
The first significant empirical contribution to the microecological
study of urban housing to be considered here is the monograph en
titled W hy Families Move by Peter H. Eossi. (Rossi, 1955) This
study, sub-titled “A Study in the Social Psychology of Urban Residen
tial Mobility,” was financed by a contract with the Housing and Home
Finance Agency (H H F A ). It represented a field survey approach to
area mobility, household mobility, and moving decisions. Although
methodologically flawed and theoretically deficient, Rossi’s study hit
upon what is apparently a major force in residential mobility. It is
apparent from his data that one of the chief reasons for moving—
aside from job changes— is change in family composition and age
structure. Significant, alterations in family structure, such as the birth
of a new child, impel a substantial fraction of our population to move,
at least within the community, if not between communities. This find
ing has been repeatedly confirmed by subsequent research.
Urban economists, who make numerous social-psychological as
sumptions, have been much more active than others in the social sci
ences in dealing with housing at the level of the dwelling. One of the
outstanding works in this area is a 1950 census monograph by Louis
Winnick (Winnick, 1957) Winnick used 1950 census materials, to
gether with a few for 1940, in order to delineate the basic structure
of the American housing market from the standpoint of the demand
for space. The basic measure employed throughout his work was the
persons per room ratio, abbreviated as “PPR.” Winnick set out his
findings in very succinct fashion, and there is no need to trouble
ourselves with an awkward paraphrase. His findings are so plainly
stated that nothing would be gained by altering the content of his
summary.
1.
The improvement in housing space standards of the past half century has
apparently been modest. It is doubtful wiiether the nonfarm PPR ratio has been
reduced by more than 15 or 20 percent since 1900. Furthermore, much of this
gain must be attributed to the decline in household size. [It would be wise to
interpret this finding in the light of the postwar baby-boom.] The very large
increases in real income that have accrued to American families contributed little
to the improvement in space standards, partly because the influence of income
appears weaker than is common!^ assumed and partly because of the very sharp
long-term increase in the real cost of housing w^hich led to smaller dwelling units.
There is also reason to believe that the reduction in the amount of “house” peo
ple buy is not entirely due to its high relative cost but is the result of changing
consumer tastes. The competition of ether expensive consumer durables, the high
cost of domestic service, and the shift of many family activities away from the
home are among the factors which caused pinching on housing space. In more
recent years the interest of the consumer in housing seems to have been re
kindled as a result of more children and suburbanization so that the future
may witness more gains than has the past. . . .
2. The distribution of housing space in 1950 was remarkably even, far more
so than the distribution of income and probably more equal than is the case of
any other major economic asset. As a result, severe overcrowding, i.e., more
than 2 persons per room, is exceedingly rare and affects less than 2 percent of
nonfarm households (less than 4 percent of the nonfarm population). The lowest
income groups tend to enjoy surprisingly favorable PPR ratios; overcrowding
is most frequent in the groups that lie between the bottom and the middle income
structure. . . .
3. Judging from cross-sectional data, the most important determinant of a
household’s density standard is its size. By comparison, the effect of household in
come or the cost of shelter is relatively small. Large households with fairly
high incomes are often more crowded than small households with modest
means. . . . The importance of rent and income, however, is increased and
the role of household size diminished, in explaining the change in utilization over
the 1940-1950 decade.
4. Overcrowding among Negroes is far more severe than among whites, and
the improvement since 1940 ha,s been less noticeable. The cause for Negro over
crowding seems to lie more in low income than in racial discrimination in the
housing market. [As we shall see, this interpretation has been disputed on the
basis of the results of subsequent research effort.] Negro households appar
ently occupy as much space as white households of the same income, but racial
barriers limit this space to low quality structures in older neighborhoods. . . .
5. The average dwelling unit has been shrinking in size for many decades. At
the same time, there has been a leveling in the size of dwelling units, at least
since 1940, with relatively fewer very small or very large ones and relatively
more of average size. From the early 1950’s on, some movement back toward
larger dwelling units has appeared. But larger dwelling units no longer mean the
mansions and castles of the 1890’s.
6. The most densely populated regions in the country do not suffer the most
from overcrowding. The reverse tends to be true. The West has more overcrowd
ing than the Northeast, rural areas more than urban areas, and small cities
more than large ones. . . .
7. The demand for larger dwelling units is in part due to the maturation of
children. As children pass from infancy to school age, considerable pressure is
exerted for more rooms. . . . [Recall the Ros,si findings.]
S.
The most important reason for the long-run decline in average household
size has not been the “spreading out” of adults but, rather, the changing age
structure of the population, which is the result of declining birth and death
rates. An older population gives rise to more married couples who have a strong
propensity toward establishing separate households. But. paradoxically, a larger
proportion of married people in the middle age groups leads to fewer rather
than more households. On net balance, therefore, the effect of an increased pro
portion of married people on the number of households a given population will
form (average household size) is greatly weakened___
9. No evidence can be found that older people form independent households
much more frequently than in the past. The rise in what is called here the “head
ship rate” of people over 60 has been quite small over the past 50 years and
almost negligible between 1940 and 1950. Because their numbers have greatly in
creased, older people, of course, occupy a larger proportion of the housing in
ventory. But this is not at all the same thing as an increased tendency toward
separate living arrangements. These findings are contrary to widespread belief
and should be reviewed with care. It is indeed surprising that Social Security,
more pensions, and general economic improvements have had, thus far, so little
effect on the housing arrangements of the aged. . . .
10. The PPR ratio will ordinarily vary with the business cycle, but to a much
lesser extent. Fluctuations in income from prosperity to depression would tend
to be largely offset by corresponding fluctuations in the cost of housing. These
findings may help to explain why cyclical fluctuations in the doubling-up rate
(and therefore the vacancy rate) have been so (relatively) small. People are
reluctant to give up separate living space even in a depression, and this reluc
tance is increased by the many housing bargains which become available. The
depression-induced rise in the national PPR ratio is more the result of shifts of
established households into smaller dwelling units than of increases in doubling.
Because of such shifts vacancies become concentrated in larger dwelling units
and a wave of conversions ensues, causing the number of vacancies to increase
by more than can be accounted for by the increase in doubling up. . . .
786
11.
Rent control, which created many housing bargains, apparently, resulted
in some misallocation of housing space. But the amount of extra space pre
empted by favored renters does not appear to have been very great, not enough
to destroy the usefulness of rent regulation under emergency conditions. Part of
the reason why the amount of “excess” space held by renters was so limited is
that rent control also reduces the number of large dwelling units by stimulating
conversions and transfers of single-family houses from the rental to the owner
ship market. Also, some renter households which might have enjoyed extra
space were forced to share it with married children whose doubling rate appears
to be related to the stringency of rent control. (Winnick, 1957, pp. 8-10)
Another valuable volume in the census monograph series for 1950
was the book entitled Residential Fin once, 1950 by Richard U. Rat
cliff and his colleagues (Ratcliff, et al., 1957). This research group
devoted attention to trends in residential finance between 1890 and 1951,
studied comparative lending practices, financial arrangements of bor
rowers, so-called “junior mortgages,” financing of rental, housing, and
the impact of government mortgage guarantees. The last topic should
be especially interesting to those concerned with national growth
policy and its implementation at the Federal level.
Ratcliff and his co-workers came to the following conclusions re
garding governmental mortgage guarantees and their impact on popu
lation distribution. We may quote them at brief length:
As yet. rapid growth of the two loan-insurance programs [FHA and VA] has
not threatened the position of conventional loans. Although typically granted on
relatively illiberal terms, conventional loans are widely used by all classes of
borrowers and are of particular importance in meeting the needs of borrowers of
above average credit risk. At noted above, conventional loans are of major im
portance in the case of low-income borrowers. . . . low-cost, properties . . . loans
on older properties, and borrowers of above-average age. . . .
Our data fail to supply answers to some of the significant questions
which may be raised about government-insured loans. Clearly, the
multiplication of effective demand implicit in liberal terms boosts the
home-buying power of borrowers and may, depending on the degree to
which the supply of new homes is inelastic with respect to price, run
to waste in raising home prices. Unfortunately, significant (and large
ly nonquantifiable) qualitative changes in homes make it impossible to
isolate the effect that these loan-insurance programs have exercised on
home prices. Our data show that the bulk of government-insured loans
(particularly FHA-insured loans ) were placed on new dwellings and
were, therefore, an important factor in stimulating postwar construc
tion.
In some cases the achievement of apparent improvement in the terms
on which mortgage credit is granted has involved the assumption of
substantial risk. For example, the move to complete amortization on
government-insured loans has been accomplished by extending the
terms of loans to untested lengths. Low down payments and relatively
slow amortization have enabled millions to purchase homes; at the
same time, the relatively small equities that borrowers using govern
ment-insured loans (particularly VA-guaranteed loans) have in their
homes subject lenders and insuring agencies to greater risk in the event
of a substantial decline in home prices. To some extent, the willingness
of lenders to make liberal, long-term, government-insured loans is
caused by increased governmental intervention in the secondary mort
gage market (F N M A ). Or, to turn to nonfinancial results of the gov
ernment programs, heavy emphasis on new construction may tend to
787
foster bliglit in the older sections of urban areas. However, as of 1050.
the positive accomplishments of these programs add to an impressive
total.
Data reviewed in this chapter suggest that the majority of govern ment-insured loans are made to moderate- to low-income borrowers for
the purchase of above-average priced homes 011 terms wThich are suffi
ciently liberal so as to establish a presumption that most loans will be
retirecl without difficulty. Below-average delinquency on these loans
in 1950 supports this tentative conclusion. Our data indicate that
lenders have maintained income requirements at approximately the
level found in the case of conventional loans. The relative infrequency
of refinancing and junior mortgage financing in the case of govern
ment-insured loans indicates that, in general, these loans have mer
the mortgage-credit needs of borrowers. It seems clear that the stand
ardized loan instrument and construction standards provided for in
these programs have speeded the development of a national secondary
mortgage market. Certainly, the widespread use of the V A and F H A
plans implies that they have met with borrower and lender approval,
(pp. 175-176)
Some of the earliest “sociological” writing 011 the subject of housing
was very much concerned with the substandard condition of housing
occupied by immigrant groups. Two women who worked with the
Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy— Grace P. Norton (1913)
and Natalie Walker (1915)— wrote about this subject and exhibited
deep concern over the “social problems” attributed to poor housing
conditions.
In subsequent years, the subject of housing was subjected to a more
objective and “scientific” approach. F. Stuart Chapin, in particular,
attempted to study housing experimentally. Chapin (1940,1947,1950)
examined such factors as family morale, social participation, and so
cial status, contrasting people in new housing projects with slumdwellers. He also looked into health conditions (e.g., tuberculosis
death rates) in relation to housing conditions. He was also one of the
first academic scholars to express concern over the possibly deleterious
effects of high density.
Other sociologists who were actively pursuing the subject in the
1940’s included Arnold M. Rose (1947, 1948), who was interested in
the living arrangements of urbanites who were not attached to a family
unit, and Svend Riemer (1941, 1943, 1945, 1947), who was especially
conscious of what sociologists might contribute to the planning of
homes, and who was concerned over the problem of rooip crowding
and loss of privacy for the individual.
In 1947, Louis Wirth published an essay on “Housing as a Field of
Sociological Research.” In it, he laid out a research agenda that has
yet to be fully completed. Sociologists have yet to follow through 011
his ideas, straightforward as they seem.
I cannot conclude this brief review of accomplished research on the
dwelling without mentioning the most valuable summary available
to us: the book by Glenn H. Beyer, Director of the Center for Hous
ing and Environmental Studies at Cornell University. The work is
Housing and Society (1965, rev. ed. 1967) and it summarizes a large
amount of academic and governmental research effort. In any case,
there is much more research available to us at the level of the neighbor
hood, and it is to this topic I shall now turn.
788
IIA . 2 . The Urban Neighborhood
Sociologists and other social scientists have been rather heavily
involved in studies of the urban neighborhood, in this country and
elsewhere, particularly in England. Much of the literature focuses on
housing conditions. A summary of some of this international research
is to be found in Suzanne Keller’s provocative book, The Urban
Neighborhood: A Sociological Perspective (1968), which is especially
valuable for its bibliography.
Actually, the scholarly emphasis on housing conditions in various
city neighborhoods dates back to the early part of this century, when
a number of “reformers” were very active in delineating areas of
poverty and “social problems” in great (and often quite boring) de
tail. The social survey movement in this country— modelled on Charles
Booth’s exemplary late 19th century research on London— brought
out many facts and even more numerous speculations about the de
velopment and impact of slums and other problem areas of the city.
(See Pfautz, 1967, especially the introductory essay on Booth by the
editor.) A good example in this country is the six-volume Pittsburgh
Survey led by Paul Kellogg.
However, the first “modern” and “scientific” exploration of the
American urban neighborhood was probably that conducted by Rod
erick Duncan McKenzie, a student of city life immersed in the nascent
development of “the Chicago School” of human ecology. Published as
a monograph in 1923, The Neighborhood was a detailed study of “nat
ural arers” in the city of Columbus, Ohio. City ward data were in
geniously manipulated, and various parts of the study appeared in
the American Journal of Sociology in earlier years, 1921 and 1922.
( See Hawley, 1968, for an appreciation of McKenzie’s work; this col
lection of the latter ?s articles contains a representative excerpt from
the study of Columbus.)
The term “ghetto” is today used mainly to refer to black areas of
large cities. Wirth’s classic study— The Ghetto (1928)— was concerned
exclusively with the Jewish ghetto. He reviewed the origin of the
ghetto as an institution, focusing on Frankfort, which he regarded
as a typical ghetto, and after two brief chapters concerned with the
“Jewish type” and the “Jewish mind,” saw the Jewish-American ghet
to as undergoing dissolution. Roughly two-thirds of his book is con
cerned with Jews in America, with a heavy emphasis on the Chicago
area. This work, non-quantitative in character, still stands as a useful
background study for current efforts to understand the general prob
lem of segregation, voluntary or forced, and the emergence of so-called
“natural areas,” or neighborhoods that have been formed on the basis
of economic class or ethnic or religious status.
Another classic in the Chicago sociological tradition is the work on
The Gold Coast and the Slum by Harvey W . Zorbaugh. This study
of Chicago, published in 1929, is a fascinating inquiry, juxtaposing
Chicago’s so-called Gold Coast with the adjacent near northside slum
areas, and the areas known as Towner Town and Little Hell.
Paul Hatt, among others, objected to the approach of the Chicago
sociologists employing the concept of “natural areas.” (Hatt, 1946) He
brought forward what he took to be evidence for the sub-areas of
Seattle that seemed to him to contradict the Chicago School’s division
of the city into definitely-bounded “community areas.” While not en
789
tirely convincing, Hatt is still worth reading because he does show the
difficulty— from a social-psychological standpoint, at least—of carving
up the community’s total territory into distinct and somehow unchang
ing neighborhoods.
Still another influential early work was that of Caroline Ware, who
studied Greenwich Village in the early 1930’s. (Ware, 1935) This
study— as much a work in urban history as a sociological investiga
tion— is widely regarded as a minor classic. It focussed on the 1920-30
decade, and was an intensive investigation of one sub-community that
shows the history, ecology, demography, and life-style of this famous
neighborhood.
Two studies that were concerned with the problem of neighborhood
invasion and succession are the well-known articles by Cressey (1938)
and Ford (1950). Examining Chicago again, Cressey tried to recon
struct for 1898 and 1930 just what the situation was with respect to
change in ethnic neighborhoods over time, while Ford updated the
Cressey study to 1940, stressing the impact of the Great Depression of
the 1930’s. Thus the Cressey study has been replicated, and would
be well worth updating even today. Ford covered most of the major
ethnic groups in Chicago, and the longitudinal reconstruction that he
made is a contribution to the study of neighborhood change in urban
areas.
Completed Worh on Neighborhoods Published in the 19-60’s.— The
format chosen here is a kind of “book-of-the-year” selection of influen
tial research monographs, although an occasional article will be men
tioned.
The relevant research of the 1960?s began with an important work
by Beverly Duncan and Philip M. Hauser. Entitled Housing a Me
tropolis— Chicago (1960), the volume first undertakes a comparative
analysis of the housing inventory in Chicago and five other large
Standard Metropolitan Areas (SM A ’s). These materials were drawn
from a survey of metropolitan housing in the United States, called The
National Housing Inventory, during December 1956 and January
1957; the Bureau of the Census carried out this survey. Special mate
rials were made available for the Chicago area, which was over
sampled, and additional questions were asked on the survey instrument.
This study is broader than the earlier housing research literature
which tended to focus on single facets of housing or which dealt with
single segments of the population at large. The authors analyze dif
ferentials in quality, availability, and price of metropolitan housing,
exploring these in relation to such factors as income, race, age, recency
of immigration, and stage of the f amily life cycle.
There are many interesting and useful findings. For example, the
authors found that while one third of the older persons who live alone
occupy substandard dwellings, fully a third of the younger persons
living also also occupy such housing. They also discovered that land
lords of substandard dwellings obtain a “bonus” for renting to nonwhites ; this amounted to about $15 per month in the period covered
bv the survey. Another striking finding, discovered by means of sta
tistical analysis, is that only one-sixth of the variation among house
holds in rent is accounted for by differences in income.
This study is relatively unique because it displays what can be done
by cooperation between academic research and a local community. The
790
monograph was a product of the cooperative research program betweenthe Chicago Community Inventory of the University of Chicago
and governmental agencies of the City of Chicago. Unlike the situa
tion in many other communities, the Chicago Community Inventory
performs general statistical, research, and service functions for the
Department of City Planning and is also available for special studies.
The authors summarize their findings in an “overview” of the volume
(Chapter I) :
On the substantive side, the major topics treated in the monograph are pat
terns of change in the size and composition of metropolitan housing inventories
during the 1950’s, the relationship of income to housing, differentials in the hous
ing of whites and nonwhites, and the housing of families at different stages of
the family life cycle. Several critical housing problems confronting the metropolis
are illuminated by these analyses. For example, there is concern that the
demolition entailed in urban renewal will exacerbate the depression and warinduced housing shortage in metropolitan areas. It is relevant that although
about 4 per cent of the 1950 housing inventory had been demolished or otherwise
lost in the post-1950 period, the number of available vacancies increased between
1950 and 1956 in each of the nation’s six largest metropolitan centers. Housing
the growing nonwhite population of metropolitan centers is another problem
faced by the metropolis. It is shown that, at least in the case of Chicago, dis
crimination in the housing market as well as residential segregation aggravates
the problem. There is the perennial problem of providing adequate shelter for the
lower-income groups— white as well as nonwhite. . . . Finally, there is the
emergent problem of housing our rapidly increasing aged population. Growing
concern with this problem is evident throughout the nation. The data, at least
for Chicago, show that some of the opinions held on the inferior housing con
ditions of the aged are unfounded; and they provide a factual basis for the
consideration and solution of such problems as there are. (pp. 5-6)
This study although based primarily on materials for Chicago and thus neces
sarily affected by the unique aspects of the Chicago situation, nevertheless has a
number of generic implications. Comparative analysis of patterns of change in
the housing inventory of the six largest SMA’s and two cities brings out striking
inter-area similarities. Insofar as differences are observed, they typically hinge
on the differential rates of new construction.
In general, the housing situation in these metropolitan areas improved between
1950 and the close of 1956 both quantitatively and qualitatively. The available
vacancy rate more than doubled in the Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia
SMA’s and increased by a fifth in the New York SMA. In the Los Angeles SMA,
the available vacancy rate fell by a sixth: but in both years it was above the
metropolitan average. The proportion of the housing inventory classified sub
standard dropped by a third to a half in each SMA except New York, where
a decrease of a twelfth was observed. Loosening of the housing market and
upgrading of the housing supply also are evident in the cities. The available
vacancy rate doubled in Chicago and tripled in Philadelphia. The proportion sub
standard fell by a third in each city. (pp. 7-8)
At the risk of misleading the reader, I shall continue selectively to
quote from the Duncan-Hauser overview chapter. They note that:
A few comments about the areas for which statistics are available seem in
order. The SMA’s differ greatly in date of settlement, residential maturity, popu
lation density, and other factors which are likely to be associated with the
composition of the housing inventory and changes therein. The number of areas
for which data are available is too small, however, to “control” for such
differences. . . .
Growth of the housing inventory and area growth differentials are accounted
for primarily by the volume of new construction. In both the SMA’s and the
cities, about 92 percent of the dwellings which existed in 1950 remained intact
in the 1956 housing inventory. Some 2 percent of the 1950 dwellings had been
demolished in the seven-year period. Four percent of the 1950 dwellings were
involved in merger or conversion. However, losses through merger were offset
by additions through conversion, and jointly merger and conversion processes
had a negligible effect on the size of the housing industry. Losses by “other
791
means” generally were offset by additions from “other sources.” Thus, the rate
at which an area’s housing inventory grew depended almost wholly on the local
rate of residential construction. . . .
Standard [as opposed to “substandard” ] housing increased by nearly half in the
Los Angeles SMA, roughly a third in Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, and at
least a sixth in the Boston and New York SMA’s. Increases in standard dwellings
of nearly a sixth are reported in the cities. In each area, new construction was the
chief source of increase in standard housing. Upgrading of dwellings which
existed in 1050 contributed a smaller, but nonetheless noteworthy, number of
units to the supply of standard housing in each area except the New York SMA,
where a net downgrading of the 1950 inventory apparently occurred.
Substandard housing was reduced by a third or more in the Chicago, Detroit,
Los Angeles, and Philadelphia SMA’s and by over a fourth in Boston. In the
New York SMA, however, the supply of substandard housing may have increased
slightly. In both the cities of Chicago and Philadelphia, substandard dwellings
decreased by almost a third. Substandard dwellings merged, demolished, or
otherwise lost to the inventory were somewhat more numerous than substandard
dwellings added through conversion or new construction. . . .
The change processes— in particular, new construction— accounted for most
of the increase in standard housing. In the case of substandard housing, the
change processes jointly resulted in moderate decreases in each area. The up
grading, or in the case of New York downgrading, of the existing housing supply
was of primary importance in changing the supply of substandard housing.
Home ownership became more prevalent in each area between 1950 and 1956.
Accounting for this increase were primarily new construction and to a lesser ex
tent tenure-occupancy shifts within the existing housing supply. Rental housing
decreased both as a proportion of the total inventory and in volume in the Bos
ton, Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia SMA’s. In the Los Angeles and New
York SMA’s, the proportion of renters decreased, although the supply of rental
housing increased. In each city, both the number and proportion of renters de*
creased, (pp. 8-10)
The available statistics on residential mobility indicate that over four-fifths
of the moves which terminate in these metropolitan areas involve a change of
dwelling within the same SMA rather than in-movement to the SMA from other
areas. Vacancies occurring in the city appear most likely to be filled by city resi
dents, whereas vacancies occurring in the ring are more likely to be filled by
residents of the suburban ring. This suggests the existence of a “city housing
market” and a “ring housing market” within the metropolitan market. . . .
[ S ] ome housing and family characteristics which vary with income may be
noted. As family income increases, increases are observed in : prevalence of home
ownership; the proportion of normal families, those which comprise married
couples and their relatives; the size of the average family. As family income in
creases, decreases are observed in : prevalence of substandard housing; the pro
portion of nonwhite families; the proportion of families headed by persons 65
and over----- (pp. 11-12)
Some 15,000 standard dwellings available in public-housing projects mitigate
the housing situation of lower-income families. Although such units comprise
only 1 per cent of the city’s housing supply, 10 per cent of all standard dwellings
rented by lower income families lie within the projects. Families in the projects,
as compared with other lower-income renters, are likely to be nonwhite, to be
large, to include minor children, and to consist of an atypical family group.
A loose relationship between rent and income on a household basis is indicated
by the finding that only a sixth of the variation among households in rent is
accounted for by differences among them in income. Households paying the same
rent vary substantially in their income, and households with the same income
pay a wide range of rents. There is, nonetheless, a strong average tendency for
rent to increase as income increases and, conversely, for income to increase as
rent increases. These relationships, along with the nature of the data, lead to
an average tendency for the rent/income ratio to decrease as income increases
and to increase as rent increases, (pp. 12-13)
During the past two decades, Chicago’s nonwhite population has grown rap
idly while the white population has decreased somewhat. During the 1940’s, the
rapid in-migration of nonwhites coupled with a housing shortage encouraged
doubling up of nonwhite families and other somewhat irregular living ar
rangements ____
81-745— 72— pt. 2--------16
792
Nonwhites in Chicago pay rentals more or less equivalent to those paid by
whites and can do so only by allocating larger proportions of their income
to housing. Although in the 1950’s, the housing of nonwhite renters improved
more than that of white renters, the proportion of nonwhites in substandard
housing still is at least double that for whites. This white-nonwhite differential
is accounted for not by differences in the rents paid by white and nonwhite
families but by the fast that nonwhite families receive less “quality” per
dollar spent on housing than do white families. When white and nonwhite
families paying the same rent are compared, the nonwhite families consistently
have a higher proportion in substandard dwellings. There is no evidence that
the non-whites “sacrifice” quality for space. They get less desirable housing
but apparently no more housing space for a given rental than do white families.
Differences in the economic status and composition of white and nonwhite
families also fail to account for their differential in housing quality.
Residential discrimination against nonwliites can be inferred from the finding
that nonwhites pay significantly more than whites for housing of roughly
equivalent quality and spaciousness. Such discrimination is evident among fam
ilies living in the Chicago areas for at least two years as well as among recent
in-migrants. Given the high degree of nonwhite residential segregation in
Chicago, white and nonwhite households may be competing in separate housing
markets. If so, the heavy demand in the nonwhite housing market engendered
by nonwhite population increase may produce residential discrimination as well
as “piling up” or congestion in nonwhite residential areas.
By and large, nonwhites gained additional housing by taking up occupancy
in dwellings formerly occupied by whites rather than by occupying new dwellings.
Although large numbers of dwelling units were “turning over” from white to
nonwhite occupancy, very few dwellings reverted from nonwhite to white
occupancy. This also suggests separate white and nonwhite housing markets.
Although new construction was concentrated in the outlying sections of the
city, increases in vacant dwellings and improvement in housing quality ocurred
in all parts of the city during the 1950’s. At the end of 1956, however, housing
conditions still were less favorable in the central than in the peripheral areas.
In the outlying parts, housing tended to be newer and in better condition and
to provide more adequate facilities. “Family living” also appears more prevalent
in the outlying areas, for the rate of home ownership is high and households
are likely to be large and to consist of normal families.
Both white and nonwhite residential areas are found in the central, more
deteriorated section of the city. Housing conditions generally appear more
desirable in the white areas. . . . (pp. 14-16)
Families typically undergo a series of stages, termed the “family life cycle,”
the major elements of which may be described as formation, expansion, contrac
tion, and dissolution. Substandard housing is widespread among young couples,
becomes less prevalent as the family passes through its expanding phase, and
then rises slightly among older couples whose children have left the parental
home. On the other hand, home ownership, occupancy of single-family homes, and
occupancy of newly built units become more frequent as the family expands and
then becomes slightly less frequent as the family contracts. On the economic side,
the pattern of change is more complicated. The situation perhaps is most acute for
younger couples with pre-school children. Their need for spacious housing of rela
tively good quality must be met from a relatively limited income. . . .
Households which include an older person are no more likely to live in sub
standard housing than are other households. It is true that a thir'd of the older
persons living alone and a fourth of those living with nonrelatives live in sub
standard dwellings, but the proportions substandard are equally high among the
dwellings of younger persons living alone or with nonrelatives. The current in
come of older families and older persons lining alone is lower than that of the
younger, and the ratios of rent to current income among the old are relatively
high. However, current income may be a poor indicator of the financial status of
older households and tend to overstate their economic disadvantage. No informa
tion is available on the financial status of elderly persons who share the dwelling
of younger relatives, but it should be noted that the families which include
elderly relatives have current incomes well above those of other families,
(pp. 16-18)
793
1961 saw the appearance of an important theoretical work: The
Emerging City: Myth and Reality, by Scott Greer. The changing
city is viewed as but one manifestation of a massive transformation
in social organization, a shift toward an enormous increase in orga
nizational “scale.” One possible outcome, according to Greer, is that
the city (as we know it) will become obsolete, and that we are in the
process of creating “communities of limited liability.”
Building upon survey research conducted within the framework of
“social area analysis,” a variant of simple factor analysis and a theory
of the city as well, Greer gives particular attention to what he per
ceives as “the community of limited liability.’7 He distinguishes four
levels of organization in urban residential areas— household, neigh
borhood, residential community, and municipality. He asserts that
different combinations of involvement in these structures yield three
key “social types” : these are the “isolates,” the “neighbors,” and the
“ community actors.” It is his estimate based 011 survey research in St.
Louis, that 90 per cent of the population falls into one or another of
these “social types.”
Isolates are those who are literally disengaged from the organizational struc
ture of their geographical space in the city; they operate as neighbors little if
at all, and they belong to none of the voluntary organizations in the area. They
are spiritual Emigres from the local community. They are poor voters; a majority
of them have never voted in a local election. Though a few read the local news
paper, they read it chiefly for advertisements; they are ignorant and incompetent
with respect to the local community’s affairs, generally unable to name local
personages of importance, and frequently not even aware that they live within
a municipality that holds elections. While they are somew’hat less apt to be
college graduates than the average, many of them are highly educated and well
paid— they simply do not opt for participation in the community.
Neighbors are those who are involved in the household and in the house
hold’s immediate social environment. Locally, they live in the small world of
casual interaction and family friendships. They are disproportionately made
up of younger families, and are most usually wives and mothers. Like the iso
lates, they participate at a low rate in local politics, and many of them have
never voted. They are most likely, however, to read the local newspaper than
the isolates, and somewhat more aware of the dramatis personae of the local
area, but much of the reading simply supplies ammunition for neighborly
gossip. For such individuals, the arena of social participation is limited : their
path through the social space of the locality stops short at the bounds of the
neighborly enclave.
Community actors are from all levels of education and occupation, are of all
ages and both sexes. They are those who are involved in the local area, through
membership in the local organizations, and are also a part of the communication
flow of the area, through neighboring or reading the local paper for local news
or both. They are likely (according to research carried out in St. Louis) to
be somewhat better educated than the others and somewhat older on the aver
age. However, they are as likely to be women as are the neighbors, and more
so than isolates. Here, in fact, are the active clubwomen who run their share of
the social organization in suburbia. But only half of them are women— men
also participate vigorously. Community actors supply a disproportionately large
part of the local electorate (about 70 per cent are local voters compared to 30
per cent of the isolates) and are by far the most knowledgeable type with respect
to local personages, leaders, and the electoral contests of the area. . . .
Thus, most of the public affairs in the community of limited liability are carried
on by a self-selected fraction of the population. When local voluntary organiza
tions are spokesmen for corporate interests, it is for the community actors they
:speak. The latter are also disproportionately important in the outcome of local
794
elections. But they are, in one sense, representatives of the total population.
Insofar as they have tlie same household, neighborhood, and community commit
ments as those who are isolated or confine their lives to the neighborhoods, their
actions stand for the whole community. They are virtual representatives. They
may not always represent these interests in an unbiased fashion, but their organi
zational advantage assures them a strong voice, collectively, in the polity of
the local area. They are a form of ruling class, a “Coxey’s army” drawn from
local businessmen and bureaucrats, small property owners, clubwomen, aspiring
young lawyers, and the League of Women Voters, (pp. 120-122)
The next significant work to make a major impact upon thinking
about h o u s in g and redevelopment was The Urban Villagers: Group
and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans* by Herbert J. Gans (1962).
Carried out under a contract with the National Institute of Mental
Health, U.S. Public Health Service, the book was an intensive investi
gation of Boston’s “West End.” Gans conducted a participant-obser
vation study focused on the native-born Americans of Italian parent
age who lived there among other ethnic groups. The area under investi
gation no longer exists; it was recognized as a “slum” in 1953 and was
ultimately torn down under the terms of the federal urban renewal
program between 1958 and 1960. It was converted by 1962 (at the time
of the publication of the book) to a luxury apartment house complex.
Gans lived in the area between October 1957 and May 1958, which was
just before the onset of redevelopment. Gans subsequently interviewed
the original residents of the area after they had become dispersed
throughout greater Boston. The focus of the effort was the “ wav of
life” of a low-income population. The work was especially oriented
to the needs of city planners, educators, social workers, public health
officials, those in public recreation, and (most importantly) doctors
of medicine and psychiatry— those whom Erich Lindemann has de
scribed as “caretakers.” As for housing, Gans gave a detailed charac
terization of the original housing stock, evaluated its condition, and
held up these data to the judgments of West Enders themselves. He
also took note of class differences in housing preferences, all adding up
to an intimate portrait of slum life.
The next work to be mentioned is another “classic” in the Chicago
tradition. I refer to Ethnic Patterns in American Cities (1963) by
Stanley Lieberson, who drew upon a massive body of census materials
in order to investigate residential segregation among ten important
immigrant groups in ten major urban areas during the period 19101950. Both first and second generation members of various ethnic
groups were examined via census data on Boston, Buffalo, Chicago,
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus (Ohio), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh,
St. Louis, and Syracuse. To one interested in housing, the significant
sections of this book deal with the ability of Negroes and whites to
compete for housing, the question of home ownership versus renting
(with close attention to the differences between ethnic groups and the
extent to which they own their own homes), and the effect of home
ownership patterns on residential segregation. Chapters 3 and 4 con
tain the heart of the housing analysis.
In the same year that Lieberson’s book appeared, a very influential
work was published by Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan—
two leading “urbanologists”— who attempted to trace the role of
ethnicity in the tumultuous, varied, endlessly complex life of New York
City.
795
It is time, we believe, that such an effort be made, albeit doomed inevitably to
approximation and to inaccuracy, and although it cannot but on occasion give
offense to those very persons for whom we have the strongest feelings of fellow
ship and common purpose. The notion that the intense and unprecedented mixture
of ethnic and religious groups in American life was soon to blend into a homoge
neous end product has outlived its usefulness, and also its credibility. In the
meanwhile the persisting facts of ethnicity demand attention, understanding,
and accommodation.
The point about the melting pot, as we say later, is that it did not happen.
At least not in New York and, mutatis mutandis, in those parts of America
which resemble in New York.
This is nothing remarkable. On the contrary, the American ethos is nowhere
better perceived than in the disinclination of the third and fourth generation
of newcomers to blend into a standard, uniform national type, (p. v)
Glazer and Moynihan have a great deal to say about housing and
neighborhoods.
The greatest gap by far between the conditions of life of New York’s popula
tion in general and the specific part of it that is Negro is to be found in housing.
Here is the greatest and most important remaining area of discrimination—
important in its extent, its real consequences, and its social and psychological
impact.
The Negro ghetto in New York City has not dissolved, either in Manhattan
nor in the other boroughs, for the poor or the well-to-do. The ghetto is not sur
rounded by a sharp line, and there is less sense of boundaries in New York than
there is in many other cities. But in each of the four main boroughs there is a
single concentrated area of Negro settlement, shading off at the edges to mixed
areas, which tend with the increase in Negro population to become as concentratedly Negro as the centers. If one looks at a map of New York City on
which the places of residence of the Negro population have been spotted, one will
find many areas with small percentages of Negroes, and it may look as if the
Negro population is spreading evenly though the city, is being “integrated.” But
a closer examination will reveal that these small outlying areas of Negro
population are generally areas with public housing projects, and the Negro
population is there because the housing projects are there. The projects in the
outlying boroughs are partly Negro islands in a white sea. (pp. 53-54)
1963 also witnessed the publication of an extremely interesting work
on Skid Row in American Cities by Donald J. Bogue. Quoting Bogue:
This research was undertaken as an experiment to learn ways of making social
science research more useful in the solution of modern social problems. The study
was undertaken initially as a Demonstration Project for the Urban Renewal
Administration, Housing and Home Finance Agency, under Section 314 of the
Housing Act of 1954. Two-thirds of the funds were contributed by the Urban
Renewal Administration and the one-third required by law to come from local
sources were kindly contributed by the Wieboldt Foundation of Chicago, (p. vii)
Bogue began his investigation early in the planning of this study
by addressing letters to responsible officials in all cities that had at
least 50,000 population. Bogue inquired whether a Skid Eow was
present in the city and, if so, where it was located. “In response to
these inquiries, and as a result of other explorations, Skid Eow de
velopments were reported or inferred for about 45 cities. The locations
o f the Skid Eow neighborhoods in each city were plotted on maps.5’
(p. 5)
The boundaries shown are approximate, or may have changed since 1959-60
when the data were gathered. In most cases, the boundaries were described by a
local observer (planning official, engineer, police official, or public or private
welfare agency head) who was familiar with the neighborhoods of his city.
In almost every case these areas are set in a much larger zone of blight and
physical deterioration. To dramatize the fact that Skid Row is only a part of
larger blighted zone, on the maps the entire census tracts containing the Skid
Row areas have also been shaded.
Reasonably exact boundaries were not obtainable for several cities known to
have Skid Rows, and maps for them could not be included. However, the author
believes that, except for these omissios, together these maps identify fairly
precisely those neighborhoods of which a wealthy nation and a prosperous com
munity might be expected to be most ashamed, (p. 17)
Bogue concludes that—
almost every American city of 500.000 or more has a Skid Row neighborhood.
Tendencies toward such a development are present in most (and possibly nearly
all) cities having 175.000 or more residents. Although there undoubtedly are
differences from one Skid Row to another, with each one being unique in some
way, the general characteristics of most Skid Rows are the same: poor housing,
occupied by familyless men living under conditions of great economic duress.
Chicago appears to have one of the largest Skid Row developments in the nation.
A tabulation of census data for a sample of Skid Row residents shows un
mistakably that they are a very divergent and depressed group, with high rates
of unemployment, incredibly low incomes, irregular employment, and low educa
tional status. Contrary to their reputation, they are not very migratory.
This is Skid Row as seen from a somewhat detached and external viewpoint.
What is Skid Row like to the many welfare workers, police, and others who
come into contact with this neighborhood every day ? What is Skid Row life like
to the various kinds of homeless men who live there? Is this a way of life they
chose and find satisfying? Is this a closely knit community wtih common orienta
tion and common values? What is the personality structure of these men? And
finally, what happens in the lives of men to cause them to take up residence
in such a neighborhood? These are the subjects of the next several chapters of
this book. (p. 17)
As a consequence of his interest in these questions. Bogue conducted
personal interviews, foil owing a lengthy interview schedule as a guide,
and proceeded to give o social psychological portrait of the inhabitants
of this sort of “unusual housin.qr area. While it was essentially a case
study of Chicago’s Skid Row, I agree with the author that many of his
generalizations conhi be extended to areas of homeless men in other
cities of the United States. From personal observation, T am of the
opinion that Bogue’s generalizations tend to hold for Providence,
CJeveland, Cincinnati, Madison, Milwaukee, and San Francisco.
A general treatise on slum neighborhoods was published in 1964 by
David R. Hunter. Entitled The Ftfvms: Challenge and Response, the
book deals with almost every aspect of slum life that one could think
of— education, housing, race relations, and poverty. One of the most
valuable parts of the bool: is an outline of a specific program of action
that might be implemented on a city, state, or federal level. With re
spect to housing per se. Hunter observes that,
Slum housing includes both buildings that hove deteriorated from their orig
inal livable state and buildings that never were fit for human habitation. There
are not so many of the latter any more in the cities. There are plenty in the rural
slums, particularly in the South. This type of building was typified by the “old
law tenement” of New York (there are still over 50,000 of them), which has inside
rooms with no ventilation at all. minimnl sanitary facilities, little light, and is
constructed of combustible materials throughout.
Today in the big cities most of the buildings in the slums once were fairly
decent, and could be made so again. In 1960. there were 3.684,000 urban slum
housing units. Of these, 1,173,000 were “dilapidated urban units’’ by the stand
ard definition used in the 1960 census.
The remaining 2,511,000 were urbnn housing units locking some or all plumb
ing facilities. In this urban slum housing, at least 12.5 million people lived. This
was calculated on the basis of 3.36 persons per household, the average for the
United Stares. Urban households tend to he somewhat smaller than the general
average, but urban slum households tend to be larger than the general urban
average. Therefore, this is a reasonable basis for estimating the number of peo
ple living in slums. The figure has to bQ estimated because it was not counted,
as such, in the 1960 census. (Hunter, pp. 31-82)
Perhaps the most interesting analysis published in 1964 was The
Future of Old Neighborhoods: Rebuilding for a Changing Popula
tion, by the economist and planner Bernard J. Frieden. Frieden ana
lyzed data from three cities, New York, Los Angeles, and Hartford.
As he observed,
Many square miles of our cities consist of old neighborhoods where popula
tion decline appears imminent or has already begun. To recent analysts, these are
the “gray areas” of obsolescent housing destined to be vacated at an increasing
rate in the near future. In their view, the old residential structures are rap
idly outliving their usefulness and will shortly be ready for clearance and re
placement. Further, according to this interpretation, economic and social forces
are operating inexorably both to destroy the present usefulness of these parts
of the city and to block efforts to rebuild them as new residential communities.
What is the nature of this hypothetical process that seems to ensure indefinite
stagnation in the old residential areas? Changing public taste is expected to
bring about a rapid obsolescence of buildings constructed to the standards of
past generations, while the buildings themselves deteriorate with age. Residents
will move out, leaving behind a set of partially occupied buildings. These semiabandoned structures are at the base of the gray areas hypothesis: their con
tinued presence is expected to constitute a severe liability to the land they oc
cupy. It is argued on the basis of current experience that such land can be
cleared only at a high cost, for old structures are expensive to acquire despite
their waning utilization.
This study will take issue with the basic perspective of the gray areas hypoth
esis and with many of its supporting assumptions. As a diagnosis of current
trends, the gray areas view accurately identifies the direction of changes now
under way. But it exaggerates the rate of change and thus leads to an illfounded notion of the under-utilization of older residential neighborhoods, with
undesirable implications for public policy. The gray areas view thus poses a
premature issue: how to accomplish the large-scale rebuilding of declining areas.
These areas serve vital social purposes and will probably continue to do so for
the next two decades: they provide housing for the poor and for the migrants
now streaming into urban regions.
American cities have long been acquainted with migrations of the poor and
the unassimilated. Traditionally, the big city has absorbed wave after wave of
immigrant groups into American society. Although foreign immigration has now
been reduced to a trickle, the movement of Negroes from the rural South to
the central cities of the North presents a continuing challenge to public policy.
The assimilation of newcomers is still an urgent problem in the city, and decent
low-eost housing is a key requirement. The task of the next twenty years in most
of our large cities is more properly one of renovating and preserving the old
houses in order to prolong their usefulness during a period when they will be
needed. Deteriorated areas that are truly ripe for clearance should he measured
by the acre rather than by the square mile. The argument for selective clearance
and gradual renewal . . . can be summarized briefly here.
Recent experience also suggests that desirable building sites will be available
at a lower cost on vacant outlying land. Suburban sites are the overwhelmingly
popular choice for new housing, and little evidence is at hand to suggest a sharp
reversal of this trend. For most people in search of new housing, the attractions
of the suburbs remain compelling, and a steadily growing metropolitan highway
network promises to open up an increasing supply of surban land with good
accessibility to jobs and services.
The gray areas, in comparison, seem to offer few present or potential advan
tages. The central location of most of these areas was formerly a considerable
asset for their development, but with the outward spread of jobs and services
and with improved highway access to the suburbs, central locations no longer
play a dominant role in the housing market. While a limited number of people
want to live near the center and are willing to pay enough for their housing to
compensate for high land costs, the vast majority of those in the market for
new housing choose suburban dwellings.
Thus, the gray areas argument constitutes both an explanation of current
population decline with its concomitant lack of newT construction and a predic
tion of more widespread abandonment and stagnation in the coming decades.
The argument rests on assumptions— drawn largely from current experience—
798
about cost differentials between built-up and vacant land and assumptions about
tlie extent of housing demand for inner locations. . . .
The use of old residential neighborhoods is closely linked to migration into
urban areas. In the 1950's, record numbers of central-city residents moved out to
the suburbs, leaving unoccupied living space in the older areas. At the same
time migrants from the South and from Puerto Rico, like their counterparts
from Europe fifty years ago. settled into old sections of the central city.
Migration alone did not refill the vacant dwellings. High birth rates increased
the size of minority groups already in the cities, and other families undoubled
or moved into more spacious quarters. . . .
Housing in the declining areas is by no means uniformly substandard. Many
of the structures do not conform to the tastes of the middle class today, but
only a small proportion are seriously deteriorated or lack basic facilities. More
over, much of the old housing has been improved. Private renovation in the
1950’s upgraded a sizable proportion of formerly substandard units by combin
ing small quarters into larger units and by installing new plumbing equipment.
Since this housing is still very much in demand, any general clearance program
would create considerable hardship unless alternate low-cost housing were pro
vided. These circumstances argue for limited clearance efforts to a scale con
sistent with the supply of vacant low-cost housing and removing only dilapidated
or clearly substandard structures. (Frieden, 1964, pp. 2-5)
In Chapter 6, Frieden completes his analysis with a consideration
of “policies for rebuilding.” He sets out alternatives for public action,
and in a direct fashion.
The rebuilding of cities is now a matter of general public concern. Both the
federal government and the cities are heavily involved in problems of housing
and the future of declining neighborhoods, but the development of public policies
that link housing concerns with rebuilding programs is a difficult task. . . .
If public policies are to serve broad social goals, there can be little justifica
tion for clearing away houses as long as they have a useful function. Big-city
experience in the 1950’s has demonstrated that the term “gray areas’’— with its
implications of abandonment and disuse— is a misnomer for the old neighbor
hoods. These areas serve rather as zones of passage for low-income groups new
to urban life, and for other residents unable to afford higher rents or not yet pre
pared to leave the social surroundings of the old communities. Under present
conditions, the large-scale clearance of aging neighborhoods deprives people of
valuable housing resources and in many cases brings on further hardship by up
rooting people who have strong ties to a local community.
Despite the evident need for old housing, many cities have already cleared
large residential areas for urban redevelopment projects. The search for addi
tional real estate taxes, the political value of physical symbols of progress,
aesthetic objections to decaying neighborhoods, and the application of current
housing standards to structures built 50 or more years ago are rationales for
such clearance programs. But the adverse social and political consequences of
harnessing rebuilding policies to these approaches have become increasingly evi
dent, and policy changes are clearly in order.
If the objective of public policy is to clear only surplus housing, what can be
done with the declining neighborhoods? Major alternatives are:
1. Leave these areas untouched until they are virtually abandoned, then ac
quire the properties at reduced prices, clear them, and rebuild the cleared sites
for new purposes.
2. Rebuild these areas gradually, replacing the old housing in small parcels as
vacancy rates rise.
The first alternative raises serious problems of maintaining public services
during the lengthy period of abandonment and dislocating remaining residents
after population falls to a low level. The second is more difficult to achieve, but
avoid? these problems. Although neither alternative would force occupants of
the old housing to leave in the near future, the first would eventually displace
those that remained, and past experience suggests that a large number will re
main even after occupancy has declined for many years. In addition, a gradual
rebuilding will offer some people a chance to find new housing without leaving
the community, and will widen the choices available to nonresidents who are in
the market for new housing (pp. 120-121)
799
In 1965 certainly the most valuable contribution of the year was
Negroes in Cities by Karl and Alma Taeuber. This monograph con
sists of two parts: a comparative analysis of patterns of Negro resi
dential segregation in the United States, and series of detailed case
studies of racial-residential succession and neighborhood change. The
first part provides valuable and comprehensive data on levels of segre
gation for 207 American cities in 1960. In addition, it is important
that measures are provided f,or 1940, 1950, and 1960 for 109 cities,
permitting some analysis of historical trends. Variables such as the
absolute and relative sizes of the nonwhite population are introduced
as factors that might explain variations in the level of segregation.
Much of the second part of the monograph makes use of a quantified
typology of neighborhoods— established Negro areas, areas of consoli
dation, stable areas, and areas of displacement. The focus is on such
diverse cities as Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, St. Louis,
Washington, Baltimore, Atlanta, Birmingham, and Memphis. In ad
dition there is an extremely valuable technical appendix on the statis
tical measurement of residential segregation, the most comprehensive
and enlightening in the research literature.
As a kind of footnote to the Taeuber volume on Negroes in Cities,
a graduate student and I were able to confirm the traditional impres
sion that older Southern cities are less residentially segregated along
racial lines than newer ones. (Schnore and Evenson, 1966) We used
the Taeuber and Taeuber data for 1960. It will be sufficient to quote the
abstract from the article:
The existing literature on Southern cities suggests that the older ones are less
segregated residentially than the newer ones. This generalization, however, has
been based mainly on case studies of individual cities and upon impressionistic
observations. This study examines current (1960) levels of residential segre
gation by color in 76 Southern cities and finds that the popular generalization
tends to be true. The historical pattern of “back yard” residency, which emerged
in the ante helium South under slavery, has apparently survived into the present,
despite the passing of 100 years. Even when other relevant variables are con
trolled, there continues to be a negative association between age of the city and
current level of segregation, (p. 58)
Reynolds Farley and Karl E. Taeuber have subsequently tried to
estimate the chancing situation of thirteen lanre cities in “Population
Trends and Residential Segregation Since 1960.” (Farley and Taeu
ber, 1968) Using census tract data in cities of at least 100,000 which
had Negro populations of at least 9,000, they discovered that ( 1 ) the
percentage of Negroes rose in all but one of the thirteen cities; the
exception was Shreveport, where the per cent Negro remained the
same (23.4 per cent). They also discovered that (2) from “11 of the
13 cities there was a substantial net out-migration of whites in the
post-1960 period” (p. 953). (3) “Migration losses were proportionately
greatest among whites aged 20 to 29 at the start of the period. The
30- to 39-year-olds also had high migration losses, and the 0- to 9-vearolds migrated along with their parents” (p. 953). Moreover, ( 4 ) “Ne
gro population is growing rapidly, but natural increase rather than
net in-migration increasingly is the principal source” (p. 956). This
is largelv a function of the younger age structure among urban Ne
groes. “Differential natural increase and white out-migration from
cities are sufficient for continued increases in Negro percentages re
SCO
gardless of the pace of Negro migration to cities” (p. 954). Finally,
(5) they discerned “a pattern of increasing racial segregation. Only
in Fort Wayne and Sacramento did Negroes and non-Negroes become
less segregated from one another during the early 1960’s. There is no
evidence in these data of an acceleration or even continuation of the
trend toward decreasing segregation observed for northern cities from
1950-60. . . . The concentration of whites in the suburbs and Negroes
in the central cities is continuing. . . . The combination of small in
creases in residential segregation and large increases in the Negro
percentage has greatly intensified the magnitude of the problems of
segregation and desegregation of neighborhoods, local institutions and
schools.” (pp. 955-956)
Perhaps the most significant work published in 1966 was Harlem:
The Making of a Ghetto, by Gilbert Osofsky, a social historian. While
he concentrates on the period 1890-1930, Osofsky provides historical
background for the understanding of the development of Harlem
as a black slum. In the early 19th century, it appears, Harlem was an
idyllic area of meadows, woods, and brooks. By the end of the 19th
century, however, it had become Manhattan’s first suburb, an exclu
sively upper- and upper-middle class community. Its broad tree-lined
streets and spacious homes, according to Osofsky, set a tone of dis
tinction and elegance in the community. He then goes on to describe
and analyze the importance of the migration of Negroes into Harlem
from the South, from Greenwich Village, and from the “Terrible
Tenderloin,” which was the site of the infamous race riot of 1900.
White residents of Harlem, by this time, had organized to resist the
“black hordes” of invaders. But Osofsky makes clear that by the
1920*s, Harlem had become a wretched slum, filled with despair and
poverty: needless to say, it has remained so ever since.
Osofsky sketches the situation in the 19th century, as a backdrop for
the developments of the 20th century:
Throughout the nineteenth century most Negroes lived in the poorest work
ing-class sections of the city. Negro neighborhoods wT
ere traditionally located
in the less attractive residential areas on the outskirts of Manhattan Island,
or along the east and west sides near the waterfronts— the sections doomed to
become slums by the unimaginative grid pattern of urban planning instituted in
1S11. Here Negroes lived apart in generally rundown quarters because of their
poverty and were further separated from other working-class families in these
neighborhoods on the basis of color. Within this pattern, however, w’as a built-in
source of instability. New York was a rapidly expanding city throughout the
nineteenth century and, as its population grew, new neighborhoods came into
existence. What wras the periphery of town or a slum for one generation was not
necessarily the same for the next. As the city moved northward, so did the princi
pal places of Negro residence.
In the early nineteenth century New York Negroes generally lived in the Five
Points district, on the site of the present City Hall and in the blocks surround
ing it. which were then considered “wTell uptown.’’ The Sixth Ward, which en
compassed most of the Five Points, was a heavily populated working-class neigh
borhood: the Negro section within it was popularly caHed “ Stagg Town*’ or
‘•Negro Plantations.” This was the first place of major settlement of New’ York’s
freed slaves, (p. 9)
By the 1830’s the Negro population of Five Points began to decline. Some
Negroes continued to live there until the end of the century, but it essentially
became a backwash community as the majority of [black] people moved north
and west into Greenwich Village. A survey made of Five Points in 1860 found it
to be an overwhelmingly Irish district. There were only a few hundred Negroes
left there. . . . Between 1880 and 1890, however, their numbers began to decline.
At the turn of the century they had dwindled to 1,000. In 1920, the few hundred
SOI
Negroes of Greenwich Village were janitors living in basements of tenements
that housed whites, or tenants in the very few houses still occupied by colored
people, (pp. 11-12)
At the turn of the century most Negroes lived in what would be the present-day
midtown area, on a wide range of blocks between Twentieth and Sixty-third
Streets. Although there were sections of Negro concentration within this area,
no single large neighborhood was an all-Negro community. Handfuls of small
and densely populated ghettos, usually a block or two in length, were found
throughout Manhattan Island, on the east and west sides, from Greenwich
Village to Harlem and even further north. Thirty-seventh and Fifty-eighth
Streets, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, for example, were Negro blocks.
They were surrounded by white people, and the majority of whom were first
and second-generation Irish and German immigrants, (p. 13)
But what about Harlem as the principal site of black residence?
Osofsky makes it clear that sheer Negro population increase was a
critical factor.
Between 1890 and 1900 the Negro population of the city expanded by 25,000
people and both these new neighborhoods [The Tenderloin and San Juan Hill]
were a response to the demand for more Negro living space. As Negroes moved
in whites moved to more desirable residences in upper Manhattan. When New
York City built its elevated lines on the West Side in the late nineteenth century
another stimulant for movement was created. The clatter and noise of the new
trains made for less than pleasant living, and those who could afford it moved
out. Apartments were taken over by Negroes (“The Choicest Apartments in the
City for Select Colored Families” ), many recent southern migrants, who were
forced to accept second-class accommodations at first-class prices. Of the twentyseven ethnic groups in the neighborhood, Negroes paid the highest rents— gen
erally two to five dollars per month more than others, (p. 13)
Since the end of the Civil War there was a steady but small movement of
Negroes northward. It averaged 41,378 persons for each decade between 1870
and 1890. In the following ten years, however, the migration more than dou
bled as at least 107,796 southern Negroes moved north and west. The Negro
populations of the States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Illinois increased
some two and a half times between 1890 and 1910 and that of New York almost
tripled. In 1910, New York City was the second largest Negro urban center in
America (just behind Washington, D.C.) ; Philadelphia was fifth; and Chicago
eighth. By 1920, they were ranked first, second and fourth respectively. A total
of some 200,000 Negroes migrated from the South and to the North and West,
primarily to cities, between 1890 and 1910. In the decade 1900-1910, for the first
time since their establishments as States in the early nineteenth century,
Mississippi and Louisiana lost Negro population through emigration, (p. 18)
The most important f actor underlying the establishment of Harlem as a Negro
community was the substantial increase of Negro population in New York City”
in the years 1890-1914. That Harlem became the specific center of Negro settle
ment was the result of circumstance: that some section of the city was destined
to become a Negro ghetto was the inevitable consequence of the Negro’s migration
from the South. This pre-World War I population movement, the advance guard
of the Great Migration (as the movement of Negroes during the First World War
is generally called), laid the foundations for present-day Negro communities in
Chicago and Philadelphia as well. These were the formative years for the de
velopment of Negro communities throughout the North.
In spite of the high Negro death rate, the colored population increased by “leaps
and bounds” in New York City in the early twentieth century. By 1910 there were
91,709 Negroes in the metropolis, the majority southern-born. (p. 17)
The possibilities for such movement resulted from two basic changes in
American life. One was the overwhelming industrial expansion of the late nine
teenth century. The Industrial Revolution created economic opportunities for
rural people, Negro and white, and both migrated to industrial and urban centers
in the North. For the Negro, hedged about by union restrictions and racial
antagonism, employment was usually found in the fringe jobs that an industrial
and commercial society creates— as janitors, elevator operators, general labor
ers of all kinds, longshoremen, servants. Negro women almost always worked as
domestics. During periods of labor disputes, Negroes were commonly found among
the strikebreakers.
80*2
There was, however, an added factor that influenced Negro migration and dis
tinguished it from the general rural migration to cities. Why, it might be asked,
had Negroes not moved in similar numbers in response to industrialization in
the 1870’s— the period of great social upheaval and dislocation that followed the
destruction of slavery? The answer undoubtedly lies in an understanding of the
differences between the slave and post-slave generations. The Negroes wTho came
north now were the first descendants of former slaves. They had listened to
tales of slavery, gentle and harsh, but had not experienced and lived its blight—
the denial of full manhood. . . .
Those who migrated to the North in the 1890’s were a new generation. Many
Negroes no longer felt any strong attachment to the soil. They could at least con
ceive of life in a new and different way. For some, the discontented and restless,,
there was now both the ability and willingness to move. They left a South in:
which their futures were sealed, (pp. 23-24)
As noted above, Osofsky describes two sections— The Tenderloin
and San Juan Hill— as the most heavily populated by blacks in the
1890?s. He then goes on to describe the mass migration of blacks out
of the South of the 20th century; this movement had important im
plications for the development of a large ghetto: Harlem. There were
only a few discerning analysts who were aware of the new shift in
Negro migration in the 1890?s. (Among them were Frederick J. Brown
and W . E. B. DuBois.) But by the first decade of the 20th century,
the migration was well-recognized on all sides, and has been widely
recognized by students of ecology and race relations ever since.
In a volume published in 1967, Allan Spear explored the history o f
Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920. Spear ex
plored the history of this major Negro community during a crucial
thirty-year period, when a relatively fluid pattern of race relations
gave way to a rigid system of segregation and discrimination. In the
late 19th century, although Chicago’s Negroes concentrated in certain
sections of the city, and were subject to discrimination in jobs, housing,
and public accommodations, they were not yet segregated in a ghettoMany racially mixed neighborhoods existed. Between 1890 and 1915,
however, white Chicagoans, who were alarmed at the influx of Negroes
from the South, intensified their discriminatory practices, particularly
in housing.
Between 1890 and 1915, the Negro population of Chicago grew from less than
fifteen thousand to over fifty thousand. Although this growth was overshadowed
by the massive influx of Negroes during and after World War I, this was never
theless a significant increase. By the eve of World War I, although Negroes were
still a minor element in the city’s population, they were far more conspicuous
than they had been a generation earlier. The population increase was accompanied
by the concentration of Negroes into ever more constricted sections of the city.
In the late nineteenth century, while most Negroes lived in certain sections of
the South Side, they lived interspersed among whites; there were few all-Negro
blocks. By 1915, on the other hand, the physical ghetto had taken shape; a large,
almost all-Negro enclave on the South Side, with a similar offshoot on the West
Side, housed most of Chicago’s Negroes.
Migration w^as the major factor in the growth of the Negro community, and
most migrants were coming from outside of the state. Over 80 per cent of Chi
cago’s Negro population in 1900 was born in states other than Illinois. The largest
portion of these migrants originated in the border states and in the Upper South:
Kentucky, and Missouri, in particular, had sent large groups of Negroes to Chi
cago. The states of the Deep South were, as yet, a secondary source of Chicago’*
Negro population: only 17 per cent had come from these states as opposed to 43
percent from the Upper South. The states located directly south of Chicago sup
plied a larger segment of the population than the southeastern states, but there
were sizable groups born in Virginia and Georgia.
From the beginning of Chicago’s history, most Negroes had lived on the South
Side. As early as 1850, 82 per cent of the Negro population lived in an area
803
bounded by the Chicago River on the north, Sixteenth Street on the south, the
South Branch of the river on the west, and Lake Michigan on the east. The
famous South Side black belt was emerging— a narrow finger of land, wedged
between the railroad yards and industrial plants just west of Wentworth Avenue
and the fashionable homes east of Wabash Avenue. By 1900, the black belt
stretched from the downtown business district as far south as Thirty-ninth Street.
But there were also sizable Negro enclaves, usually of a few square blocks each,
in several other sections of the city. (pp. 11-12)
The decade 1900 to 1910 saw several significant changes in the population
pattern of Negroes in Chicago. The growth rate, which had far outpaced the
white growth rate in the 1890’s, declined from 111 per cent to 46 per cent, and
the proportion of Negroes in the population increased from 1.9 per cent to only
2 per cent. Yet despite this stabilization, the Negro population was still com
posed largely of migrants. Over 77 per cent of Chicago’s Negroes were born out
side of Illinois. This represents only a slight drop from 1900 and was almost five
times as great as the corresponding figure for white Chicagoans. . . .
The concentration of Negroes in enclaves was clearly increasing throughout
this period. By 1910, over 30 per cent lived in predominantly Negro sections of
the city and over 60 per cent in areas that were more than 20 per cent Negro.
Whereas in 1900 nineteen of thirty-five wards had been over .5 per cent Negro,
this figure was reduced to thirteen in 1910. Furthermore, the second and third
wards, which included the heart of the black belt, were now 25 per cent Negro,
while in 1900 only one ward had even approached that figure.
Negro residential patterns for 1910 can be seen most clearly through the use of
census tract data. Of 431 census tracts in the city, Negroes could be found in
all but ninety-four; eighty-eight were at least 1 per cent Negro. Four tracts were
over 50 per cent Negro, but no tract was more than 61 per cent Negro. Despite
greater concentration, therefore, there were still few all-Negro neighborhoods in
Chicago.
The eight or nine neighborhoods that had been distinguishable as areas of
Negro settlement in 1900 remained the core of the Chicago Negro community in
3910. The principal South Side black belt was slowly expanding to accommodate
the growing population. Not only did Negroes push steadily southward, but the
narrow strip of land that made up the black belt began to widen as Negroes
moved into the comfortable neighborhood east of State Street. By the end of the
decade, Negroes could be found as far east as Cottage Grove Avenue.
Statistical data, then, reveal several definite trends in the pattern of Negro
population in Chicago in the early twentieth century. The growth rate between
1900 and 1910 had decreased from the previous decade, but was still 50 per cent
greater than that of whites. Most of the population increase was the result of
migration, particularly from the nearby border states. Negroes could be found
throughout much of the city and the Negro neighborhoods were by no means ex
clusively black. But the concentration of Negroes in two enclaves on the South
and West Sides was increasing. As the population grew, Negroes were not spread
ing throughout the city but were becoming confined to a clearly delineated area
of Negro settlement.
The increasing physical separation of Chicago’s Negroes was but one reflection
of a growing pattern of segregation and discrimination in early twentieth-cen
tury Chicago. As the Negro community grew and opportunities for interracial
conflict increased, so a pattern of discrimination and segregation became ever
more pervasive. And perhaps the most critical aspect of interracial conflict came
as the result of Negro attempts to secure adequate housing. . . .
Negro expansion did not always mean conflict, nor did it mean that a neighbor
hood would shortly become exclusively black. In 1910, not more than a dozen
blocks on the South Side were entirely Negro, and in many mixed areas Negroes
and whites lived together harmoniously. But as Negroes became more numerous
east of State and south of Fifty-first, friction increased and white hostility
grew. WThen a Negro family moved into a previously all-white neighborhood,
the neighbors frequently protested, tried to buy the property, and then, if un
successful, resorted to violence to drive out the interlopers. In many cases, the
residents organized to urge real estate agents and property owners to sell and
rent to whites only. The whites often succeeded in keeping Negroes out, at least
temporarily. When their efforts failed, they gradually moved out leaving the
neighborhood predominantly although rarely exclusively Negro, (pp. 16-21)
The unwillingness of whites to tolerate Negroes as neighbors had far-reaching
results. Because Negroes were so limited in their choice of housing they were
forced to pay higher rents in tho.*e buildings that were open to them. Real estate
agents frequently converted buildings in marginal neighborhoods from white
to Negro and demanded rents 10 to 15 per cent higher than they had previously
received, (p. 23)
Living conditions in much of the black belt closely resembled conditions in
the West Side ghetto or in the Stockyards district. Although Negroes could find
some decent homes on the fringes of the Negro section the core of the black
belt was a festering slum. Here was an area of one- and two-story frame house
(unlike the older Eastern cities Chicago had, as yet, few large tenements). usually
dilapidated with boarded-up porches and rickety wooden walks. Most of the
buildings contained two flats and, although less crowded than houses in the
Jewish, Polish, and Bohemian slums, they were usually in worse repair, (p. 24)
The pattern of Negro housing, then, was shaped by white hostility and indif
ference: limited in their choice of homes, Negroes were forced to pay higher
rents for inferior dwellings and were frequently surrounded by prostitutes,
panderers, and other undesirable elements. This, together with the poverty of the
majority of Chicago Negroes, produced in the black belt the conditions of slumliving characteristic of American cities by the end of the nineteenth century.
The most striking feature of Negro housing, however, was not the existence
of slum conditions, but the difficulty of escaping the slum. European immigrants
needed only to prosper to be able to move to a more desirable neighborhood.
Negroes, on the other hand, suffered from both economic deprivation and sys
tematic racial discrimination, (p* 26)
The development of a physical ghetto in Chicago, then, was not the result
chiefly of poverty; nor did Negroes cluster out of choice. The ghetto was pri
marily the product of white hostility. Attempts on the part of Negroes to seek
housing in predominantly white sections of the city met with resistance from
the residents and from real estate dealers. Some Negroes, in fact, who had
formerly lived in white neighborhoods, were pushed back into the black districts.
As the Chicago Negro population grew, Negroes had no alternative but to settle
in well-delineated Negro areas. And with increasing pressure for Negro housing,
property owners in the black belt found it profitable to force out white tenants
and convert previously mixed blocks into all-Negro blocks. The geographical
dimensions of Black Chicago in the early twentieth century underwent no dra
matic shiff similar, for instance, to Negro New York, where the center of Negro
life moved to previously all-white Harlem in less than a decade. Negroes in
Chicago were not establishing new communities. But to meet the needs of a
growing population, in the face of mounting white resistance, Negro neighbor
hoods were becoming more exclusively Negro as they slowly expanded their
boundaries, (pp. 26-27)
111 the same year (1067) another valuable contribution by Herbert J.
Gans was published— The Levitt owners: Ways of Life and Politics in
a New Suburban Community. Gans lived as a “participant observer”
in Levittown, New Jersey (between Philadelphia and Camden, and
now known as Willingboro) for the first two years of its existence in
order “to. find out how a new community comes into being, how people
change when they leave the city, and how they live and politic in sub
urbia” (p. v). His conclusions are summarized in the final chapter on
“Levittown and America,” and though he tends to over-generalize
his results, the findings are worth summarizing in detail:
I began this study with four questions, the answers to which can be gen
eralized to new towns and suburbs all over America. First, a new community is
shaped neither by the builder, the planner, and the organizational founder, nor
by the aspirations with which residents come. A builder creates the physical
shell of the community; a founder, the social one; but even when organizations
and institutions are initiated by national bodies outside the community, they
can only survive by attracting people and responding to their demands. . . . In
short, their [the residents] choices of (and within) community institutions are
basically a function of the population mix they encounter.
These choices are not made in a vacuum, but involve values and preferences
which people bring with them. Perhaps the most significant fact about the
origin of a new community is that it is not new at all, but only a new physical
site on which people develop conventional institutions with traditional programs.
New towns are ultimately old communities on new land, culturally not signifi
cantly different from suburban subdivisions and urban neighborhoods inhabitated
by the same kinds of people, and politically much like other small American
towns.
Second, most new suburbanites are pleased with the community that develops:
they enjoy the house and outdoor living and take pleasure from the large supply
of compatible people, without experiencing the boredom or malaise ascribed to
suburban homogeneity. Some people encounter unexpected social isolation, par
ticularly those who differ from the majority of their neighbors. Who wilt be
socially isolated depends on the community; in Levittown, they were older
couples, the well educated and the poorly educated, and women who had come
from a cohesive working class or ethnic enclave or were used to living with an
extended family. Such people probably suffer in every suburb; even though they
want to escape from the close life of the “urban village/’ they miss their old
haunts, cannot find compatible people, or do not know how to make new friends.
But the least happy people are always those of lowest income and least educa
tion ; they not only have the most difficulty in making social contacts and joining
groups, but are also beset by financial problems which strain family tempers as
well as family budgets. And if the suburb is designed for young adults and
children, the adolescents will suffer from “nothing to do” and from adult
hostility toward their youth culture and peer groups.
People’s lives are changed somewThat by the move to suburbia, but their basic
ways remain the same; they do not develop new life styles or ambitions for them
selves and their children. Moreover, many of the changes that do take place were
desired before the move. Because the suburb makes them possible, morale goes
up, boredom and loneliness are reduced, family life becomes temporarily more
cohesive, social and organizational activities multiply, and spare-time pursuits
now concentrate on the house and yard. Some changes result from the move:
community organizational needs encourage some people to become joiners for
the first time, ethnic and religious difference demands more synagogue attend
ance, and social isolation breeds depression, boredom, and loneliness for the few
who are left out. But change is not unidirectional; different people respond differ
ently to the new environment, and the most undesirable changes usually stem
from familial and occupational circumstances.
Third, the sources or causes of change are not to be found in suburbia per se,
but in the new house, the opportunity for home ownership, and above all, the
population mix— the people with whom one now lives. They bring about the in
tended increase in social life, the unintended increase in organizational activity,
and, of course, the equally unintended social isolation. Some changes can be
traced to the openness of the social structure in a new community and people’s
willingness to accept and trust each other, as wrell as to the random settling pat
tern wrhich requires them to make friends with strangers next door or to leave
the block for the larger community to find compatible people. But most result
from the homogeneity of age and class of the population that buys into a new
suburb. Indeed, the basic sources of change come from goals for home owner
ship, a free-standing house, outdoor living, and being with people of similar age
and class, which have long been basic aspirations of American working and
middle class cultures. Even unintended changes could be traced finally to na
tional economic trends and cultural patterns that push people out of the city
and provide incentives for builders to construct communities like Levittown.
Ultimately, then, the changes people undergo in the move to the suburbs are only
expressions of more widespread societal changes and national cultural goals.
Fourth, the politics of a new suburb is no more distinctive than the rest of its
life. In any heterogeneous community, conflicting demands from the voters force
the decision-makers to set up a performing government which observes democra
tic norms, freeing them to reconcile these conflicts in a backstage actual govern
ment. Their decisions are, more often than not, responsive to the majority of
voters when that majority makes demands, but are unresponsive to powerless
minorities, which therefore have to intervene— to upset the normal decision-mak
ing process in order to get satisfaction. Since they fail more often than they
succeed, local government generally neglects minority demands and rights, and
the public interest as well. Experts with sufficient consensus, skill, and power
can implement decisions unpopular with the majority, but on the whole, such
decisions have to be enforced by non-local agencies. Of course, suburbs like Levit
town have fewTof the problems that face American cities, dying small towns, or
806
stagnant rural areas, so that local governments can meet the limited needs of
at least their dominant constituents. Supra-local governments must be developed,
however, to deal with the problems generated by the myriad of suburban sov
ereignties and the artificiality of suburban boundaries.
My four initial questions were joined by a common theme: To what extent
is a community made by its residents and to what extent by leaders, planners,
and other experts who want to stimulate innovation and change? The findings.
I would suggest, demonstrate again an important sociological truth and truism,
that what happens in a community is almost always a reflection of the people
who live in it, especially the numerical and cultural majority. That majority
supports the organizations and institutions that define the community; it deter
mines who will be enjoying life and who will be socially isolated; and it forms
the constituencies to which decision-makers are responsive. In the last analysis,
then, the community (and it origin, impact, and politics) are an outcome of the
population mix, particularly of its dominant elements and their social structure
and culture, (pp. 408-411)
Still another sociological “participant-observation” study was pre
sented in 1968, this one by Gerald I). Sutles. It was entitled The Social
Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City. The
basic w7ork was done between 1962 and 1965, and Suttles focused his
efforts on the Addams area on the near west side of Chicago. As Mor
ris Janowitz observes in his Preface to the Suttles book, “The com
munity [or neighborhood] study remains a basic vehicle for holistic
and comprehensive understanding of the metropolitan condition” (p.
vii). Janowitz goes on to observe (and correctly so) that “this volume
represents a benchmark in the perfection of the techniques of partici
pant observation in a field setting” (p. viii). In the words of Janowitz,
Suttles joins a tradition that emphasizes the contributions of the sociologist
to policy and professional practice. This tradition is not based on contrived re
search or vulgar popularization. Reasoned and responsible scholarship leads to
empirical findings and to the formulation of delimited generalizations. It is hoped
that such results are relevant both for sociologists and for all interested in policy
issues. This book is no plea for utopia based on research to be completed in the
distant future, but rather a contribution to immediate understanding, (p. ix)
So rich are the findings of this investigation that it is difficult to pick
out particular results of the study for emphasis. Suffice it to say that
Suttles has succeeded in re-uniting the three major traditions of the
“ Chicago School”— demography and ecology, social organization, and
social psychology. A few highlights will be excerpted in order to sug
gest the flavor of the book.
As for “Territoriality and Ordered Segmentation” (Part 1 ), Suttles
makes the following observations:
The Addams area is one of the oldest slums in Chicago and researchers have
invaded it almost as often as new minority groups. Like most slums, however, it
remains something of a mystery hovering between two divergent interpretations.
In some ways it is easiest to describe the neighborhood by how its residents devi
ate from the public standards of the wider community. There are, for example,
a high delinquency rate, numerous unwed mothers, and several adolescent
“gangs.” Measured by the usual yardstick of success it is tempting to think that
the local residents are simply inadequate and disadvantaged people suffering
from cultural deprivation, unemployment, and a number of other “urban
ills.” . . .
Seen from the inside, however, the Addams area is intricately organized ac
cording to its own standards and the residents are fairly insistent on their
demands. . . .
Neither disorganization nor value rejection are apt terms to describe the
Addams area. Certainly the social practices of the residents are not just an in
version of those of the wider society, and the inhabitants would be outraged
to hear as much. Also the neighborhood is not a cultural island with its own
distinct and imported traditions. The major lineaments of the area’s internal
807
structure are such commonplace distinctions as age. sex, territoriality, ethnicity,
and personal identity, (pp. 3-4)
Obviously the balance between a person’s involvement in his local neighbor
hood and alternative associations is unevenly distributed. To decipher these
variations two central observations must be kept in mind. First, distinctions
or earmarks that can be applied to an entire society— social class, education,
and so forth— are often complemented by another set of distinctions that are
specific to a single locality. Localisms of this type simply increase the degree
of social differentiation and provide an additional basis for association. . . .
A second consideration is the differentdal moral isolation of a neighborhood
from the wider society. In all societies there are probably people who fall short
of existing standards that attest to their trustworthiness and self-restraint. The
standards of American society are severe, and a very large proportion of our
population is regarded with suspicion and caution. Typically, these are poor
people from a low-status minority group and unable to manage very well their
“public relations.” The presence of such a group of pepole is disruptive because
it undermines the trust residents must share to go about their daily rounds.
In American society, a common solution to this difficulty has been to relegate
all suspicious people to “slums” and “skid rows.” As a result, respectable and
essential citizens can carry on their corporate life undisturbed by their own
apprehensions.
Slum residents, however, are subject to all the suspicions and bear those
disreputable characteristics that turn people away from one another and inter
fere with joint activities. Seen from the standpoint of the wider community,
sum residents do not inspire levels of trust necessary to the usual round of
neighborhood activities. Out of necessity, then, they may fall back on local pat
terns which guarantee their safety and promote association, (p.. 5-6)
The early work of Park and Burgess on “natiiral areas” was an important
beginning but was so couched in physicalistic terminology that it drew undue
criticism. Accordingly, later sociologists have neglected territorial groups in
favor of structural ones. There is, of course, no scarcity of studies dealing with
people who happen to live near one another. Spatial distributions have not been
ignored but have been seen as a product of structural elements general to an
entire society.
In anthropology, however, territorial grouping has been a subject of continued
interest. Most anthropological studies begin by focusing upon social groupings
than can be defined by areal distribution. In turn, may of the social units singled
out for particular attention— the domestic unit, the homestead, the tribe, and so
forth— frequently have locality as one of their principles of organization. Alter
natively, where locality and structural forms do not coincide, anthropologists
have regarded this discrepancy as a distinct problem which raises a number of
theoretical and methodological issues. In this respect, anthropologists have self
consciously addressed themselves to the question of how territorial and structural
configurations are related. . . .
The most obvious reason for centering in on locality groups is that their mem
bers cannot simply ignore one another. People who routinely occupy the same
place must either develop a moral order that includes all those present or fall
into conflict, (pp. 6-7)
The Addams area consists of four different ethnic sections occupied predomi
nantly by Negroes, Italians, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans. Each of these ethnic
sections falls into a somewhat different stage in its development of a provincial
order. At one extreme is an old Italian population slowly being displaced by
Mexicans, Negroes, and Puerto Ricans. . . .
[A] 11 four ethnic sections share many characteristics and seem headed along
the same social progression. The overall pattern is one where age, sex, ethnic,
and territorial units are fitted together like building blocks to create a larger
structure. I have termed this pattern “ordered segmentation” to indicate two
related features: (1) the orderly relationship between groups and (2) the se
quential order in which groups combine in instances of conflict and opposition.
This ordered segmentation is not equally developed in all ethnic sections but,
in skeletal outline, it is the common framework within which groups are -being
formed and social relations are being cultivated, (pp. 9-10).
Chapter 2— “The Ecological Basis of Ordered Segmentation”—
points up the relevance of ecology for understanding the social orga
nization of the Addams Area neighborhood:
SI—745— 72— pt. 2------ 17
808
The Addams area was first settled around 1837 as a relatively well-to-do
neighborhood, but by 1880 encroaching industry had already so jeopardized prop
erty values and the continuity of the area as a place of residence that the more
affluent population left. From that time on the Addams area became a zone
of transition where buildings wTere generally held as speculative property and
rented without improvements lest they be replaced by other structures. Grad
ually some industry made its way into the area, and by 1964, 18% of the land
was devoted to this purpose. For the most part, however, it has remained the
first place of settlement for old-world immigrants and new-world migrants. First
there were the Germans and Irish, wiio gradually gave way to the Greeks, Poles,
French Canadians, Bohemians, and Russian Jews. Even before these groups
fully occupied the area, however, they were hard-pressed by the Italians. Only
the Italians seem ever to have achieved any sort of hegemony over the entire
area. The other nationality groups either occupied only portions of the area or
were intermixed. The dominance of the Italians, however, was short-lived. By
1930 the Mexicans began to enter the area and currently make up almost a third
of its population. The Mexicans in turn are now being displaced at the periphery
of the area by a small group of Puerto Ricans who are growing in number but
who have never made up more than eight per cent of the population. . . .
Shortly after World War II, the Negroes almost totally occupied the Jane
Addams Public Housing Projects. These housing projects . . . contain about 975
apartments. To date, however, the Negroes have been almost entirely restricted
to the projects, and before 1960 they made up only about 14% of the popula
tion. (pp. 15-16)
According to general opinion the Italians have prior rights over the area. They
make up a majority of the population, and the surrounding city also tends to
authenticate theier claim by referring to the area as an Italian community and
by holding the Italians responsible for whatever happens within it. (p. 20)
Of the 30.000 people who lived in the Addams area during the 1950’s, only about
20.000 are left in the western two-thirds of the neighborhood. The racial and
ethnic composition of this remnant has not changed dramatically: approximately
one-third are Italian, a quarter are Mexican, 17% are Negro, and 8% or less are
Puerto Rican. A few isolated Greek families and persons from various ethnic
groups, many of whom have married Italians, round out these figures, (p. 22)
Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that the present study pertains only to
that remnant of the Addams area which is still intact. Certainly this is a rather
unusual area with many peculiarities of its own and situated in a unique his
torical context. Currently it is subject to a variety of social welfare programs,
and its future as a residential area is in jeopardy. In addition, it is undergoing
a progressive cycle of invasions, with the Mexicans pressing upon the Italians,
and the Puerto Ricans and Negroes not far behind. But ethnic invasions, residen
tial uncertainty, and social welfare programs are long standing forces in the
area. It is, after all, a zone of transition, and change is its most permanent
aspect, (p. 24)
From a distance all of these antagonisms seem to take on the formal char
acteristics of a “segmentary system.” First, each group is a socio-spatial unit.
Second, inclusion in these groupings is mutually exclusive. Third, opposition is
between “equivalent” units. Fourth, the order by which groups combine preserves
the enuivalence of oppositional units. While segmentary systems are usually
restricted to corporate groups, however, the ones here include groups that are no
more than corporate units of responsibility. Addams area residents are a group
only in the sense that they are jointly held liable for each other’s behavior, (p.
31 >
By their assumption that residential unity implies social collaboration, inner
city residents may help create the situation they imagine. Given the conviction
that persons from another area will act in concert, they have little alternative
except to go into collusion with their own territorial compatriots. To some ex
tent, of course, this emphasis on territorial unities has its background in a
enifurnl history wherein spatial groupings are one of the most frequent forms
of social combination. This general pattern, however, is given credence by still
another condition. Addams area residents are forced together in rather intimate
and congested confines, (p. 34)
To some extent, this reliance on territorial unities probably reflects the cultural
background of inner city residents. Originally all of them depended heavily upon
small territorial unities whose safety from one another was assured by distance
and the lack of any reason for contact. Rare outsiders might be treated as “guests.”
800
In part, however, this reliance on residential unities may be shared by most
Chicagoans. What seems to be especially disturbing for inner city residents is the
relative abundance of nonresidential areas. West of the river, Chicago stretches
out like a hand, the fingers of industry and business getting thinner, while the
enclosed residential spaces include more and more people. For those at the
fringes, residential unity may include almost all those occasions where people
must face each other without the benefit of daylight or prior acquaintance. By
contrast, the inner city is a set of little residential islands surrounded by danger
ous expanses of industry, business, and government, (p. 37)
What are Suttles’ conclusions? Suttles harks back to Robert E.
Park’s conception of athe moral order” as he concludes with some
observations on “Practicality and Morality” :
The Addams area is less than one-half square mile in size and contains fewer
than 20,000 residents. It is probably a more orderly slum than many others and
departs sharply from the common image of an atomized and unruly urban rabble,
For all its historical uniqueness, the neighborhood does establish the possibility of
a moral order within its population. The reoccurrence of the circumstances that
led to its organization is as uncertain as the future of the Addams area itself.
In spite of all these uncertainties, the Addams area shows that slum residents are
intent upon finding a moral order and are sometimes successful in doing so.
(p. 223)
The most general characteristic of the Addams area is its provincialism. This
provincialism, however, is not total, nor does it constitute an unqualified rejection
of societal values and norms. A belief in the stereotypes held by the wider society
is what arouses so much mutual distrust among the residents and drives them to
find another basis for moral order. Even so, the residents organize themselves on
the basis of distinctions that are widely made in American society: age, sex,
ethnicity, territoriality, and personal reputation. In the Addams area these dis
tinctions are emphasized to the exclusion of occupational, educational, and other
attainments that are more appreciated in the wider society. The process, however,
is more nearly one of reversion than inversion or outright rejection.. . .
An essential condition to the provincialism of the Addams area is some control
over land usage and population movements. This control, however, need not extend
over vast areas because of the segmental structure of the neighborhood. The
Addams area consists of four ethnic sections in which the residents are dependent
primarily upon persons in the same section. Changes in land usage and population
shifts, then, tend to disrupt only one section at a time.
The provincialism of the Addams area qualifies but does not exclude many rela
tions with the wider community. Up to a point, then, an exchange with the wider
community is complementary to the provincialism of the Addams area. Moreover,
an absence or decline of provincialism in each ethnic section does not mean an
increasing compliance with the mores of the wider community. In the Addams
area the alternative to provincialism is a pervasive anonymity, distrust, and isola
tion. (pp. 223-225)
Bach ethnic section of the Addams area differs from the others in the extent
to which it possesses a standardized routine for managing safe social relations.
There is, however, a general agreement upon the social categories beyond which
associations are not pursued. The boundaries of the neighborhood itself form
the outermost perimeter for restricting social relations. . . .
Further territorial partitions are present in each ethnic section and maintain
a degree of segregation between age, sex, and residential groupings. The general
pattern is one that fans out from the household and is partitioned according
to the age and sex of the residents. Females and children are in closest proximity
to the household. Males move progressively beyond this perimeter depending on
their age. (pp. 225-226)
The social order produced in the Addams area is always partial, and there are
many occasions for conflict between ethnic sections. When there is trouble with
an adjacent neighborhood, all four ethnic groups show their greatest unity. At
other times their cohesion is expressed in such limited forms as a common voting
pattern, a respect for territorial arrangements, and joint resistance to the clear
ance for the University of Illinois, (p. 227)
Looking to the future, it is tempting to predict a convergence between the
Italian section and the other three ethnic sections. Such a speculation would be
hazardous for a number of reasons.
8 10
First, the future of the Addams area itself is uncertain, since urban renewal
and institutional 'building plans threaten to disband its population. Once they
are scattered, the residents will have to start anew rather than simply advance
from where they stand.
Second, as new economic and political policies gain ground, the entire com
plex of inner-city life may change its character. Except for the projects, the
land and buildings of the Addams area are broken into many small and in
dependent units which allow for the interlarding of religious, commercial, rec
reational, and domestic life. The growth of public housing and the sale of large
blocks of land for special usages is likely to separate these functions. The con
struction of huge housing developments, uniform in style, size of dwelling unit,
and rental costs, may produce a series of residential compounds appropriate to
only a period of the family life cycle. If these policies are implemented on a
large scale, the centrifugal forces may be so great that slum residents can no
longer maintain the integrity of their territorial groups and provincial way of
life.
Added uncertainties accumulate as we consider possible changes in the occu
pational structure and a variety of programs aimed at reacculturation. In the
particulars of its ordered segmentation, then, the Addams area may be less a
model of the future than a reflection of the past. In a broader sense, -however,
the Addams area is an example that has direct relevance to the future of all
slum neighborhoods. Addams area residents are not engaged in an attempt to
create an illusory world that merely denies the one which the wTider community
has established. The residents are impelled by a far more basic task of finding
an order within which they can secure themselves against common apprehen
sions. So basic is this burden that few slum residents can ignore it or retreat
fully into sheer fantasy, opportunism, or defeatism.
The moral order created by Addams area residents does not meet either their
own ideals or those of the wider society. The local people recognize as much
and view their way of life as a practical exigency. For all its shortcomings, how
ever, the moral order they have developed includes most, if not all, of their neigh
bors. Within limits, the residents possess a way of gaining associates, avoiding
enemies, and establishing each others’ intentions. In view of the difficulties en
countered, the provincialism of the Addams area has provided a decent world
within which people can live. (pp. 233-234)
Despite his emphasis on the neighborhood, its ecology, social orga
nization, and “way of life.” Sutt-les does provide a brief but sensitive
portrayal of the kinds of housing in the Addams area and its effect
upon communication patterns among night-dwellers. To the slum
inhabitant, the dwelling has a character and meaning quite different
from “normal” (i.e., middle-class) experience. “ Street life” has
emerged as an extension of the congested life indoors.
Undoubtedly the prevalence of street life among Addams area residents is
continuous with their separate cultural histories where the home is essentially
a place for sleeping, eating, protection against the weather, and ritual occasions.
All the ethnic groups in the Addams area have come from a warmer region
where the dwelling unit is limited in space and function. In Chicago, the heat,
unattractiveness, and congestion of living quarters may have continued this
pattern. On closer inspection, however, the streets are probably less attractive
and almost as crowded as their homes. On mild days, when one could comfort
ably stay home, the streets seem about as active as at any other time. Seemingly
there is a distinct preference for encountering people on more neutral grounds
than one’s own household. Among teenage boys this attachment to street life is
especially great. After being arrested and released they do not speak of going
home but of going “back to the streets.”
The interior of most Addams area homes suggests a further reason for this
preference for street life. Most hojnes are well-kept and cared for, but it is im
possible to conceive of them as something other than a “woman’s world.” The
curtains are of lace. the bedspreads are chenille, the furniture is simply no place
for a male with his dirty hands, informality, and coarse manners. In fact, the
well-kept household in the Addams area is less a place for carrying out day-to-day
life than a “show place” to demonstrate the housewife’s diligence and domestic
skills. Among its furnishings, there are hardly any provisions for male activities
or, for that matter, any form of joint family life except for meals. There are no
811
games for males to play, no rooms set aside for their private use, or objects they
can claim as their own. Ultimately, the home is a kind of ceremonial center used
only at those rare moments when visitors are permitted to look into family life.
Apart from these rather special occasions, the household is not even an ap
propriate setting for the casual exchanges of women.
With our imagery of lower class households, this characterization of the
dwelling unit as a woman’s world may seem strange, but for all their external
decay and dirt, most Addams area homes are well-kept on the inside. There is,
of course, a difference in esthetic taste. Most middle income people would be
appalled at the “calendar art” pictures, the overstuffed furniture, the gargoyle
like bric-a-brac, the cheap finish of metal goods, and the mementos that seem
far too numerous for the space. These, however, are the extremes that make
households in the Addams area a woman’s world. The neuter decor of middle
income households reflects not so much a difference in housekeeping standards
as a lack of sexual differentiation in household appointments.
Not all homes in the Addams area are well-kept, of course, and a few are
downright messy. Even so, if there is a mess, it is usually a “woman’s mess.”
Males almost never take an opportunity to introduce into its furnishings or
upkeep any sign identifiable as their own. The males have their own special
province, but it is not in the household. Here, as elsewhere in the Addams area,
the separation of male and female worlds is repeated in spatial arrangements.
Weather permitting, then, most Addams area residents must go to the streets
to find a place befitting the ordinary nature of their “weekday” life. For their
purposes the street is ideal. The setting itself is informal and open to many
possibilities. Its activities can be entered or abandoned almost at wTill because they
are relatively unscheduled or easily changed to meet the number of participants.
Close at hand are most of the people they are interested in and the content that
makes up their conversation. And, along with these attractions, there is the ad
vantage that peers of the same sex can separate themselves as a group and take
up their private concerns, (pp. 75-76)
One advantage to street life . . . is that it permits the residents to enjoy
friendly and informal social relations without exposing the very private nature
of their family life to subsequent unexpected visits. Perhaps this is one reason
why researchers have found that domestic gatherings among working class
people are so restricted to relatives. The same is true of domestic gatherings in
the Addams area, but this does not mean the residents lack extra-familial rela
tions. Indeed, street life in the Addams area seems to provide for exceptionally
frequent associations outside the family, (p. 78)
Finally, 1969 saw the publication of a monumental work on neigh
borhood patterns of housing in American cities— the urban econo
mist Richard F. Muth’s Cities and Housing: The Special Pattern of
Urban Residential Land Use. The contents can best be summarized by
reproducing the table of contents:
1. Introduction
PART I. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The Equilibrium of the Household in Urban Space
The Equilibrium of Housing Producers
The Distribution of Population and Housing Output within Cities
Other Determinants of Land Use
The Determinants of Dwelling-Unit Condition
PART II. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS
7.
8.
9.
10.
The Spatial Pattern of Population Densities in Cities in the United States
Components of Population Density in Cities in the United States
Population Densities and Its Components on the South Side of Chicago
The Determinants of Dwelling-Unit Condition and the Location of House
holds by Income
11. Housing Prices and Race on the South Side of Chicago
PART III. CONCLUSIONS ANI) IMPLICATIONS
12. An Appraisal of the Theoretical Analysis
13. Implications for Public Policy
812
The highlights of Mutlrs analysis are clearly set out in “A Brief
Summary of the Study.” I shall abstract the most interesting (and
sometimes controversial) results from this section, concluding with
some of his comments on public policy.
I begin by considering the influence of accessibility to the CBD upon the loca
tion of households, their consumption of housing, and the intensity of residential
land use by producers of housing. Following this I consider the effects of the age
of neighborhoods and preference factors associated with the incomes of their
different parts of the city. Finally, I consider the residential segregation of
Negroes and the determinants of housing quality or condition. . . .
When I examine the median income level of a census tract in various cities,
I find a strong, positive simple correlation with distance from the CBD. How
ever, when the age of dwelling units in the tract is added to the analysis, the
association between median income and distance vanishes, while that between
age and income is strongly negative. The failure of census-reported money in
come to increase with distance once the effect of age of dwellings is removed
can be explained by considering the effects of distance upon the money incomes
of locally employed workers. The latter by definition, incur no transportation
costs. But, since workers locally employed at greater distances from the CBD
pay lower prices for housing, their money wage incomes must be lower if they
are not to have higher real incomes. The reported money incomes in a census
tract include those of CBD and locally employed workers, and the increase in
the money incomes of the former group with distance from the CBD tends to be
offset by the decline in money incomes of the latter.
The decline in housing prices with distance from the CBD implies that the
rental value of land used for residential purposes must likewise decline if firms
producing housing services are to earn the same incomes regardless of their
locations, Since payments to land are probably only around 5 percent of the
value of housing services produced, the relative rate of decline in land rentals
is of the order of twenty times that of housing prices. The decline in land rentals
in turn leads producers of housing services to use more land relative to other
factors of production at greater distances from the city center. Empirically, it
appears that the value of housing services produced per square mile of land
tended to decline at a relative rate of about 30 percent per mile on the average
for American cities in 1950. The intercorrelation of age of dwellings and income
of their inhabitants is responsible for only a little of this decline. It is far more
important than the increase in per household expenditures on housing in account
ing for the decline of population densities with distance from the CBD, once the
influence of age of dwellings is removed.. . .
It appears that the decline in the fraction of the central city in the urbanized
area’s population and the marked increase in the land area the latter occupies
which occurred for American cities during the 1950’s can be almost wholly ac
counted for by the effects of reduced transport costs on the one hand and in
creases in urbanized area population on the other. Conversely, there is little evi
dence that the decline of the central city’s share in an urbanized area’s popula
tion or the increase in the land area occupied by the latter has come about to
any practically significant extent because of undesirable physical or social condi
tions in the central city.
While distance to the CBD is of crucial importance in determining the inten
sity of residential land use, the age of dwellings and the income of their inhabi
tants also have an important influence. Because the marginal costs of transport
for workers commuting to the CBD were greater prior to the automobile and,
incomes being lower, expenditures on housing services per family were smaller,
the rate of decline in housing prices was almost certainly greater. For this reason,
the output of housing per square mile was probably greater than its equilibrium
for the auto era near the city center, and conversely in its outer parts. After the
development of the automobile, the demand for housing and housing prices fell in
the central parts of the city relative to its outer parts. Because of the long lag in
the adjustment of the intensity of land use to changing conditions, especially
where reductions are called for, one might anticipate that population density and
the output of housing per square mile of land would be greater than otherwise
in those central parts of the city developed prior to 1920.
Empirically, the direct association of population density with age of dwelling
arises mainly from smaller housing expenditures per household in older areas,
which itself results mostly from the inverse relationship between age of dwelling
813
and the income of its inhabitants. The best explanation for the latter, I believe, is
that older housing is more cheaply converted to occupancy by lower-income house
holds than is newer housing.
There are a variety of reasons apart from a differential effect of income on hous
ing expenditures and marginal transport costs why higher-income households
might tend to live at greater distances from the CBD and at lower population
densities. Stronger preferences for privacy or for space relative to structural
features of housing is one frequently cited example. Empirically, therefore, it is
quite surprising to find that population densities are no smaller, and, if anything,
the value of housing produced per square mile of land is higher in comparably
located higher-income areas. This probably results from so-called neighborhood ef
fects, which raise housing prices and residential land rents in higher-income
areas, for on does not find a higher proportion of dwellings in one-unit structures
in comparably located higher-income areas.
Residential segregation or separation occurs for a variety of groups of persons
variously defined. Segregation of the Negro population, however, is one of its most
striking instances and is of great current public interest. The segregation of
Negroes is frequently attributed to a unique aversion on the part of landlords
and real estate agents, which is not shared by the community at large, to deal
ing with Negroes as tenants or buyers. The major shortcomings of this explana
tion is the economic incentive for those landlords or real estate agents who have
an aversion to dealing with Negroes to sell out to others without such aversions.
The segregation of Negroes is also sometimes attributed to a conspiracy on the
part of landlords, real estate agents, and perhaps others such as mortgage lenders
to profit from higher Negro housing prices. Such a conspiracy, though, would be
quite difficult to organize and would almost certainly break down if it did, for
a time, succeed in raising Negro housing prices. A much more satisfying ex
planation is that whites have a greater aversion to living among Negroes than do
other Negroes.
Segregation need not imply higher housing prices relative to marginal costs for
Negroes. Indeed, if prices in the interiors of the white and Negro residential
areas were the same, the greater aversion by whites to living among Negroes
would imply that prices on the white side of the boundary separating the resi
dential areas of the two groups would be below those on the Negro side. The
Negro area would thus expand, and in the process prices in the interior of the
Negro area would fall relative to those in the interior of the white area. Thus,
only if the Negro demand for housing grows faster in relation to the white de
mand than the Negro residential area will prices in the interior of the Negro
area exceed those in the interior of the white area. Empirically, housing expendi
tures per family by non-whites appear to be a third or more higher at a given
current money-income level than those of whites. Such a result is frequently inter
preted as demonstrating that Negroes pay higher prices per unit of housing. But
with a unit or elastic housing demand with respect to price, higher prices per
unit would leave unchanged or reduce expenditures for housing, not increase
them. When I examine physical indicators which one would expect to reflect price
variations, such as population densities, crowding, the proportion of dwellings
substandard, and the proportion which are in one-unit structures, the differences
as between non-white and white census tracts are small. My examination of
changes in average contract rents of tenant-occupied dwellings during the fifties
between areas shifting from white to non-white occupancy and those remaining
in white occupancy also suggest that the Negro housing price differential is
small, at most of the order of 5 percent for renters.
Most explanations for the expansion in slum or poor-quality housing in central
cities in recent years are based upon forces which influence the supply schedule
of poor-quality housing. In many, the increase in the supply of poor-quality
housing in the central city as a whole has resulted from a decline in the demand
for better housing in certain parts of it. A variety of reasons, such as the de
velopment of automobile transportation, physical obsolescence, poor initial plan
ning, and the failure of local governments to supply a proper level of municipal
services, have been suggested to account for the decline in demand. “Other ex
planations stress market imperfections, external economies, or shortcomings in
property taxation, as forces increasing the supply schedule of poor-quality housing
directly. Whatever the reason for the increase in the supply of poor-quaiity hous
ing, because lower-income households might be presumed to have less of an
aversion to living in poor-quality housing than higher-income ones, the deterio
rated areas have come to be inhabited largely by lower-income groups.
814
While certain of the factors just discussed may have some empirical rele
vance, all theories which attribute the increase in the absolute numbers of slum
dwellings to increased supply are either inconsistent with or, at best, fail to
provide an explanation for three simple, emprical facts. These are: (1) that
slum housing would, if anything, seem to be especially expensive in relation
to its quality; (2) that urban renewal projects lose money ; and (3) that during
the 1950’s the proportion of dwellings which were substandard in American cities
declined sharply. These three facts, however, are readily explainable by the hy
pothesis that the growth in the number of poor-quality dwellings is the result of
an increase in the demand for poor-quality housing in cities in the United States.
Income per family is probably the most important determinant of housing de
mand. Viewing quality, space per person, and other features as inputs into the pro
duction of the commodity called housing, one would expect a growth of the lowerincome population to increase the demand for poor-quality housing and for
smaller dwellings. In consequence, dwellings would be converted to smaller units
and allowed to deteriorate in quality. Since quality deterioration takes a longer
time than conversion to smaller units, many persons have mistakenly inferred
that crowding causes deterioration. . . .
The increased-supply-of-slums hypotheses cannot account for the close asso
ciation between dwelling-unit condition and income. If anything, my evidence sug
gests that the private market has not carried the production of slum housing
far enough. On the south side of Chicago in 1980, I find that net population den
sity, the value of housing output per square mile of residential land, and crowd
ing all tended to be greater, and the proportion of one-unit dwellings to be
smaller, the higher the proportion of substandard dwellings. These findings all
suggest that the price per unit of housing service is higher in slum areas than
in other comparably located areas.
The findings of this monograph strongly suggest that many actual and pro
posed governmental policies will have little effect upon urban decentralization
and housing quality. What effects they have will probably tend to make these
problems worse. Public policy has sought to reverse the tide of decentralization
largely enough improving the physical condition of the central city, especially
through the federal urban-renewal program. My findings suggest, first, that the
location of households by income and the distribution of population between the
central city and its suburbs is little affected by physical condition. Secondly,
however, slums are largely the result of the poverty of their inhabitants; urban
renewal does little or nothing to remove poverty— it merely removes buildings in
which poor people live.
To the extent., of course, that the relative supply of poor-quality dwellings is
less than perfectly elastic, urban renewal or demolition under other programs
will tend to reduce the fraction of substandard dwellings. But it will also raise
the price of poor— relative to good— quality housing, reduce the real income of the
poor, and lead the poor to consume poorer quality housing and less space on the
average. At the time, the building of urban express highways, largely aided
by federal funds, has undoubtedly contributed greatly to the urban decentraliza
tion of the fifties. The building of subsidized rapid-transit systems is likely to
have tihe same effect. In a similar vein, suburban development policies, such as
proposals for subsidizing the building of new towns, like the federal income
tax advantage to home-ownersliip and federal mortgage programs will encourage
further decentralization by reducing the price of housing to consumers in the
outer parts relative to the inner part of cities, (pp. 7-14).
Of all the forces making for urban decentralisation during the 1050’s, lower
marginal transport costs, as reflected in increased car registrations per capita,
have been by far the most important quantitatively. . . .
My analysis . . . suggests that federal housing subsidies have been an important
factor in urban decentralization. It would appear that these subsidies would
reduce the density gradient by as much as one-third in the outer parts of the city
inhabited by home owners and increase the typical city’s land area by around
17 percent. . . .
This monograph has produced practically no evidence that urban decentraliza
tion has been the result of physical or social conditions in the central city. . . .
[0]n ly the proportion of the central city’s dwelling units which are substandard
gave much indication of influencing the density gradient. Not onlv were its effects
quite uncertain on statistical grounds, but the decline in proportion substandard
during the 1950’s, which averaged from 0 20 to 0.11 in the cities studied, would
actually have led to increased centralization. . . .[I]t. would appear that, with
increases in the central-city population which is Negro, housing demand grows
815
more rapidly in the outer parts of the central city than in its inner zones. Neither
an increase in the proportion of central-city dwelling units that are substandard
nor an increase in the fraction of its population that is Negro would appear to
reduce the central-city population or increase the land area of the urbanized
area, however.
To an important extent it appears to me that the forces influencing the dis
tribution of an urbanized area’s population between the central city and its
suburbs are very much the same as those which affect the spread of population
within the central city itself. Two important exceptions should be noted, how
ever. First, with a fall in the average income level of the central city relative
to its suburbs, the central-city population tends to decline and the urbanized
area’s land area to increase. Although there is no direct evidence, the best ex
planation for this phenomenon is, I believe, tlie increased tax burden on higlierincome households and business firms in the central city to which an influx of
lower-income households leads. And, second, it appears that the central city’s
population declines less in response to forces making for an increased spread of
population within its borders than one would expect if population distribution
between the central city and its suburbs w’ere merely an extension of that
within the central city. Thus, my analysis gives little evidence that suburbaniza
tion of population has been carried too far.
Turning to the determinants of the quality of tlie central city’s housing stock,
it appears to me that differences in the proportion of dwellings which are sub
standard within or among different cities at a given time and over time in a
given place can best be explained on the basis of differences in the relative
demand for poor- versus good-quality housing. By far the most important deter
minant of the condition of dwelling units is the income level of their inhabitants.
Not only is the association between condition and income quite close, but the
quantitative response of condition to income changes is very strong indeed. . . .
On the whole there seems to be little evidence that variations in the relative
quantities of poor- and good-quality housing are importantly affected by differ
ences in their relative supply. In my opinion, the positive association between
poor dwelling-unit condition and crowding is largely due to the fact that they
are closely related aspects of the low-income demand for housing. . . .
My analysis gives little support to the view that Negroes pay higher prices
for housing of comparable quality than whites do. I do find that expenditures
for housing by Negroes are higher at a given income level, but with a price elas
ticity of housing demand of unity or larger, price differences cannot account for
such expenditure differences. My examination of population densities and other
physical magnitudes, as well as my comparison of changes in median rents in
Chicago south-side tracts remaining in white occupancy during the fifties versus
those changing to Negro occupancy, suggests to me that in Negro areas rental
housing prices are no more than 5 percent higher than in comparable white areas
and perhaps less. Furthermore, my examination . . . of the effects of race on
dwelling-unit condition suggests that at given income levels the proportion of
dwellings in Negro areas which are substandard is no higher than in while areas.
This finding lends no support to the widespread view that the residential segrega
tion of Negroes restricts them to areas of poorest housing quality. Rather, it
would seem that the low average quality of Negro housing is due primarily to
the low incomes of the inhabitants. . . .
While it has been an avowed aim of public policy to reduce urban decentralisa
tion, largely through the federal urban renewal program, on balance govern
mental programs have almost certainly encouraged decentralization. By reducing
the proportion of a central city’s dwellings which are substandard, urban re
newal might tend to increase the numerical rate of poplation-density decline
within the central city itself. This possibility tends to be counterbalanced,
though, by the fact that many more low-income households are displaced by
renewal projects than are replaced by liigher-ineome households in the renewal
area. In addition, my results suggest that the distribution of population between
the central city and its suburbs is not appreciably affected by dwelling-unit con
dition in the central city, contrary to the widespread belief of supporters of
renewal programs. At the same time my results suggest that def'ontrnUzation
has been encouraged to a substantial degree by improvements in transportation,
to which the building of urban expressways— largely with federal funds— have
probably been of principal importance, and by federal homeownership subsidies.
If, as is widely believed, decentralization of population had occurred largely
because of undesirable physical conditions in the older, more central parts of
810
cities, then improvement of transportation facilities might tend to moderate
decentralization in the future. In the absence of improved transportation, some
business firms might also be induced to relocate to outlying areas for better
access to potential customers and employees. There is virtually no empirical
evidence to support the view that decentralization has occurred because of de
terioration of the central city, however. Rather, decentralization of population
has occurred to an important extent because of transportation improvements,
and these improvements thus provide indirectly the very incentive for decentrali
zation of business firms which they are designed in part to counteract.
In recent years, the development and improvement of rapid transit facilities
through federal subsidy has received strong support. This support probably de
rives from concern over rush-hour congestion on urban highways and the belief
that rapid transit would be a technologically more efficient means of commuter
travel. Congestion, however, is not so much a technological problem as an eco
nomic one; it arises largely because of a failure to impose a charge for the use of
a scarce resource. Even if preferable on other grounds, congestion would still he
a problem on rapid-transit routes if fares are set too low— 'witness the New York
City subway system during rush hour. And to the extent that subsidized rapidtransit systems are technologically more efficient than highways, they will merely
be more efficient in encouraging decentralization. I realize, of course, that build
ing more highways and rapid-transit facilities may well be justified by the sav
ing of resources for other uses that they might permit. There seems to be little
reason, though, to anticipate by so doing that one might slow down urban decen
tralization.
Subsidies to home ownership in the form of the federal income-tax advantage
and federal mortgage programs have probably tended substantially to reduce
population-density gradients in the outer parts of cities and to increase the land
area that urbanized areas occupy. As I will argue in more detail in the following
section, there is little evidence to suggest that consumption of housing at the ex
pense of other commodities ought to be encouraged. Much more important, how
ever, is the fact that, being geared largely to home ownership, these subsidies
tend to benefit the higher-income groups primarily and thus to increase in
equality.
Another group of programs that is receiving increasing scholarly and popu
lar support comprises various suburban development programs. Prominent among
these are proposed federal subsidies for the building of new towns. SupT)ort for
these programs stems largely, I believe, from the hope that in avoiding the un
desirable physical conditions of past urban development by means of proper
planning, they will prevent future deterioration and decentralization. There is
little evidence, however, that current decentralization results to any important
degree from physical deterioration of the older parts of cities which proper
planning might prevent. Rather, by encouraging the flow of new resources into
suburban development and thus reducing the price of housing there relative to
that in the central city, the subsidization of new towns and related programs
would surely encourage decentralization currently.. . .
Given current municipal fiscal relationships, decentralization does pose a
serious problem. In our society some of the most significant income and wraith
redistributing functions are performed by local governments through their role
in providing for public education and health and hospital services to the low erincome population, and welfare services of many kinds. At the same time, local
governments have been dependent to an important extent upon taxes raised
from their own residents for the support of these functions. With the growth
in the absolute size of the lower-inoome population in central cities, the tax
burden of higher-income households and business firms increases if a given level
of public services per capita is to be maintained. With the higher central-city
tax burden, those so affected have additional incentives to choose suburban over
central-city locations___
Until now7 the typical answer to the fiscal problems of central cities has been
federal grant-in-aid funds for specific purposes. The greatest disadvantage of
this method of overcoming the problem is that it encourages too much expendi
ture for certain purposes and too little for others. If local governments are
allowed free rein in designing programs for which they are required to pay
only some fraction, say one-third, of the costs, they have the incentive to push
expenditures on them to the point w’here the marginal benefits are only onethird of the marginal costs. It is probably for this reason that the federal gov
ernment has retained a substantial degree of control over specified local proj
ects. Such controls result in delays and impose additional administrative costs.
817
And it is quite difficult for federal legislation and administrative regulation to
allow for all exceptions warranted by genuine differences in local conditions.
Another answer to the municipal fiscal dilemma which is gaining increased
support is the colonization of lower-income persons in surburban areas and the
discouragement of their migration from rural areas in the South to large cities.
Colonization has the disadvantage of incurring greater housing costs than would
otherwise be incurred. Discouragement of migration is likewise inefficient in
that it prevents the movement of labor from areas of lower to higher marginal
productivity.
Given that it is desirable for local governments to retain functions such as
support of public education, a far more efficient means of dealing with the
municipal fiscal problem is federal and/or state tax-sharing with municipalities.
If individuals and business firms had to pay the same taxes regardless of their
location, the fiscal incentive for decentralization would be eliminated. Such
tax-sharing schemes would also eliminate the inefficiencies inherent in grantsin-aid for specific programs. Each city, having to bear the full marginal costs
of each project, would have no incentive to overspend, and the need for federal
control of local projects would largely be obviated. Finally, regional development
projects could be evaluated on their own merits without regard to the extraneous
issue of the fiscal problem arising from continued in-migration into large
cities. . . .
While some persons have come to realize that demolition has adverse effects
upon the poor, few realize that the long-run effects of measures which raise the
cost of producing poor-quality housing are equally, if not more, injurious to
lower-income groups. Among the latter are measures such as stricter code
enforcement, the rent strike, and public receivership of slum dwellings. In the
short run such measures may improve the housing of the poor by allowing the
quasi-rents which would otherwise accrue to the owners of poor-quality dwellings
to be appropriated and used either for quality improvement or for reducing the
unit price of poor-quality housing. Such actions, however, reduce the relative
earnings of dwellings in poor- as compared with good-quality use. For this
reason, in the long run fewer dwellings will be converted to poorer-quality
dwellings as the low-income population grows, and some may be reconverted
to good-quality ones. The net effect of cost-increasing policies is thus to reduce
the housing opportunities of the poor. This will be the case even with a perfectly
elastic relative supply schedule of poor-quality housing. For, by shifting this
supply curve vertically rather than horizontally, code enforcement, for example,
directly raises the long-run equilibrium relative price of poor- versus goodquality housing. Although they are less readily apparent than the effects of
demolition, the effects upon the lower-income population of cost-increasing
programs are if anything even more harmful.
Unlike the policies discussed thus far, housing subsidies tend to benefit the
poor even in the long run by increasing their real consumption opportunities.
Such subsidies are inefficient, however, in that they increase the real incomes
of their recipients by no more than an income subsidy whose annual cost to the
government is the same would do. For, if the cost of the housing subsidy were
given as an income subsidy, its recipients could if they wished spend the whole
of the increase in their incomes on housing. If they were to choose to spend
only a part of their additional incomes on housing, one would presume that they
preferred the expenditure pattern they had selected for themselves. Certain
housing subsidies, especially those involving loans at below market interest
rates, are further deficient in that they lead producers of housing to use more
capital and less current expenditure in producing housing services than market
conditions warrant. . . .
Two additional arguments might be used to justify housing subsidies in
preference to general income subsidies. The first, which is pure paternalism, is
that the poor are unable to spend their incomes in their own best interest. A
more serious argument is that by inhabiting poor-quality housing the poor
impose costs upon other members of society. For example, it is argued that crime,
disease, and delinquency rates all tend to be higher in slum areas than elsewhere.
Such an argument, of course, is exceedingly naive, since the obvious association
between crime, disease, and delinquency rates and housing quality by no means
implies any casual relationship. . . . Until such effects can be demonstrated,
however, there would seem to 'be no grounds for preferring housing to general
income subsidies.
In view of the strong response of housing quality to increased incomes, . . .
a general income subsidy would be surprisingly effective in eliminating sub
818
standard dwellings. . . . The income subsidy would also permit lowTer-income
families to increase their expenditure on food, clothing, and medical care. With
the substantial growth in incomes that has occurred since 1950, substandard
dwellings would be more costly to eliminate now, both because a given percentage
income-increase now represents a roughly 50 percent larger absolute increase
and, the proportion of substandard dwellings being much smaller now’ than in
1950, because a given percentage reduction would be a smaller absolute one. Still,
in view’ of its other advantages, a general income subsidy to lower-income
households appears to me to be an attractive alternative to housing subsidies
for improving the real consumption opportunities of the poor. (pp. 324-335)
IIB . MACRO-ECOLOGY
Having discussed the dwelling and the neighborhood as units of
analysis, I wish to turn to studies of the metropolitan complex that
have been completed by American scholars. Long-term trends will be
discussed, but there will be an emphasis on the 1950-60 and 1960-70
intercensal decades.
IIB .l. Population Distribution and the Ecological Complex
As a framework for this review, I shall employ atlie ecological com
plex” first developed for publication in a masterful fashion by Otis
Dudley Duncan. (Duncan, 1959) Building upon the “neo-classical”
version of human ecology as set out by Hawley (1950), Duncan estab
lished a coherent frame of reference for ecological investigations.
In this scheme, he discussed the multifold and reciprocal interrela
tions between four variables— Population, organization, environment,
and technology. (Hence the mnemonic device— P-O-E-T— for the
ecological complex.) The ecological theorist or researcher who is
guided by this conception takes one or another of these four as his “de
pendent variable”— or the “effect” he hopes to explain— by reference
to the other three as “ independent variables” or “causes” to be ex
amined in the analysis. No one variable is to be understood as some
how intrinsically a cause or effect; the designation of these are at the
819
analytical option of the investigator. The choice depends upon the in
tellectual problem at hand.
Can we apply the ecological complex to the analysis of housing
phenomena? I feel that we can. Now at first glance, housing might be
seen as a piece of technology; a dwelling, after all, is “a machine for
living,” to use Frank Lloyd Wright’s apt conception. I shall not treat
housing in its technological aspects, however. Rather, I am inclined to
take population distribution as the dependent variable, and seek inde
pendent variables from the remaining variables in the P-O-E-T scheme.
Population redistribution necessarily involves locational shifts in oc
cupied housing.
I f one takes population distribution and changes therein as the
variables to be explained, the ecological complex suggests where we
might begin to seek an explanation.
la. Sheer population size will play a role; added numbers— or in
crements to the unit of analysis in question— must be located some
where. Whether by migration or natural increase, growth must be ab
sorbed. In the metropolitan complex (our unit of analysis at this
point), people added to the total population must be accommodated
somewhere. Do they flow to the central city or the broad “ring,” includ
ing its satellites, suburbs, and rural-urban fringe ?
lb. Another variable to which we must be sensitive is the age-sex
composition of population. I f numbers are added through a surplus
of births over deaths— “natural increase,” or “reproductive change”—
numbers will be added at the base of the familiar “population pyra
mid,” as the postwar baby boom displayed so dramatically. (That
pyramid has become less broadly based as the American birth rate
has fallen.) Deaths, on the other hand, will be subtracted from all
age grades. Similarly, physical movement is selective in both age and
sex terms, depending upon the migratory stream in question. It may
be hypothesized that each of the streams recognized in Figure 1 will
have a different composition or “selectivity.” I am not prepared at
this moment to fill in each cell, but the basic notion should be clear to
the reader. (For convenience, Figure 1 ignores foreign immigration
and emigration.)
820
FIGURE 1.
o
H
FROM:
Nonmetropolitan
Areas
"Rural"
Territory
Smaller
Towns
SCKE IMPORTANT MIGRATORY STREAMS
Metropolian
"Rings"
Employing
Satellites
Residaatial
Suburbs
Metropolitan
Central Cities
Inner
Cores
’
I
Outlying City?
Aeighborhood-
u o
l
5 £
Metropolitan
"Rings"
Residential
Suburbs
!I u u
' 'w C
!^
l
•i-J-ob
-5
Inner
Cores
s-S
4.‘ 4J
■ 6
j
1
j
Jj
j
o
o. <2
%
■“
** CO
j
1
u
Nonme tr opo1its o
Areas
"Rural"
Territory
<U 0)
6
ts H
CO
i
i
lc. Population composition in terms other than age and sex might
also be critical in determining the amount and kind of population
distribution and ^-distribution. I am thinking of what may be called
the functional composition of population, e.g., its industrial or occu
pational make-up. Some areas— given the nature of their “economic
bases”— will attract certain kinds of migrants. One need think only
of such metropolitan areas as important educational centers (e.g., Ann
Arbor, Madison, Champaign-Urbana, etc.). On the other hand, such
military or war-related metropolitan centers as San Diego, Seattle,
and Norfolk-Portsmouth may be expected to experience migratory
patterns unique in their stream sizes and compositional make-up. The
list of specialized types of sending and receiving areas could be ex
tended considerably, but I trust that the point is clear.
2.
The organization of a population may be subjected to similarly
detailed specification. Philip M. Hauser has been most articulate in
spelling out these details. In his Presidential addresses before the
American Statistical Association and the American Sociological A s
821
sociation, he offered a synoptic view of organizational shifts taking
place over time. (Hauser, 1963 and 1969) He labels the key phenom
enon as “the social-morphological revolution,”— a dramatic organiza
tional shift involving such trends as those toward greater differenti
ation and bureaucratization. He has also spelled these out in great
detail in “Urbanization: An Overview” (Hauser, 1965). It need only
be added that the years following upon World War II increasingly
displayed some of the characteristics of Harold D. Lasswell’s “garri
son state.” (Lass well, 1941)
3. The environment seems to be on everyone’s mind these days.
“Ecology” has become a household word— or, in current Washington
parlance— a “buzz word.” Various kinds of pollution are seen as a
threat to civilization itself. Indeed, in conjunction with the world
population explosion and— to use Hauser’s phrase “the population
implosion,” or urbanization per se— humanity itself is said to be
threatened with extinction. Man is an endangered species.
But what of the role of the environment in shaping the contours of
population distribution? It appears at this point that the inter-regional drift toward the American seaboard cannot be overlooked, nor
can the continuing growth of metropolitan complexes. Indeed, this
“metropolitanization” continues to take place despite the widespread
distrust of both cities and suburbs as, on the one hand, “behavioral
sinks”, and on the other, as sprawling stretches of conformity, a la
Whyte’s conception of The Organization Man (1956).
Some writers speak of the urban environment as though it were a
setting stripped of “natural” features— a man-made milieu of con
crete, glass and steel. This notion requires a corrective ; until deliber
ate weather modification is a full-fledged reality, population distribu
tion will continue to be sensitive to environmental variation. And the
micro-environment cannot be neglected; different terrains, altitudes,
and the nearness of water all play a role in building decisions and
costs. The local pattern of housing is sometimes markedly influenced
by the physical contours of available land for residential development.
It is true, of course, that man can alter the topography with increas
ing ease, but there are sites of such difficulty that little can be done
with them while staying within the bounds of “reasonable” cost, what
ever that might be.
4. This brings us finally to the role of technology in affecting popu
lation distribution. The list of salient machines and technological
devices could be the sole subject of a long essay. I will select from this
array of variables only two technological complexes: ( 1 ) the automobile-truck-and-roadway system, and ( 2 ) advances in telecommunica
tions. The focus will be upon the 20th century.
We live in the “auto age,” and it is reasonably clear that the con
temporary structure of the urban setting was revolutionized by the
use of the internal-combustion engine in transportation. This is not
to say that earlier eras— from that of the “walking city” through those
associated with horse-cars and electric trains— are somehow not im
portant. Indeed, they established the major outlines of what are now
the inner cores of our major cities. But the impact of the automobile
and the truck was enormous. Developed around the turn of the century,
they became truly significant only in the 1920’s, when mass ownership
822
became socially and economically feasible. Suburbanization on a grand
scale followed accordingly.
The impact of electrical and (later) electronic means of communi
cation have had a rather more indirect and subtle influence upon pat
terns of population distribution. To follow R. D. McKenzie (1933,
Part IV ) and Amos Hawley (1950. Chapters 13 and 19), they
have permitted central co-ordination and control activities to continue
to function in the inner areas of the metropolis, while production fa
cilities in the manufacturing sector have become more widely dis
persed over the years. The latter, in turn, have become important focal
points for employment* and— to the extent that members of the labor
force attempt to minimize the time and cost of commuting—they exer
cise a further attraction for suburban living. Retail goods and house
hold-oriented services have also undergone a dramatic suburbaniza
tion over the years, to the point where the “dying downtown” has
become a widespread urban phenomenon, affecting central cities in
virtually all size classes. But this is a story so familiar to all that I
need not linger over its re-telling.
I want to conclude my review of research already accomplished by
turning more directly to the matter of population redistribution in
the United States. Unlike many of the studies of the dwelling and the
neighborhood previously summarized, quantitative measures abound,
and I can provide a more concise account that I was able to do in pre
vious sections.
IIB . 2 . Metropolitanization of Population
Having established a rough ecological framework, I can now pro
ceed to review the research already accomplished at the level of the
metropolitan complex. Over the years of the twentieth century, there
has been a continuous drift toward metropolitan areas, and this has
not escaped the attention of scholars interested in population distribu
tion. Indeed, Adna Ferrin Weber (1899) saw the growth of certain
great cities and their suburbs as one of the striking features of the late
nineteenth century.
Following Weber, in chronological order, came the 1ST.SJB. Gras
classic. An Introduction to Economic History (1922), a theoretical
work. R. D. McKenzie’s The Metropolitan Community (1933, Part
I ) , Amos H. Hawley and Donald J. Bogue's article on “Recent Shifts
in Population: The Drift Toward the Metropolitan District, 19301940” (1942), Warren S. Thompson’s Census-sponsored monograph
on The Growth of Metropolitan Districts in the United States: 19001940 (1947), Bo<?ue?s monographs on. Metropolitan Decentralization:
A Study of Differential Growth (1950) and on Population Gron'th
in Standard Metropolitan Area** 1900-1050 (1954). All but the last
of these works referred to developments prior to the United States
entry into World War II. Warren C. Robinson updated the Bogue
series (with some alterations in method) in Metropolitan and Urban
Grou'th in the U.S.A.: 1000-1000 (1968).
Table 1 , taken largely from Bogue (1959, Chapter 3) and official
Census sources, summarizes the main trends quite adequately. While
roughly a third of the U.S. population lived in “principal” metro
politan areas in 1900, the fraction in officially designated Standard
Metropolitan Statistical Areas had exceeded two-thirds by 1970. By
these measures, metropolitan growth exceeded the growth of nonmetro
823
politan areas in every intercensal period of this century, including the
depression decade of the 1970?s. “ Nonrnet ropol it an,” of course, can
not be equated with “rural” population; nonmetropolitan territory
contains numerous smaller cities and towns, as well as rural-nonfarm and rural-farm components. While these latter populations are
beyond the purview of this essay, they constitute an important sector
of the total U.S. population, and some attention will be given them
in passing. For the moment, however, I want to retain a sharp focus
on the 200-odd metropolitan complexes as the arenas within which
the most dramatic population shifts in the U.S. have occurred.
T A B L E 1.— ES TIM A TE S OF M ETR O P O LITA N A N D N O N M E TR O P O LITA N G RO W TH , 1900-70
Census year
1900...............
1910.... ...........
1920... ............
1930...............
1940...............
1950...............
1950...............
1950... ............
1960...............
1960...............
1970...............
Metro
politan
Rates of growth
population
(percent change in preceding decade)
Metroas p e rc e n t------------------------------------------------------------------Total U.S.
politan
of total
Total
Num ber of population
population
United
United
NonSMSA's
(m illions)
(m illions)
States
States
SM SA metropolitan
1 52
1 71
194
H1 5
125
H 47
168
212
212
243
243
76.2
92.2
106.0
123.2
132.2
151.3
151.3
151.3
179.3
179.3
203.2
24.132
34.5
46.1
61.0
67.1
84.3
84.5
89.359
112.9
120.267
140.2
21 .......................... .
38
21
33
15
44
15
25
8
50
16
27
7
51
7
8
6
56
15
22
6
57
15
22
6
15 ........................... .
63
19
26
8
19 ................ ............
69
13
17
6
i Adapted from Bogue 0959), table 3-1, p 46; for 1900 through 1950, Bogue identifies "principal'' metropolitan areas,
i.e., those with at least 100,000 inhabitants.
Note: All estimates are from official census sources. In each case, area is held constant.
IIB.3. Suburbanization of Population
Within the metropolitan complex, there is a long-term shift in popu
lation that is variously labelled as “deconcentration,” “decentraliza
tion,” or “suburbanization.” Weber was clearly aware of these outward
shifts— large cities and their suburbs were growing at different rates
near the end of the 19th century. Indeed, in an article entitled “The
Timing of Metropolitan Decentralization” (1959), I have been able to
show that ten out of the ninety-nine largest metropolitan areas (largest
as of 1950) were suburbanizing by the turn of the century, long before
the automobile-truck-highway complex began to exert its major influ
ence. In this respect, Hawley’s monograph on The Changing Shape of
Metropolitan Areas: Deconcentration Since 1920 (Hawley, 1956) is
somewhat misleading. This study covered the period 1900-1950. By
aggregating the data over all metropolitan areas in the study— and by
largely ignoring the individual experiences of particular metropolitan
areas— Hawley wTas led to place too much emphasis upon the auto
mobile-truck-highway complex; lienee the subtitle. Carriages, horsecars, and intra- and inter-urban electric railways played a key role in
pre-1920 (indeed, pre-1900) “deconcentration” around the larger and
older metropolitan centers. (The Hawley volume's greatest virtue lies
in its treatment of what he calls “extended metropolitan areas,” delim
ited not by county lines, as in Bogue’s work and mine, but in terms of
five-mile distance intervals as far out [when feasible] as 35 miles and
over.)
81-745—72—pt. 2----- 18
824
Regrettably, the work of Hawley and Bogue, together with most of
mine, ceases with 1950 Census data" Indeed, we are largely confined to
the half-century 1900-1950 for most of our generalizations about sub
urbanization or population decentralization. One exception is a study
of mine (Schnore, 1965, Chapter 6 ) confined to the 1950-60 intercensal
decade, and another is a more recent effort (Schnore and Klaff, 1972)
that uses preliminary 1970 Census data in order to estimate the major
trends for 1960-70. Work in progress at the Center for Demography
and Ecology, University of Wisconsin, will soon produce a more defini
tive picture.—taking into account the all-important factor of annexa
tion by central cities. Such annexation clearly tends to mask the actual
amount of suburbanization or decentralization that has occurred.
Hopefully, the current effort will yield an improved estimate of the
role of annexation and a number of other community characteristics
in suburbanization.
In any case, Table 2 summarizes the situation for the years 1900
through 1970. Again, I depend heavily upon Bogue’s estimates for the
half-century 1900-1950, and “splice” the 1960 and 1970 census data to
the end of the Bogue series.
TA B L E 2.— MEASURES O F S U B U R B A N IZA TIO N , 1900-70
Census year
1900...............................
1910................................
1920.......... ............... ..
1930.......... ......... ...........
1 9 4 0 ...........................
1950.............. .................
1950.................... ..........
1950.......... .....................
1960________ _______
1960...............................
1970...........................
1970................................
Num ber of
SMSA's
i 52
171
194
i 115
i 125
i 147
168
212
212
230
230
243 .
Total SM A
(millions)
Percent in
central city
24.1
34.5
46.1
21.0
67.1
84.3
84.5
89.3
112.9
119.6
139.4
89
87
85
82
80
76
58
59
51
51
2 54
Rate of growth (percent change in
preceding decade)
Percent in ring Total SM SA Central city
Ring
11
13
15
18
20
24
42
41
49
49
2 46
33
25
27
8
22
22
35
27
23
5
14
14
27
22
34
14
35
36
26
11
49
2 15
17
25
2 26
28
5
1 Adapted from Bogue (1959), table 3-2, p. 49; intercensal rates are computed with area held constant to the extent
that city annexations permit.
2 Preliminary data from Schnore and Klaff (1972); annexation by central cities are not taken into account.
In any case, we have reached this point where the outlying rings
of metropolitan areas now contain a plurality of the American popu
lation. This situation constitutes the culmination of a true “revolution”
in population distribution, and there are no clear signs of an abate
ment of this massive shift to the suburbs.
IIB.4 Suburbanization by Social Class
For many years, dating at least from the original statement of the
“zonal hypothesis” bv Ernest W . Burgess (1923), American sociol
ogists have contended that the urban and metropolitan population has
been “sifted and sorted” in space according to socioeconomic status.
Moreover, they have contended that there is a clear-cut tendency for
the upper strata to shift residence from the central city to the suburbs.
This gives rise to a concern about loss of community leadership cadres,
a declining tax base, and mounting psychological separation— or
“alienation”— between the rich and the poor.
825
I have been studying this question (among others) for almost twenty
years, and I have concluded that the common image of the rush to
suburbia on the part of the urban elite yields a distored picture of
reality and is a vast oversimplification. We have tended to take the
experience of the larger and older metropolitan areas as common to
all metropolitan areas. This is plainly unwise.
I f I may be permitted to quote from my latest book (Schnore,
1972) :
Results indicate that residential redistribution according to “social class”
is occurring in all these metropolitan areas and that the pattern of change
varies systematically. Regional differences are pronounced and, as prior re
search has suggested, age of this city and population size appear to be important
factors. The percentage of adults in the high schooland college categories in the
rings of older and larger metropolitan areas generally increased disproportion
ately compared to the central cities. A variety of patterns of change occurred
among the younger and smaller metropolitan areas.
If men of practical affairs often are confused about urban issues— especially
about questions pertaining to cities and suburbs— this should be no great sur
prise. The plain truth is that the scholarly community is even more confused
about the main trends. Pinkerton’s (1960) review of the literature emphasizes
this confusion in embarrassing detail. Most of the difficulties in determining the
nature of recent trends in the redistribution of social classes stem from (1) a
lack of consensus regarding the appropriate areal units, time intervals, and
measures of “social class” ; (2) an obtuse reliance on cross-sectional data for
testing inherently longitudinal propositions; and (3) a heavy dependence on
case studies of individual urban areas, usually larger or older metropolitan com
plexes. (pp.82-83)
In any event, the need for more carefully designed research is quite
clear. Significant studies have been published by other investigators—
notably Joel Smith (1970) and Avery Mason Guest (1971)— that con
tribute to our understanding of the process of “social class-’ selection
in residential terms. The availability of the 1970 Census materials,
along with methodological advances of the 1960’s, should lead to a
firmer grasp of the main facts and their antecedent conditions.
IIB.5. Suburbanization by Family Type
The most creative of recent research on the areal distribution of
family types has been carried out by two men trained at the University
of Wisconsin (Madison)— Professors Ozzie Lee Edwards (University
of Michigan) and Avery Mason Guest (University of Washington). I
shall summarize some of their published work, largely in their own
words, in order to give the flavor of current thinking on the subject.
Guest has published a significant report on “Patterns of Family
Location” in Cleveland, Ohio, using census tract data and “path
analysis” in order to evaluate some ecological hypotheses concerning
the location of different family types. (Guest, 1972)
We defined six types of families or pseudo-families on the basis of available
1960 data. Four types represent idealized stages in the life cycle of married
couples: Young Couples, husband under 45 with no children under 18 at home;
Young Families, husband under 45 with children under 18 at home; Old Families
husband over 45 with children under 18 at home; Old Couples, husband over 45
with no children under 18 at home. The other two types of families, Single
Heads and Primary Individuals, do not contain married couples as heads of the
household. In Single Head families, there are relatives (perhaps some children)
living together, while Primary Individual living units generally consist of one to
three unrelated individuals, (pp. 161-162)
826
What is the areal distribution of these types of family? One aspect
of their typical locations is shown in Table 3. Guest summarizes these
findings in these words:
As Table [3] shows, it is indeed true that these family types vary with distance
from the Cleveland CBD. Young Families and Old Families in the mature child
bearing stage are found disproportionately on the outskirts of Cleveland, while
Single Heads and Primary Individuals are found more often near the center. Old
Couples, presumably just through the childbearing period, are somewhat decen
tralized, although the relationship with distance is slightly curvilinear. The peak
concentrations occur near the outskirts, but there is a clear drop in concentration
in the last two mile-distance zones. The sixth family type, Young Couples, pre
sumably about to begin childbearing, shows little relationship with distance from
the CBD.
T A B L E 3.— MEAN PR O P O RTIO N O F FA M ILY TY P E S BY 1-M ILE D IS TA N C E ZO N ES FROM C LEVELA N D CBD*
Fam ily type
Young
couples
Young
families
Old
families
Old
couples
Single
heads
Prim ary
individuals
$0-1 (13)____________ _____________
i - 2 (35)______________ ____________
2-3 (4 6 ).. ________________________
3-4 (47). ...................................................
4-5 ( 4 6 ) . . . ................................ ..............
5 -6 (4 4 )_____________ _____________
6-7 (35)................... .................................
7 -8 (2 8 )____________________ ______
8 p lu s ( 5 9 ) . . . ...........................................
5.7
7.5
8.1
8.3
7.3
6.3
6.0
8.0
6.5
16.7
25.3
27.6
27.6
25.2
28.8
32.3
41.1
39.6
5.2
8.0
8.7
9.6
11.2
13.0
13.9
13.4
14.8
12.0
16.4
20.3
23.7
27.6
28.9
29.1
23.3
25.4
10.5
17.0
14.6
12.8
11.6
9.6
8.3
6.7
6.1
50.8
25.6
20.5
17.8
16.9
13.3
10.4
7.4
7.5
Grand mean (353)........................
Standard deviation_____ ____ _______
Zero-order r with linear distance from
C B D ________ ___________________
7.2
3.0
30.4
10.7
11.4
4.8
24.1
7.1
10.8
4.9
16.1
12.7
-.1 0
.52
.54
.43
-.6 5
-.6 0
Zone
i Num ber of tracts in parentheses.
Source: Guest (1972), Table 1, p. 163.
However, it should be emphasized that most of the variance in each family
type is left unexplained by linear distance from the CBD. We were unable to
find significant other spatial patterns, such as sectoral or location in relation
ship to Lake Erie, that might account for much more of the variance in the
family types.
These relationships between distance and the proportion of each family type
are generally consistent with our expectations. Given that families with chil
dren, Young Families and Old Families, should be attracted to the outskirts by
the presence of recreational activity and spacious housing, we would expect them
to be particularly decentralized. Young Families might also be decentralized
through the use of new housing. Single Heads and Primary Individuals should
be particularly centralized by their use of the small space of central housing.
Furthermore, since these families are often headed by elderly widowed persons,
they might be found particularly in old housing near the city center. There may
be some propensity for widows to live in the neighborhood where they lived as
spouses in families with children. The relatively strong propensity for Old Cou
ples to be decentralized is somewhat surprising, given the fact that they should
have fewer space needs than families in the childbearing stage and that they
might be found in the old housing near the city center. On the other hand, the
weak relationship between the proportion of Young Couples and distance from
the CBD is generally expected. Location in areas of new housing might lead to
their decentralization, (pp. 162-163)
Following* a detailed investigation by path-analytic techniques,
Guest summarizes the apparent reasons for centralization or decen
tralization of types of family:
Young Families and Old Families are decentralized, but apparently for some
what different reasons. Young Families are on the outskirts primarily due to
827
the presence of relatively new housing, while Old Families are there because of
low density housing.
Both Primary Individuals and Single Heads are found toward the CBD be
cause they live in old areas. Primary Individuals are also particularly central
ized because of residence in high density areas; density is less important for
Single Heads.
Of the other two types, only Old Couples had much relationship to distance
from the CBD. In this case, paths have noticeably opposite effects. Thus, Old
Couples are decentralized due to residence in low density areas but centralized
due to residence in older areas; that is, there are forces pulling them toward
both the center and outskirts of Cleveland. There is also some tendency for
location in new neighborhoods to decentralize Young Couples, whereas location
in high density neighborhoods tends to centralize them. . . .
It is clear that the arguments of the human ecologists are valuable for under
standing the location of types of families in the metropolis. Much of the ten
dency for family types to be located close to or distant from the CBD may be
explained through the distance-density and distance-Age relationships. In fact,
the tendency for Young Families and Old Families to be decentralized and for
Primary Individuals to be centralized can be almost completely explained by the
model.
Given the massive evidence (Muth, 1969) that population densities decline
in a fairly regular manner with distance from the CBD, one would expect gen
erally similar patterns of family distribution in most American metropolitan
areas. Indeed, we (Guest, 1970) have shown that patterns of family distribution
in sixteen other metropolitan areas are generally similar to those found in
Cleveland.
The direct effect of areal Age on patterns of family location may indicate
the importance of the neighborhood life cycle in understanding the distribution
of population. Neighborhoods, regardless of their housing and site characteristics,
may indeed pass through life cycles in their family composition, from Young
Families to Old Couples, Primary Individuals, and Single Heads. This, of course,
has been only suggested, not demonstrated, by the model. While areal Age may
exert a direct effect on family location, there is little evidence that it has much
indirect effect through other variables.
The ecologists’ model would suggest that patterns of family distribution in rela
tionship to the CBD should be most distinct in the largest metropolitan areas,
whether for reasons steming from the greater competition for central land or
from the generally old age of the area around the CBD. However, we have else
where (Guest, 1970, p. 162) correlated (for Cleveland and the sixteen other
metropolitan areas) population size with the predicted change in the proportion
of each family type for each mile distance zone from the CBD. This analysis
showed that the proportions of Young Families and Old Families increased most
rapidly with distance from the CBD in the smallest places, while the proportions
of Single Heads and Primary Individuals decreased most rapidly with distance
from the CBD in the smallest places. This result was consistent with Muth’s (1969,
p. 152) finding that the density gradient changed most rapidly in the smallest
places. While these results seem to be contradictory to current ecological theory,
we have no present explanations. Obviously, more research is needed into the
process of neighborhood change as cities age and grow in population, (pp. 168169)
Edwards’ research report was also a case study of a single metro
politan area— Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In this case, however, the total
population is not studied; rather, the investigation is of “Patterns of
Residential Segregation Within a Metropolitan Ghetto” (Edwards,
1970). The study would have been vastly improved had Edwards used
the detailed family typology employed by Guest; instead, Edwards
examined only four family types— Younger Couples, Younger Fami
lies, Older Families, and Older Couples. (At the same time, it must be
said that Guest’s study would have been improved by attention to the
white-nonwhite differences; this would seem especially important in a
city like Cleveland, where a substantial black “ghetto” encompasses
much of the East side, while the West side remains largely white in
occupance.) Both studies suffer from a familiar problem: trying to
828
make longitudinal inference (generalizations about changes over time)
with cross-sectional data (“snapshots” referring to one point in time).
In any case, Edwards’ study is worth attention for its ideas. Sum
marizing in his own words, Edwards says:
The residential segregational of families by income and by a stage of the
family life cycle within Milwaukee’s black community resemblies in both pat
tern and degree that in the white community. The greater the difference in
income, the more dissimilar are the distributions by census tract. Dissimilarity is
greater between younger couples without children and older couples with chil
dren than between any other pair of family types defined by husband’s age and
presence of children. However, segregation by income was substantially greater
than by family type in 1960. The bases of selectivity of blacks in “changing"
areas of the city, where the proportion black is still relatively low, and of whites
in the “suburban” areas adjoining the city are similar. Families in the higher
income groups and couples with children are over-represented in these areas.
It would appear that given the pressures of limited housing space in the inner
core of the black community, given the fact that certain amenities are not
available in that area, and given the economic and social barriers which restrict
the movement of blacks into the suburbs, the changing areas must function as
“suburbs” for the black community. . . .
In this study we have attempted to measure residential segregation within
a metropolitan ghetto. We discovered that Milwaukee’s Inner Core, the place of
residence of a racially segregated population, is not an undifferentiated mixture
of elements of the nonwhite population. Within this area, nonwhite families of
different income level are segregated to a degree which is moderate in an absolute
sense but approximates that of similar income groups in Milwaukee’s white com
munity. In addition, nonwhite married couples living in the Inner Core were
classified according to stage in the family life cycle and segregation between
family types measured. This form of residential segregation was disappointingly
small in the light of previous suggestions as to the family type composition of
areas of urban communities. However, residential segregation of nonwhite family
types within the Inner Core approximated that of family types within the White
Community.
The data of this study provide further evidence of the positive relationship be
tween social distance and spatial distance. Segregation is greatest between those
families which differ most in level of income. Although the distinctions are less
pronounced, segregation between family types also reflects this positive relation
ship between social distance and spatial distance. Those family types which dif
fer most in life style are most segregated from each other. Indexes of segrega
tion for family types reflect the curvilinear pattern of change in life style as the
family passes through its life cycle. These principles are applicable to the Inner
Core as well as to the White Community.
Of particular interest was the function of the Changing Area as a place of
residence for elements of the nonwhite population. It appears that the Changing
Area serves the nonwhite population in much the same way as the Suburban Area
does the white population. The Changing Area is characterized by a dispropor
tionately large number of nonwhite families in higher income categories and 11011white families with children as is the Suburban Area by white families of higher
income and white families with children.
The patterns suggested here may be obscured somewhat by the size of the areal
unit. However, they are sufficiently distinct to create general impressions and to
provoke further interest. Level of income is a key factor in the distribution of
urban families. The life cycle also seems to be a useful frame of reference for
studying this distribution. There is particular need for further consideration of
this subject as it applies to the nonwhite family, (pp. 185, 191-192)
It is clear that much work remains to be done on this topic in the
future. The 1960 and 1970 Census data, in particular, should be utilized
for the purpose of ascertaining important changes that have occurred
within cities over the decade of the 1960’s. Current research at the Uni
versity of Wisconsin (Madison) should help add to the sum total of
our knowledge and understanding on the issue of segregation by ( 1 )
socioeconomic status, ( 2 ) family types, and (3) color. It is to the last
of these topics that I turn now.
8-29
IIB . 6. Suburbanization by Color
The popular image of city and suburb in metropolitan America is
clear: the central city is being abandoned by whites in a great suburbanward exodus, leaving the metropolitan core area increasingly to blacks.
What are the facts ?
The main trends since the turn of the century are reasonably clear.
Taeuber and Taeuber (previously cited) have assembled the basic
data shown in Table 4. They explain the long-term trends— through
1960— as follows:
The racial composition of metropolitan areas in the United States from
1900 to 1960 is shown in summary fashion in Table [4]. Of the white population
in 1960, 63 per cent lived within the 212 SMSA’s recognized in the census, as
compared with 65 per cent of the Negro population. Of the metropolitan Negro
population in 1960, 80 per cent lived in central cities, and 20 per cent lived in
the rings. Metropolitan whites were more evenly distributed, with a slight major
ity living in the suburban rings. Thus, Negroes composed 17 per cent of the
population in central cities, but less than 5 per cent of the population outside
central cities.
T A B L E 4.— D IS TR IB U TIO N O F P O P U LA TIO N W ITH IN M ETR O P O LITA N AR EAS,* BY RACE, 1900-60
Year
Total
White
Negro
112,385
72.576
52,508
31,836
99,509
66.487
48,779
29,399
12,194
5.840
3.547
2.352
51.4
62.7
66 .0
62.1
47.8
61.6
65.9
62 .8
78.6
74.6
57.2
54.5
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
82.4
90.1
9?. 9
93 .3
16.8
9 .6
6 .9
6 .5
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
95.0
94.1
93 .0
90.7
4 .6
5 .5
6 .5
8 .9
Population in metropolitan areas (in thousands):
1960..................... .......... ............ ................ ........................................
1940_______________ _____ ________ _______ ____________
________
1920______ ___________________ _____ ______ ____________ ________
1 9 0 0 ..._____________ __________ __________ ______________
Percentage living in central cities:
1950______________ __________________________________ _ ________
1940................... ............ ................................... ............ .......... ..........
1920................. .......... ................................................ .......................... ________
1900_________ _____ __________ ____ __________ ________ _
Percentage by race, inside central cities:
1960...................................... ............ ............................. .......... ...........
1940.................................... ............................... ...................................................
1920......................................................... ........................... ..................________
1900........................................................ .......... ....................... ........... ...............
Percentage by race, outside central cities:
1960............................. ................ ......................... ...............................
1940____ ________ ____________ _______________________ _ ...............
1920.......................................... ............ ......................... .......... ............_______
1900........................................................................................ .............. ...............
i Th e historical data pertain to standard metropolitan statistical areas as defined in the 1960 census, with no adjustm ent
for changing city boundaries.
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, “ U.S. Census of Population: 1960, Selected Area Reports, Standard Metropolitan
Statistical Areas," Final Report P C ( 3 H D (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963). table 1. Reprinted
in Karl E. Taeuber and Alm a F. Taeuber, “ Negroes in Cities” (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1965), p. 57, table 11 .
The trends in these various percentages are in part explained by the northward
movement of Negro population. In the North, there has never been any significant
amount of rural and village settlement by Negroes, and they have been excluded
from nearly all new housing developments in the suburbs. In the South, by
contrast, Negroes have long resided in many rural and village places that have
been brought into the metropolitan sphere as urban settlement expanded out
ward. Within both North and South, the rapid urbanization of Negro population
has contributed disproportionately to the growth of Negro population inside
rather than outside central cities. For whites, particularly in the older and larger
metropolitan areas, the central city population has been growing slowly if at all,
while there has been a large migration to the suburbs, (p. 56)
A colleague and I drew similar conclusions from the same basic
data, though we concentrated on the twelve largest metropolitan areas
as of 1960, and stressed detailed trend data for the period 1930-1900.
For those areas and that time period, we came to the following
conclusions:
830
It is no exaggeration to call the growth of nonwhite population in our major
cities one of the truly outstanding social trends of the twentieth century. In
1900, when 43 percent of the wThite population was living in urban communities,
only 22.7 percent of the nonwhite population lived in cities. At our most recent
census in 1960, 69.5 percent of all whites and 72.4 percent of all nonwhites were
urban dwellers, making the nonwhites more urbanized than the rest of the
American population.
The concentration of nonwhites in very large cities is even more dramatic. The
central cities of our twelve largest metropolitan areas contained 13.2 percent of
the United States population in 1960. At the same time, these cities held over
31 percent of American Negroes. (These cities are New York, Los AngelesLong Beach, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, San Francisco-Oakland, Boston,
Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Washington, Cleveland, and Baltimore. In the California
cities there are substantial numbers of persons of Chinese and Japanese
ancestry who are also treated as “nonwhites’’ in census statistics: but the nonwhite population in most cities is almost entirely Negro.)
Actually the rapid influx of nonwhites is not confined to a handful of very large
places. Every one of the fifty largest cities in the continental United States—
each containing at least 250,000 inhabitants in 1960— showTed increases in their
proportions of nonwhites between 1950 and 1960, our two most recent censuses.
This trend was evident in all sections of the country, North and South, East and
West. In some cases (e.g., Minneapolis, St. Paul, and El Paso), the increases are
modest, with a difference of only one or two percentage points. In other in
stances. however, the changes are substantial: for example, Newark changed
from 17.2 to 34.4 percent nonwhite, and Washington’s proportion of nonwhites
rose from 35.4 to 54.8 in 1960.
There were regional differences, however, in the experience of metropolitan
areas. Fully 70 percent of the 212 Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas
currently recognized showed increasing proportions of nonwhites between 1950
and 1960, but this figure conceals an important difference between the South
and the rest of the country. Outside the South, nine out of every ten, metropolitan
areas showed nonwliite increases over the decade. In the South itself, the
trend was radically different, for only 35 percent of the southern metropolitan
areas (27 out of 77) experienced relative gains in numbers of nonwhite. In
other words, six out of every ten southern metropolitan areas had lower pro
portions of mnwhitcs in 19(W than in 1950. In general, it was only the larger
southern metropolitan areas that gained larger numbers of nonwhites.
The twelve largest metropolitan areas listed earlier now contain almost a
third of the American Negro population. The proportion of whites in the United
States who lived in the twelve central areas has fallen slightly but steadily since
1930. while the proportion of nonwliites has consistently increased, doubling in
the thirty-year interval. Between 1950 and 1960 these central cities lost over
two million wiiites while gaining 1.8 million nonwhites. In addition, although
the white population has become progressively more concentrated in the sub
urban “rings" around these cities, the relative number of nonwhites in these rings
(only 3 percent in 1930) has grown by just two percentage points in thirty years.
The collective pattern described above is generally reproduced in each of the
twelve areas taken individually. The total population increased rather slowly
in the depression decade of 1930-19JO, then grew faster over the last two
decades. with the nonwhite populations growing at rates from two to four times
greater than those of the white populations. . . .
Thus the relative number of whites in every one of the twelve large central
cities has decreased drastically over the last thirty years. This trend started
slowly in the ‘thirties, gained momentum in the ‘forties, and became most pro
nounced during the ’fifties. The experience of one central city— Washington,
D.€.— touches on the dramatic. In 1930 almost three-quarters of the inhabitants
living in the city of Washington were white; currently, more than one-half of
the residents of this city are nonwliite.
In contrast to the sharp drop in the proportion of whites in the central cities,
the most common pattern in the suburban rings is one of near stability in racial
composition. Thus despite the rapid absolute growth of the ring area, and
despite the fact that the nonwhite rate of growth in the ring often is higher
than that of the whites, the proportion of whites in eight of the twelve sub
urban rings changed by less than three percentage points between 1930 and 19^0.
In Washington. D.C., and in Baltimore, the relative number of whites in the
ring actually increased substantially during these thirty years.
831
Since 1930 the nonwhite population has expanded rapidly in every one of the
large central cities; correspondingly, the central city white population has
remained relatively stable or has substantially declined. This process of racial
turn-over reached a peak of intensity between 1950 and 1960. The population
decline of our largest cities would have been much more pronounced if increased
numbers of nonwhites had not partially compensated for the loss of the white
population. As we have noted, the flow to the rings was even greater over the
last ten years than it was earlier.
But this “decentralization” movement involves a distinct color line. While the
cities are becoming more and more nonwhite, the rings maintain an amazingly
high and constant proportion of white residents; without exception, from 93 to
99 percent of the population in the rings of our twelve largest metropolitan com
munities are white and this situation is basically unchanged since 1930.
Continuation of the trends documented here would certainly have tremendous
implications for the future of the metropolitan community in the United States.
(Schnore and Sharp)
W e also speculated on some of tlie reasons for these massive shifts
over the thirty-year interval on which we focussed our attention:
One reason why the central city is losing its white population is that whites
in the city are older and have higher death rates. More importantly, under
developed city land for the building of new homes is in very short supply. Those
dwellings that are available often are not as attractive to young white families
as comparably priced homes in the suburbs. Finally, for a number of whites, fears
of various kinds— threats of possible physical violence, hazards of declining
property values, concern over the color composition of schools— begin to operate
when nonwhites become neighbors.
The ring population is increasing at a tremendous rate not only because of
movements into them but also because suburban areas have a high proportion
of young couples who are producing children at a very rapid pace. They are “baby
farms” in an almost literal sense. Additional factors which have contributed to
the accumulation of population in the ring include the greater ability of Amer
ican families to pay the higher costs of transportation: the decentralization of
industrial and commercial enterprises; and the construction of vast suburban
housing tracts and massive expressways which lead into the heart of the city.
Nonwhites are increasing in the larger cities because of the higher birth rates
of central city nonwhites and because of the “puli” of a more favorable politicaleconomic climate. The big cities have the jobs to which nonwhites can aspire,
even though they may not pay well.
Why have nonwhites clustered near the center of the city and avoided the
outer city and the ring? Part of the explanation is certainly the low economic
status of the nonwhite and his inability to afford a new home in a more expensive
neighborhood. Most observers would agree, however, that the major factors in
residential clustering by race are restrictive selling practices which ultimately
create separate housing markets for whites and nomvhitcs.
Our conclusion was rather grim, and we are pleased to note that the
1970?s have yet to witness the devastating ghetto riots of the 1960‘s:
We can anticipate that the rest of the twentieth century will be marked by a
continuation of the established trend toward concentration of the American
Negro in large cities and a continuation of the accompanying social upheavals
that have captured the attention of the nation in recent years.
Other writers have detected a hint of change from sample data.
Reynolds Farley (University of Michigan sociologist and demog
rapher) summarizes the data available to him on the eve of the 1970
Census:
Several studies have indicated that central cities and their suburban rings are
coming to have dissimilar racial compositions. A closer examination of the data
reveals that suburban rings do not have an exclusively white population. There
are now, and always have been, suburban communities of blacks. In recent years,
the growth of the Negro suburban population has accelerated. This growth ap
pears concentrated in three types of areas: older suburbs which are experiencing
population succession, new developments designed for Negro occupancy, and some
impoverished suburban enclaves. Despite this growth, city-suburban differences
S32
in the proportion of black population are increasing, and patterns of residential
segregation by race within suburbs are emerging which are similar to those
found within central cities. In the past, city-suburban differences in socioeconomic
status were different among whites and Negroes. Unlike whites, the blacks who
lived in the suburbs were typically lower in socioeconomic status than the blacks
who lived in central cities. The recent migration to the suburbs, however, is ap
parently selective of higher status blacks, and it is likely the census of 1970 will
reveal that the socioeconomic status of suburban blacks exceeds that of central
city blacks. (Farley, 1970, p. 512)
Farley is even more direct in his opinions concerning the conse
quences of black suburbanization :
The suburbanization of blacks does not herald a basic change in the pat
terns of racial segregation within metropolitan areas. Cities and their suburban
rings are becoming more dissimilar in racial composition, and the out-migration
of some blacks from the city will not alter this process. It will do no more than
slow the growth of the black population of some cities while adding still greater
diversity to the already heterogeneous population of suburbia.
It does indicate that Negroes, similar to European ethnic groups, are becom
ing more decentralized throughout the metropolitan area after they have been
in the city for some time and improved their economic status. However, im
provements in economic status brought about not only the residential decentral
ization of European immigrant groups but also reductions in their residential
segregation. Negroes have deviated widely from this pattern for, despite eco
nomic gains and some decentralization of predominately black residential areas,
the residential segregation of Negroes has persisted1. Even during the prosperous
p e rio d from the end of World War II to the present, there is no evidence that
the residential segregation of blacks decreased. It is possible that the suburban
ization of blacks will alter this pattern, and a future census may reveal in
tegrated suburban neighborhoods. In the meantime, we can be certain that the
residential segregation patterns of central cities are reappearing within rhe
suburbs. (pp. 520-527).
Only a detailed analysis of tlie 1970 census data— just now becom
ing available for close scrutiny— will yield a full picture of the major
trends in suburbanization by color. Work at the University of W is
consin is proceeding apace. Professor Harry Sharp is updating the
trends for the twelve largest metropolitan areas, and Karl and Alma
Taeuber are replicating and extending their monumental work on
Negroes in Cities. It will not be long before we will have the full
facts concerning the 1960’s.
IIR.7. Trends and Projections for the Total Metropolitan Population
The most ambitious effort to project the total metropolitan popula
tion is that of Patricia Leavev Hodge and Philip M. Hauser in a work
entitled The Challenge of America's Population Outlook, 1960 to
1985 (1968). Their work, based on Census sources, contains a wealth
of information on key trends through 1960. Sponsored by the Na
tional Commission on Urban Problems, this study is the most com
prehensive yet undertaken with existing census data as of the late
1960’s. Table 5 is taken from their work. They are careful to note
that the estimates for 1985 are projections of recent trends, and not
predictions about the actual course of events awaiting us in the future.
833
TA B L E 5.— M ETR O P O LITA N A N D N O N M E TR O P O LITA N P O P U LA TIO N BY REGION : 1960 A N D P R O JEC TED 1985
[Numbers in thousands]
Change 1960-85
Population
Region and
metropolitan status
United States............ .......
Metropolitan..............
Nonm etropolitan___
Northeast...........................
Metropolitan..............
Nonmetropolitan___
North Central................
Metropolitan..............
Nonm etropolitan___
South..................................
Metropolitan..............
Nonmetropolitan___
W est......................... ..........
Metropolitan..............
Nonmetropolitan___
Percent of region
1960
1985
Am ount
Percent
1960
1985
179,323
112,884
66,439
44,678
35,350
9, 328
51,619
30,963
20,656
54,973
26,436
28,537
28,053
20,135
7,918
252,185
178,138
74,047
58,517
47,328
11,189
65,723
44,642
21,081
78,910
46,156
32,754
49,035
40,012
9,023
72,862
65,254
7,608
13,839
11,978
1,861
14,104
13,679
425
23,937
19,720
4,217
20,982
19,877
1,105
40.6
57.8
11.5
31.0
33.9
20.0
27.3
44.2
2.1
43.5
74.6
14.8
74.8
98.7
14.0
100.0
63.0
37.0
100.0
79.1
20.9
100.0
60.0
40.0
100.0
48.1
51.9
100.0
71.8
28.2
100.0
70.6
29.4
100.0
80.9
19.1
100.0
67.9
31.2
100.0
58.5
41.5
100.0
81.6
18.4
Change
1960-85
+ 7 .6
-7 .6
+ 1 .8
-1 .8
+ 7 .9
-7 .9
+ 1 0 .4
-1 0 .4
+ 9 .8
-9 .8
Note: 1960 boundaries of SMSA's used for 1960; 1967 boundaries of SMSA's used for 1985.
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, "U.S. Census of Population, 1960, Selected Area Reports, Typ e of Place", final re
port PC(3)-1E, table 1; and appendix A , table A - l , in Patricia Leavey Hodge and Philip M. Hauser, “ The Challenge of
Am erica’s Metropolitan Population Outlook, 1960 to 1985,” New York: Praeger.
Table 5 shows that metropolitan areas are expected to increase by
57.8 per cent over the 25-year interval at issue. Nonmetropolitan popu
lation growth will be largely a function of natural increase, since net
migration losses will continue to be felt in this type of territory. Table
5 also projects broad regional differences by metropolitan status. The
Northeast will apparently show the least change. The prospect for
all of the remaining three regions is that they will undergo further
substantial “metropolitanization.” The South and the West are ex
pected to show the greatest increase within metropolitan areas, with
the North Central region (The Midwest) expected to show a somewhat
more moderate increase. There are many technical limitations to this
kind of effort; the authors are fully aware of them, and couch their
conclusions in very careful language:
It is projected that the total population of the United States in 1985, under
the assumptions employed, would be 252.2 million— with a possible range of from
240.7 to 263.6 million. Of the 252.2 million persons anticipated in the United
States by 1985, it is estimated that 178.1 million or 71 percent of the total pop
ulation would reside in metropolitan areas. Then, the metropolitan population
of the nation by 1985 may well be as large as the total population was in 1960.
This projection indicates that the metropolitan population would increase by
some 65.3 million or by 58 percent during the 25 years from 1960 to 1985. In
contrast nonmetropolitan United States would increase by only 7.6 million per
sons, or 12 percent.
Although the Northeast would show the smallest metropolitan increase both
in rate of population growth and the proportion of the metropolitan population,
the population residing in metropolitan areas in this region, at 47.3 million, would
exceed its total population of 44.7 million in 1960. By 1985 the Northeast would
have lost its position as the most metropolitanized region in the nation, with 81
percent metropolitan, to the West which will have become 82 percent metro
834
politan. Tlie West will have achieved this status as the most metropolitanized
region by reason of almost doubling its metropolitan population between 1960
and 1985— an increase of 99 percent.
The North Central states would retain their rank as the third most metro
politan region with 68 percent of the population concentrated in SMSA’s in
1985. The metropolitan population of this region would increase by 44 percent.
The South will continue to experience the greatest relative increase in the
proportion of the metropolitan population. This proportion would increase to
5S percent in 1985, from 48 percent in 1960— a 10 percentage point increase.
Metropolitan population in the South would increase by 75 percent.
It is clear that each region of the nation must be prepared for great metro
politan population increases by 1985. Of the total metropolitan increase of 65.3
million in the United States, the West would absorb 19.9 million additional
metropolitan inhabitants, the South 19.7 million, the North Central states 13.7
million and the Northeast 12.0 million.
The annual growth rate of SMS A population between 1960 and 1965 was con
siderably below that between 1950 and 1900. 1.8 as compared with 2.4 percent
(geometric) This reduction in rate of growth was evident in each region,
and is, of course, reflected in the projections to 1985.
Between 1960 and 1985 the metropolitan population of the nation as a whole
would increase at a rate of 1.6 percent (geometric) per annum. The annual
growth rate of the population resident in SMSA’s in the West, would be 2.6
percent; in the South, 2.0 percent; in the North Central states, 1.2 percent; and
in the Northeast 1.0 percent. The annual growth rate anticipated in the West
is one that would double the population about every 27 years, whereas that of the
Northeast would require about 70 years for a doubling, (pp. 7-10)
Thus the problems of providing adequate housing for metropolitan
populations loom largest in the future for all regions of the United
States. The most common notion among demographers and social
scientists is that we shall have to double the currently existing housing
stock by the end of the century, at least within metropolitan areas.
IIB . 8. Trends and Projections by Color. City and Ring, in Metro
politan Areas
In view of the emphasis in this paper, the question of future changes
in the color composition of cities and suburban rings in American
metropolitan population deserves at least a few words. Again. Hodge
and Hauser (1968) have provided the most thoughtful consideration
of this question. The basic data are contained in Table 6. The authors
summarize the highlights of this summary table in these words.
A 40.6 percent increase in total U.S. population is projected for 1960 to 1985,
involving' a 37 percent growth in whites and a 68.2 percent growth in nonwhites
(Column D ).
Of the total population growth, nearly four-fifths (79.4 percent) is projected
for outlying parts of metropolitan areas (the SMSA Ring), with the balance
about evenly split between metropolitan central cities and nonmetropolitan ter
ritory (Column E ).
The proportion of nonwhite population in central cities is projected to rise
from 17.8 percent in 1960 to 30.7 percent in 19S5, with the proportion of nonwhite
population in outlying parts of metropolitan areas changing only from 5.2 to 6.1
percent (Columns F and G ). (p. 58)
835
TA B L E 6 .-S U M M A R Y — RE SID EN T P O P U LA TIO N O F TH E U N ITE D S T A T E S ; 1960 A N D PR O JEC TED 1985
[Numbers in thousands]
Percent distribution
Population
Change 1960-85
by color
--------------------------------------------------------------------------Percent o f ------------------------------------------------1960
1985
Am ount
Percent total change
1960
1985
(A )
United S ta te .....................
W h i t e . . . ...................
N o n w h it e ...............
M etropolitan!............... ..
W hite__________ _
N o n w h ite ..........................
Central C ity........... ............
W hite..........................
N o nw h ate.................
SM SA R in g .................
W h ite ...................__
Nonwhate____ _____
Nonm etropolitan1.............
W h ite .................
N onw h ate.................
179,323
158,832
20,491
112,884
99,692
13,192
58,208
47,852
10,356
54,676
51,840
2,836
66,439
59,140
7,299
(B)
<C)
252,785
217,714
34,471
178,138
151,164
26,974
65,581
45,435
20,146
112,557
105,730
6,827
74,047
66,550
7,497
72,862
58,882
13,980
65,254
51,472
13,782
7,373
-2 ,4 1 7
9,790
57,881
53,890
3,991
7,608
7,410
198
(D)
40.6
37. o
68.2
57.8
51.6
104.5
12.7
-5 .1
94.5
105.9
104.0
140.7
11.5
12.5
2.7
(E)
100.0
80.8
19.2
89.6
70.6
18.9
10.0
-3 .3
13.4
79.4
74.0
5.5
10.4
10.2
.3
(F)
(G)
100.0
88.6
11.4
100.0
8.83
11.7
100.0
82.2
17.8
100.0
94.8
5.2
100.0
89.0
11.0
100.0
86.3
13.7
100.0
84.9
15.1
100.0
69.3
30.7
100.0
93.9
6.1
100.0
89.9
10.1
1 1960 boundaries of SM S A ’s used for 1960; 1967 boundaries of SMSA's used for 1985.
Source: Patricia Le&vey Hodge and Philip M. Hauser, “ The Challenge of America's Metropolitan Population Outlook,
1960 to 1985” (N ew York: Frederick A. Praeger, publishers, 1968), p. 58.
These authors’ conclusions are thus somewhat different from those
implied in Farley’s thinking, previously quoted. Which analyst is
more correct will only be determined when all the factual data from
the 1970 Census become available, but it is reasonably clear that black
suburbanization is not— and will not be— as dramatic a change in popu
lation distribution as the massive shift (primarily out of the South)
toward Northern and Western metropolitan central cities.
IXB.9. The Problem of Annexation
A final note must be appended to this discussion. I have made some
calculations of the percentage nonwhite in fifty large cities, distin
guishing (a) those with extensive annexations between 1950 and 1960
and/or between 1960 and 1970 and (b) those with no annexations be
tween these intercensal decades. The results are shown in Tables 7
and 8.
In Table 7, twenty-two cities that either had no annexations (or very
minor boundary changes) the percentage-point shifts in nonwhite pop
ulation are in the direction of mounting black proportions. Note espe
cially the large gains in percentage nonwhite in the very largest cities.
Washington, D.C. and Newark now have black majorities. Moreover,
all but one city (Akron) shows a clear trend upward in proportions
black over the two post-war decades considered here.
836
T A B L E 7.— COLOR CO M PO SITIO N OF 22 C ITIE S W ITH NO BO U N D A RY CHANGES 1950-60 AN D 1960-70 OR M INOR
CHANGES DURING T H E 2 DECADES
Percent nonwhite in city
New Y o rk ................................ .................
Chicago.................................... .................
Los Angeles............................. .................
Philadelphia.......... ................. .................
Detroit......................................
Baltim ore................................. .................
C le ve la n d ................................. .................
W ashington.............................. .................
St. L o u is ,................................ .................
San Francisco......................... .................
Boston...................................... ________
New Orleans......... ................. .................
Pittsburgh................................ .................
B u ff a lo .................................. .................
M inneapolis............................. .................
N e w ark.................................... .................
Oakland...................................
Rochester................................. .................
St. P a u l.................................. ................
M ia m i...................................... .................
A k r o n . . .................................. .................
Je rse y C ity............................... .................
1950
1969
1970
Total
population
1970
White city
population
1970
Nonwhite city
population
1970
9.8
14.1
10.7
18.3
16.4
23.8
16.3
35.4
18.0
10.5
5.3
32.0
12.3
6.5
1.6
17.2
14.5
2 .4
2.0
16.3
8.7
7.0
14.7
23.6
16.8
26.7
29.2
35.0
28.9
54.8
28.8
18.4
9.8
27.4
16.8
13.8
3.2
34.4
26.4
7.6
3 .0
22.6
13.1
13.5
23.4
34.4
22.8
34.4
44.5
47.0
39.0
72.3
41.3
28.6
17.2
45.5
20.7
21.3
6.4
56.0
40.9
17.6
4.6
23.4
8.3
22.2
7,867,760
3,366,957
2,816,061
1,948,609
1,511,482
905,759
750,903
756,510
622,236
715,674
641,071
593,471
520,117
462,768
434,400
382,417
361,561
296,233
309,980
334,859
679,239
260,545
6,023,535
2,207,767
2,173,600
1,278,717
838,877
479,837
458,085
209,272
364,992
511,186
524,709
323,485
412,280
364,367
406,414
168,382
213,512
244,118
295,741
256,377
623,076
202,813
1,844,225
1,159,190
642,461
669,892
672,605
425,922
292,819
547,238
257,244
204,488
116,362
269,986
107,837
98,401
27,986
214,035
148.049
52,115
14,239
78,482
56,163
57,732
Now it is often asserted by observers of the urban political scene
that one of the main motives for central city annexations of outlying
suburban territory is to keep a white city majority. How successful is
such a strategy? Table 8 suggests that— if this is indeed a major mo
tive— only Indianapolis succeeded in lowering the percentage black
between i960 and 1970. And in that case, the entire surrounding county
(Marion) was consolidated with the city of Indianapolis. I f we had de
tailed social and economic data for the annexed territory itself— color,
income, etc.— we would be in a far better position to evaluate the situa
tion. A t the moment, the only way to achieve the desired results is to
aggregate the Census data over blocks and/or census tracts, and this
is clearly a very tedious and time-consuming enterprise. This work
probably will be done, but only at substantial costs in both money and
time. W e cannot expect the results of such a study to be available
for some time to come.
837
T A B L E 8.— CO LOR C O M PO SITIO N O F 28 C ITIE S W ITH E X TE N S IV E A N N E X A T IO N S 1950-60 AND/OR 1960-70
Percent nonwhite in city
Houston.................... _
M ilwaukee...............
D a lla s ................ .. ..
San Antonio.............
San Diego................ .
Seattle......................
Cincinnati................
Memphis...... ............
Denver.....................
Atlanta................. ..
Indianapolis.............
Kansas City.............
Columbus, Ohio
Phoenix....................
Louisville________
Portland, Oreg
Fort W orth_______
Long Beach..............
Birmingham.............
Oklahoma City
Toledo......................
Norfolk.....................
O m a h a ....................
El Paso.....................
Tam pa___________
Dayton......................
Tulsa........ ...............
Wichita.................
Total United
States...........
1950
1960
in
1950
boundaries
1960
in
1960
boundaries
21.1
3.6
13.2
7.2
5.5
5.8
15.6
37.2
4 .4
36.6
15.0
12.3
12.5
6.2
15.7
3.5
13.3
2.6
39.9
9.3
8.3
29.7
6.7
2.6
22.0
14.1
10.0
5.0
26.0
10.5
18.7
7.9
8.5
9.8
22.0
42.7
7.7
46.6
23.0
19.3
19.0
8.4
21.4
5.7
17.3
5.1
41.1
13.8
13.5
32.6
10.0
3.1
29.0
22.8
14.0
11.7
23.2
8.8
19.3
7.4
7.8
8.3
21.8
37.1
7.1
38.4
20.7
17.7
16.6
5.9
18.0
5.6
15.9
4.3
39.6
13.1
12.7
26.4
8.7
2.6
16.9
21.9
10.0
8.3
Percent
--------------1970
1970 population
in
in
1970
1960-70
boundannexed
aries
areas
26.6
15.6
25.9
8.6
11.1
12.6
28.1
39.2
11.0
51.6
18.4
22.8
19.0
6.7
24.1
7.8
20.6
8.2
42.2
16.1
14.3
30.2
10.6
3.6
20.1
30.9
13.5
10.7
12.6
2.9
1.0
1.3
2.2
1.4
0
.2
21.9
11.1
.7
(0
13.8
4.9
11.1
3.5
4.0
2.8
2.2
.8
2.6
22.2
0
20.7
.1
5.0
1.2
28.1
14.2
Total city
population
1970
White city
population
1970
Nonwhite
city
population
1970
1,232,802
717,099
844,401
654,153
696,769
530,831
452,524
623,530
514,678
496,973
744,624
507,087
539,677
581,562
361,472
382,619
393,476
358,633
300,910
366,481
383,818
307,951
347,328
322,261
277,767
243,601
331,638
276,554
904,443
605,372
626,146
597,723
619,498
463,870
325,394
379,224
458,187
240,551
607,902
391,496
437,255
542,510
274,511
352,635
312,521
329,084
173,937
307,628
329,068
215,055
310,599
310,612
222,082
168,407
287,047
246,943
328,359
111,727
218,255
56,430
77,271
66,961
127,130
244,306
56,491
256,422
136,722
115,591
102,422
39,052
86,961
29,984
80,955
29,549
126,973
58,853
54,750
92,896
36, 729
11,649
55,685
75,194
44,592
29,611
203,165,699
177,612,309
:25,553,390
i Indianapolis 1960 data were recomputed to represent the 1970 city area for the 1970 report. An alternative would be to
show the population for the 1970 area. Indianapolis annexed the whole of Marion County between 1960 and 1970.
I I I . N E E D E D R E S E A R C H A N D IM P L IC A T IO N S FO R P O L IC Y
Food, clothing, and shelter—these are the basic human needs, and
government can hardly neglect them. This essay has been concerned
with shelter alone; housing and population distribution have come to
be recognized as matters of national concern.
838
There is a long history of Federal involvement in the area of hous
ing. 'While it is true that “ the first public policies c o n c e r n in g housing
in this country were established at the local level, and date back to
the period of the colonies,'’ it is equally true that “ the Federal Govern
ment’s first important action in relation to housing was taken [as
early as] 1892 when Congress passed a resolution to provide $20,000
for an investigation of slums in cities of 200,000 people or more.”
(Be.yer, 1965, pp. 448 and 454-455) Beyer devotes an entire chapter
(14) to the “ H istory of the Government's Role in Housing.” Congress
and the Executive branch have displayed an increasing sensitivity to
housing needs over the years. But not enough has been done. More
time and energy (and ink and paper) have been expended on rhetoric
than on assembling the basic facts and on doing the difficult research
that has yet to be accomplished. The research needs are clear at all
three of the levels we have recognized in this essay: the dwelling, the
neighborhood, and the metropolitan community.
I l l A. RESEARCH XEEDS
C areful work must be done at all three levels of analysis. The
research already accomplished needs replication and improvement,
of course, but there are a few new topics for research that might be
carried out.
The Dwelling.—The nature of housing from an internal stand
point— or at the smallest “ micro” level—needs further study and
understanding. W hat are the changing patterns o f facilities that
housing units contain? What are those desired? W hat constitutes
“ decent” housing ? I f the latter question cannot be sensibly answered,
then what are the minimal requirements for different subgroups of
the population ? W hat are the impacts of different physical arrange
ments upon social interaction within and between families?
There is a modest tradition of empirical research in sociology,
dating mainly from the post-World W ar I I research of Robert K .
Merton and his colleagues, that examines some of these questions,
but by no means do we ha've a coherent body o f hard evidence, The
closest current sociological work is largely speculative in character.
We must be aware that illustrations and advertising in such publica
tions as House Beautiful and Better Homes and Gardens do not
represent, the sum total of space-age technological spin-offs available.
The fam ily—as a production as well as a consumption unit— should
be queried as to some of these matters. Survey research, undertaken
largely by economists and by sociologists, at the Universities of C h i
cago, Michigan and Wisconsin, have yielded many small clues to the
situation. Ideals and expectations with respect to housing and its
constituent facilities can be readily conceived as research topics.
The “ micro-ecology” of the dwelling itself deserves attention. There
are numerous aspects to be dealt with under this rubric. One is the
implications for inter-fam ilial interaction of such things as room size,
layout, routing of the internal “ paths” within the house or apart
ment or whatever. (Reconstruction and remodelling should also be
studied, whether by merger or by cutting up single fam ily dwellings
into apartments.) W ithin my range of acquaintance, three efforts
stand out as prom ising: (1) Robert Gutman (a Rutgers sociologist)
839
is working on “’the built environment” in collaboration with architects:
(2) Robert Sommers (social psychologist, University of California
at Davis ) studies “psychological geography” or “small-group ecology,”
and (3) Roger G. Barker (social psychologist, University of Nebras
ka) has written a great deal on “ecological psychology.”
Another topic deserves attention— “communes” and other “un
usual” housing arrangements. Examples could be listed indefinitely,
from the hippie “crash pad” to the Kennedy Compound at Hyannisport, Massachusetts. There is a strong middle-class bias in the census
and in census-based research. Survey researchers (e.g., National Opin
ion Research Center [Chicago], the Survey Research Center [Michi
gan], and the Wisconsin Survey Research Laboratory) are especially
sensitive to this fact. In the U.S. the census has increasingly become a
gigantic sample survey, unlike the attempts at complete enumeration
sought prior to World War II. (Sharp and Schnore, 1071)
The Neighborhood.— Another “micro-ecological” set of efforts
should be directed at phenomena at the level of the neighborhood. Re
grettably, it is difficult to get people to agree on the very names and
boundaries of what constitutes their own neighborhood. (See the re
search by William Form and his colleagues on Lansing, Michigan
[Form, et al., 1954].) Given the limited effort devoted to the topic by
sociologists, it is no surprise that so little has been learned about the
American city neighborhood. As I remarked earlier, we have to de
pend more on British research experience than American for facts and
ideas on this subject. Current research at the University of Chicago on
that city's “ Community Areas” promises to be enlightening.
The Metropolitan Complex.— I am most sensitive to the needs here
because this is my special area of interest— the “macro-ecology” of the
larger communities in which a steadily increasing proportion of our
population lives and works. At various points in this essay, I have
pointed to specific research needs in this sphere. Suffice it to say that
we need careful updating— via the 1970 Census— in order to discern
what has transpired in the 1960?s and in order to determine if there are
any significant variations from the long-term trends I have discussed
here: “metropolitanization,” suburbanization and polarization by class
and color.
IIIB . P O L IC Y IM P L IC A T IO N S
There is no lack of opinion concerning urban growth policy, and
housing policy is usually treated in the course of discussions of urban
and rural growth and decline. As I write these words, my eyes are
directed to a set of books on my desk. The titles alone are instructive,
and the authorship and sponsorship of each volume constitutes an im
pressive list of individuals and institutions:
Robert C. Weaver, Dilemmas of Urban America (Cambridge: Har
vard University Press, 1965)
Kenneth J. Arrow, James G. March, James S. Coleman, and Anthony
Downs, Urban Processes as Viewed by the Social Sciences: A Na
tional Academy of Sciences Symposium (Washington, D .C .: The
Urban Institute, n.d.)
Brian J. L. Berry and Jack Meltzer (editors), Goals for Urban Amer
ica (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1967)
81-745— 72— pt. 2------- 19
840
Bernard J. Frieden and Robert Morris (editors), Urban Planning
and Social Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1968)
Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Urban and
Rural America: Policies for Future Growth (Washington, D .C .:
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968)
Committee on Social and Behavioral Research, Division of Behavioral
Sciences, National Research Council, A Strategic Approach to
Urban Research and Development: Social and Behavioral Science
Considerations (Washington, D .C .: National Academy of Sciences,
1969)
Donald Canty (editor), The New City (sponsored by the National
Committee on Urban Growth Policy, and published by Frederick A .
Praeger for Urban America, Inc., 1969)
Anthony H. Pascal (editor), Thinking About Cities: Ne-ia Perspec
tives on Urban Problems (Belmont, California: Dickenson Pub
lishing Co., 1970)
Anthony Downs, Urban Problems and Prospects (Chicago: Markham
Publishing Co., 1970)
Daniel P. Moynihan (editor), Toward a National Urban Policy (New
York: Basic Books, 1970)
Task Force on Governance of New Towns, New Towns: Laboratories
for Democracy (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1971)
The Task Force on Community Development Corporations, CDCs:
Neio Hope for the Inner City (New York: The Twentieth Century
Fund, 1971)
James A . Clapp, New Towns and Urban Policy: Planning Metro
politan Growth (New York: Dunellen, 1971)
Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, Popu
lation and the American Future (Washington, D .C .: U.S. Govern
ment Printing Office, 1972)
Executive Office of the President— Domestic Council, Report on Na
tional Growth 1972 (Washington, D .C .: U.S. Government Print
ing Office, 1972)
This list is merely a sample of what is available in print. It is by
no means exhaustive. W e suffer from a glut of policy pronouncements.
As part of an advertisement for still another book on the subject, the
Director of the Printing and Publishing Office, National Academy of
Sciences— National Academy of Engineering, observes that “since
1960, several White House task forces, countless congressional com
mittees, and many public interest groups have attempted to define a
national urban growth policy.” This is only too true. But where do
we stand with respect to a coherent urban growth policy? W e have
none, and it appears that we will not have one until much more solid
research is accomplished.
The President’s Domestic Council, in the last report cited above con
cludes its review with “Administration Recommendations to the
Congress” :
Part of the task before us involves the eradication of outmoded, duplicative,
and often counterproductive governmental programs, together with the cumber
some and inefficient structures administering them. But this is not enough. More
importantly, we must design programs and structures that can respond swiftly,
effectively, and responsively to growth problems and opportunities. In response
to this challenge, and in accordance with section 702 of the Housing and Urban
841
Development Act of 1970, the Administration recommends the enactment of the
following proposals during the second session of the 92d Congress.
The recommendations include ( 1 ) Government Reorganization with
a proposed Department of Community Development; (2) Revenue
Sharing, now passed by both houses of Congress; (3) Expanded Rural
Credit; (4) Planning and Management Assistance; (5) a National
Land Use Policy; ( 6 ) a Powerplant Siting A ct; (7) a Tax Policy to
Conserve Natural and Cultural Values; and ( 8 ) Welfare Reform,
perhaps the most controversial of all eight proposals. Most of these
proposals— if enacted— would have a bearing, either direct or indirect,
upon urban housing. (Powerplant Siting, for example, might play a
large role in metropolitan growth and redistribution of population be
tween areas. Similarly, a massive dose of Rural Credit might be aimed
at reversing or slowing the flow of migrants to our cities and metro
politan areas.)
Scanning these reports, and the recommendations they contain, I am
impressed with one major theme: the notion that “balanced growth” is
highly desirable, and that New Towns, in particular, should exhibit
“social balance.” The latter term is often used as a euphemism for
“desegregated” communities— with a “balance” between classes, ages,
and races. I am skeptical about all the alleged virtues of heterogeneity,
and the assumptions upon which the usual arguments are based. Her
bert J. Gans (1961) has convinced me how fatuous are most of the
discussions of “social balance,” especially in planning circles. In my
view, Congress would do well to defer action that insists upon “bal
ance” until we have some hard evidence on which to base sound policy.
The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1970 contains language
that I find unconvincing; Section 702(a) of Title V II, for example,
asserts:
The Congress finds that the rapid growth of urban population and uneven ex
pansion of urban development in the United States, together with a decline in
farm population, slower growth in rural areas, and migration to the cities, has
created an imbalance between the Nation’s needs and resources and seriously
threatens our physical environment, and that the economic and social develop
ment of the Nation, the proper conservation of our natural resources, and the
achievement of satisfactory living standards depend upon the sound, orderly, and
more balanced development of all areas of the Nation.
Furthermore, the Act goes on to say:
(d) The Congress further declares that the national urban growth
policy should—
(1 )
favor patterns of urbanization and economic development
and stabilization which offer a range of alternative locations and
encourage the wise and balcmcecl use of physical and human re
sources in metropolitan and urban regions as well as in smaller
urban places which have a potential for accelerated growth.
I have added italics in order to show how Congress has succumbed
to the general notion that “balance” is good and “imbalance” is bad.
The rhetoric of “ urbanology” is shot through with explicit and im
plicit notions of the unquestioned desirability of “balance”— within
apartment houses, within neighborhoods, within whole communities,
etc. Age and sex composition, color, and social class “balance” are the
apparent desiderata. This fundamental assumption must be questioned.
I should make clear that this is not a plea for continued segrega
tion on any basis. I share the “liberal bias” of most academicians in
842
tlie social sciences. With respect to the communal use of space, segre
gation is all too evident. What are the alternative goals? Can we
spell out a rationale for “balance” that does little more than give lip
service to Constitutional and other rhetorical imperatives? The “ real
world** may intervene. And what are the constraints? W ill a certain
measure of separation, segregation and striving for the status quo
override all our efforts at “balance” ? This notion of “balance,” indeed,
may be the will-of-the-wisp of the 1970?s as far as urban research and
policy are concerned. We still have a lot to learn, and hasty action does
not appear to be in order at this point in time. This is not to say that
we must somehow “ wait until all the evidence is in.” It is simply a plea
for more support for the kind of research that will allow realistic pol
icy to he formulated and implemented. This is the task of the 1970’s.
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A N A G EN D A FOR TH E PR E SID EN T
(By Dr. George Sternlieb, Director, Center for Urban Policy Research,
Rutgers, The State University, New Brunswick, N.J.)
The gap between national concept and reality, of belief in potential
options and the facts of their existence in the United States, can no
longer be tolerated. In the squabbles over which group gets what— the
question of what is there to be divided— and how to increase it— has
been overlooked. This essay is devoted to the presentation of a half
dozen facets of the latter problem.
The era in which the United States defined the arena as well as
the games that were to be played on the international front is at an
end. Our wealth is no longer so considerable, our forms of social and
economic organization are 110 longer so unchallengeable. The time of
profligacy, of winning so much that the droppings of the table are or
seem to be trivial is over. Time lias run out for thoughtlessness.
The question may well be asked why this note is addressed to the
President. With equal justice it probably could have been addressed
to the Presidency, but regardless of whether it is to the man or to the
institution, it is to the sum of these that the American people look for
leadership. This is the focal point of resolving that balance between
immediate need and future payoff, between current consumption and
investment in the future.
The ordering of the presentation which follows will appall the
logician. Some of the elements are clearly subsets of the others, but as
Movnihan has pointed out. the only thing that social scientists have
taught us is that everything is related to everything else. With this in
mind, let us advance.
TRANSPORTATION" AND COM M UNICATION TECHNOLOGY VS. TH E AM ERICAN
STANDARD OF LIVING
There is a basic incongruity between the enormous strides that have
been taken in international transportation and communication tech
nology, on the one hand, and the American standard of living and
labor costs 011 the other. The devaluation of the dollar which we have
just experienced is a long over-due initial response to this incongruity.
We face a competitive world which does most of the things we do just
as well as we do them, but with $5.00 a day (or cheaper) labor vs. the
$5.00 an hour equivalent here.
The variation in labor cost is far from a unique phenomenon. His
torically, however, the United States was able to enjoy this variation
because of a number of factors, primary among them the existence of
a unique market, in terms of scale. It was the length of production
run as much as proverbial American ingenuity which made the mass
production line practicable and which permitted the use of enormous
(8 4 5 )
846
capital investment in tooling up, thus making United States labor
input vastly more productive than its equivalent abroad.
This, however, is no longer unique to the United States. The Euro
pean Common Market on the one hand and the vast markets of South
East Asia and Latin America on the other, provide more than ade
quate support for optimum production runs. These markets now can
be assembled and serviced from a central production facility because
the costs of freight have tumbled so very, very sharply. Recent inno
vations in dry bulk containerships and clearly foreseeable decreases
in the cost of air freight make much of the world essentially one
market.
American technology has been exported abroad, frequently by Amer
ican firms. Our corporations have invested in excess of 125 billion
dollars in overseas production units. The Servan-Schreiber thesis of
The American Challenge, which pointed out to Common Market manu
facturers that their principal competition might very well not be each
other but rather American subsidiaries abroad, needs deepening. Let
me add to the Schreiber thesis that the principal competition of
American manufacturers whose production facilities are located in
this country are their equivalent production facilities abroad. By
definition, they do most things as they are done here— with much
cheaper and increasingly productive labor.
In another statement, I have pointed to the export of labor inten
sive employment by the United States at the cost of opportunities for
the central city poor; of the shift of basic* needle trade employment,
for example, or electronics assembly work and the like. Much of this
work used to be done in central city facilities: the sweat shops of the
Bowery, the radio assembly plants of Camden or Jersey City. Now
they are sited in Formosa, the Philippines, 01* equivalent places. It is
both possible and in many cases quite practical to use key punch serv
ices in Mexico or the Caribbean, rather than using United States equiv
alents, at one-third the cost. The air freight costs are trivial. The
communication technology involved in discussing what is to be done,
clarifying errors, in supervising the actual through-put, are cheap and
convenient. And this is not going to go away.
The world is very small, and increasingly locations are essentially
homogeneous from a production point of view. How do we justify the
United States present standard of living? And if we have difficulty
doing that, how then does the United States successfully provide all
the increased social services which are called for?
There are very few things which the United States does uniquely
well. Agricultural production is perhaps the primary case, along with
large scale, complex, expensive equipment— particularly airplanes
and computers. The export potential of the former is substantially
limited by the political realities in most countries which call for the
support, of local food producers, to avoid being completely dependent
upon imported foodstuffs.
The second area requires very purposeful governmental interven
tion. I f we turn to airplanes, for example, basic development costs
are so very, very high as to be bevond the grasp of individual com
panies, even the giants of the United States defense complex. From
this point of view— if no other— while the decision not to continue
with the SST may have been an ecological triumph. it may also prove
847
to be an economic disaster. In the computer field, tremendous strides
have been made in terms of overseas production. Much of this is as a
function of American licensing and/or subsidiaries. But the basic la
bor bill in any case, and increasingly much of the software which
absorbs nearly as much of the total cost of production, is being ab
sorbed abroad.
A t the same time, there has been basic aging of American produc
tion facilities. Seymour Melman has undertaken some detailed analysis
of United States machine tool facilities, which are among the oldest
in the West. The same is true throughout our basic production plant.
In many areas what we face is not merely competition in wage rates,
but competition in terms of age and sophistication of equipment as
well. We are losing this latter battle as well as the former. The seven
percent investment credit, used with considerable success by the Ken
nedy Administration, has been emulated in less generous detail by the
current administration. It compares very poorly with equivalent legis
lation in most industrialized countries.
Yet, the political difficulties of securing even the current legislation
are very considerable. How do we move from the present adversary re
lationship which seems to characterize our country: the state of bel
ligerency between the production oriented and consumeristic facets
of our society, to some comprehension of their interdependence? A
little belligerence in this area is undoubtedly a good thing. How much
more than a little we can afford to live with is an open question to
which the President must give serious thought. However, the supply
of service jobs and the filling in of the web of social services which is
obviously required by American society can only be successfully under
taken by an economy which has grow-power. This is to say nothing
of the necessity for fitting into that economy, in a meaningful and
positive fashion, groups which have been severely kept from the faucet,
minority groups and particularly women.
What is to be done here ? The life of a remittance nation, dependent
upon dividends from overseas manufacturing facilities, may be good
for a very few, but only a very few; it does not provide nearly enough
jobs for the broad mass of the polity. W e do not have to invent the
future here, we need onhTlook at the England of 1910 to see its short
comings.
H O W DO W E BUFFER TH E FALLOUT FROM A M ONOLITHIC ECONOMY?
The path from anecdotal-clescriptions of an individual happening
at an individual moment of time, within a specific setting, to general
izations that pull together many similar case studies and provide some,
perspectives with which to view the individual happenings as part
of a modular phenomenon is a long and tedious one. W e still have not
pursued this path in terms of the problem of the individual who falls
out of what, for lack of a better term, I have labeled the monolithic
economy. There is less and less in the way of flexibility of role with
in our society for the individual, whether white collareii or otherwise,
who for any of a number of reasons loses his job, particularly after the
age of 40.
A t this late stage of the game there is no point even referring to the
demise of the family farm. The romantic efforts to regenerate this orga
S48
nization within a market context on the part of youth groups proves
only their lack of general viability. The same is true of the small store:
the individual proprietorship, the corner grocery store, the stationery
emporium or the like, which once provided a safety valve for the man
who lost his job. Secured through his own savings or the accumulation*
of advances and hand-outs from relatives and friends, it provided a
basic floor for status and livelihood. This is no longer available. The
modern day supermarket, frequently exceeding 30,000 square feet of
space represents an investment of nearly a million dollars. Its weekly
volume exceeds that of a year by the family grocery operation. In
the age of the discounters, the concept of do-it-yourself general mer
chandise operations still may attract those who have no alternative—
but the attrition rate is enormous. Even furniture operations, which
are perhaps the most archaic form of retail merchandise distribution,
are giving way from individual proprietorships to vast chains, many
of which are now adapting to the self-service and pick-up, take-out
format.
The man, therefore, who loses his job loses more than the immediacies
of comfort and paycheck. He literally may have no place to go. Check
any meeting on franchise opportunities and see who is present there.
And despite an enormous capacity— there simply aren’t enough ham
burgers and/or fried chicken eaten by Americans to support the
displacees.
W e 1lave seen the beginnings of this in terms of hi"h technology
displacement: the engineers and scientist who were involved in weapon
svstems which have disappeared. This has made a dramatic story.
There were large numbers and concentrated locuses of displacees at
a particular moment of time. Xot so dramatic, but probably involving
even more individuals, is the general plight of the over-40 white collarite who increasingly finds the avenues of alternative employment
opportnnities blocked.
And this affects not only the white collar individual bn*-. also the
skilled trades. Some of the fervor with which craft unions block easy
access to apprenticeship programs is a tribute to this fact of life. Their
members are fearful of their own job?— and not uncommonly the
major inheritance, which they can offer their children ov near relatives
is access to the same occupational niche. Poppa mav envision his son
as a- college graduate and not getting h?s hands dirtv: at the back
of his nvnd though there is the feeling that— just in case—the union
card is a life preserver.
Do we turn to the Japanese solution of essentially lifetime tenure
on th© job? Certainly this is a concept which is substantially alien to
the American way of doing business, to the arms-length trading posi
tion between owners and executives and workers. Our high cash wages
have in part, been supported by a high flexibility of hire and lire. The
increasing costs of unemployment insurance which must be borne
within the expense pattern of the firm and of high cost termination
and lay-off agreements are altering this balance- One can't have it
both ways— efficiency in the machine, high immediate wages for the
worker and long-term security. Where do we turn ?
It is very clear that we are moving in the direction of increased
bureaucratization and property interest in specific employment niches.
This is most obvious as we view some of the newer areas of a social
849
service employment nature. A ll too frequently, whether poverty pro
gram, skills training program, or housing development, the implementary jobs become an end in themselves; the initial function of the
organization as gauged in through-put to consumers of services, is
forgotten, moving us into make-work for the new bourgeoisie, blackwhite-spanish-speaking.
While we have a desperate need for flexibility in social intervention
programs, a need for continual experimentation, and for expanding
the state of an art whose- present capacities are completely inadequate,
this is in substantial measure inhibited by the job interests which have
arisen around old programs. A t best these latter can be reshaped and
the office holders within them retitled, but the property interests that
encrust and dominate the jobs become more and more rigorous in
exacting continuity of status and employment.
This is far from novel; any reader of Max Weber is very familiar
with the process. American economic and social organization, however,
has always benefited from a relative fluidity in this regard— yet the
odds are very high that this may be a thing of the past.
TH E USELESS POOR
One of the great debates of the Founding Fathers in putting togeth
er the Constitution and the system of government that evolved around
it was the fear of the landless poor, of the urban propertyless mob.
Looking back to that time of virginity, of endless opportunity, of a
continent waiting to be plundered, one is perhaps amused by this con
cern. Unfortunately, as the bicentennial of the Declaration of Inde
pendence rolls near, the situation, feared then, becomes a reality now.
It becomes a reality not because of some innate shortcomings of the
urban poor, not because of their race mixture (though this has perhaps
made the specific groups in question much more victimized than might
otherwise be the case), not because of their absolute lack of education
or of training or of any of the other platitudes that have been uttered,
but rather by the loss of function of the poor.
I f there were no race question the basic reality of this statement I
think would have surfaced earlier. Race has tended to obscure the fact
that the urban poor who once provided a very meaningful and sig
nificant source of basic labor which provided central cities with much
of their economic reason for being, are now increasingly a non-sequitur
in an industrialized society.
The United States is not unique in facing this fact of life. Even
countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, each of which has
enjoyed increases in gross national product approximating six percent
a year compounded annually over the last ten years, have substan
tially the same number of people engaged in industry as was the!
case at the beginning of the decade. Wassily Leontief, in reviewing the
Report of the President-s Commission on Auto?na.tion may well have
assessed the situation properly when he compared its finding* with
those of a mythical horse census of 1910. The census might well have
viewed the internal combustion-engine as obviouslv freeing horses for
higher things: social activity, perhaps even para professional training.
Obviously, however, it wasn’t truly impacting the center of the porkchop.
850
Let me suggest that there will be more and more and more people of
all races who will be left behind by the strides of the machine. The
Western European countries have been buffered by an enormous level
of capital investment and rebuilding consequent to World W ar II,
by great increments in total production, but even more so by the use of
imported labor: the Greeks, Southern Italians, Tunisians and so on,
who have been imported as the marginally employed. They have served
to protect the native stock of the several Western European countries
from the impact of the machine. This time, however, may well be
drawing to a close. The United States in this regard at least provides
some illustration for the others to worry about.
H owt do we provide meaningful work opportunities? Is the shorter
work week an answer— or is it too costly in terms of competitive
through-put? If action on the many hungry social fronts may provide
an outlet, who is going to pay for it? How do we adjust the balance
between private and public spending to support an even greater serv
ice establishment than is presently the case ?
And this is not merely a problem of the blue-collar worker, it holds
true of the floods of students attending education courses— for whom
there are no teaching jobs, the English majors, the History majors and
the you name it, who face a blank wall at the annual meetings. Where
are the jobs— meaningful jobs— going to come from ? Our cities have
been, permitted to become welfare centers for the dropouts and the
cast-offs of our economic society and this has perhaps been made
palatable by race, at least for the non-impacted. Now that the prob
lem has been broadened perhaps we can come to grips with it, but
only with help and leadership from our elected leader.
FEDERAL POLIC Y O X JTOrSTXG I X TH E SI^BT KBS
Slowlv and often reluctantly, the vast mechanisms of State and
Federal Governments are beginning to pry open the suburbs for low
and moderate income housing. The present administration has sub
stantially won the fight to make any man’s housing dollar nearly as
good as any other man’s. There are many exceptions to this generali
zation but I think it substantially holds. The next level, to provide
access to the new zones of job growth in the suburbs to the blue collar
workers and their equivalent, perhaps even to move some slight level
of public housing to those hitherto reserved spheres, is evolving mute
rapidly. The tenor of recent court cases, particularly the Madison
Township case, which have successfullv challenged freeze-out zoning
on the part of suburbs leaves little doubt- that there will be housing
available to many more of the working central eityites than is pres
ently the case.
All of this is a source of much congratulation among those of lib
eral bent who have fought for the cause for many years. What re
mains to be considered, however, is what is the impact of this goine* to
be upon the central city. T have reference here not to the argument of
black political genocide, i.e., the decrease in population and dispersion
of blacks from the core city lessens their potential power base, hurt
rather to the consequences for the municipal entity itself.
851
I would suggest that the major element which is presently gluing
the central city together— to whatever degree it is being held together—
is the suburban housing shortage for the less than affluent.
When this adhesive is removed, what then ?
The problem of the central city is not the problem of how to main
tain middle class whites, it is how to maintain any semblance of middle
class individuals once alternative accommodations are open to them.
W e have shown little capacity to deal with the relatively slow degen
eration of the city— a decline whose pace has been hindered as
indicated before by the difficulties of securing suburban housing. How
then are we to face the very rapid degeneration which will take place,
that is taking place, now that the suburbs are opening up?
We know very little about the ecology of cities. Unquestionably,
however, there is some minimal mass concept of urban appeal which
holds whether it is the intown department store which can adjust to
a slow decline of sales, (particularly when buffered by inflation) but
cannot adjust to abrupt sales losses nearly as well, or the municipal
transit system, or any other amenity. Once this mass is lost, a slow
decline may accelerate faster than the worst of our nightmares. The
costs of running cities are relatively inflexible to declines in popula
tion. Their revenues, however, are highly sensitive to this. The rate
of housing abandonment which is presently taking place is nothing
compared to what can be anticipated. An analysis undertaken, for
example, of Co-op City— the new 15,000 unit housing development on
the very periphery of the Bronx highlights the fact that much of its
tenantry has moved from areas of the Central and South Bronx which
were slowly declining— but which will now go under very rapidly.
What is desperately required here is some level of overall planning
(that dreadful platitude!) some more systematic analysis of the re
sults of inputs than the simple minded numbers game that we are
playing with housing starts. The cities at present are not dying grace
fully. How do we anticipate the future rather than running after it
in this vital sphere. There is a relentless market mechanism at work
here, true, but the pace of its advance is substantially determined by
governmental housing policy and subsidies. This relationship remains
to be comprehended by Washington’s policy makers.
SOCIAL SPENDING VS. TH E GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT
In the last ten years we have been witness to the bankruptcy of
municipal government. Increased social demands in the face of lim
ited tax resources have essentially broken the fiscal backs of most
United States municipalities. The demand in turn has been for in
creased State assumption of social burdens. It wTas the State and only
the State that could broaden the base of resource through income
taxes and sales taxes which when applied in the immediacy of a
community were practically self-defeating as industry— and popula
tion— moved to avoid their burden.
This theory enjoyed considerable vogue and still does. It was both
easy and popular to blame the woes of the municipality to the short
sightedness of the state legislature. I think that New York State and
California both, however, give evidence that there is no magic bullet
852
in the State House, that the State too may well have a finite limit upon
its practicable resources.
What then of the Federal Government? Again, the response to any
unmet social need has been the call for the Federal Government to
provide resources for A or B or C or some composite of all of them.
Where are these resources going to come from ? The basic fact- of life
is that the American economy has been growing, at best, at around
three or four percent a year and even this rather modest figure simply
has not been met in the last several years. At the same time, however,
social spending in the United States has been increasing nearly ten
percent annually. For example, if we take state and local total expendi
tures by function, education costs have expanded by even more than
this over the last four years. Public welfare costs have gone up by 50
percent in two years. The health and hospital bill, gauging by state
and local expenditures alone have moved from 6.6 billion dollars in
1967 to over eight and a half billion by 1969, and police and fire costs
have increased nearly 25 percent in the same span.
The incongruity between resource and expenditure is not a function
of who is responsible for what, but rather is basic to a need/taste for
social spending which expands at the rate of ten percent a year con
trasted with total national resources that expand three percent. This
is further complicated by the new militancy and organization of serv
ice workers. Strikes by major industrial unions are relative paper tigers
compared to equivalent efforts by the garbage collectors or hospital
workers. And this will not go away.
Granted that the mythological redistribution of resources, i.e., the
reduction of the armed services, might provide a one-shot input— over
a period of time this too would -be absorbed. Unless there is some
basic alteration in the disposition of the pie, the growth of the pie
itself simply is inadequate. Are we to have therefore, a redisposition
of spending between the private and public sectors a la the Galbraithian approach or do we have some level of reduction in the incre
ments attendant to the service sector? I f we have the latter how are we
going to absorb all the people who are coming into the market for
governmental or neogovernmental jobs? And further how do we sup
port these social needs in the face of enormous requirements for capital
investment in the American economy ?
LONG RANGE P LAN N IN G AND CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT I N A CONSUMERISTIC
DEMOCRACY
The title of this last section might very well have been the title of
the entire list of areas in question. It is a lengthy and cumbersome one,
but I think it highlights one of the principal problems of the time.
Our system of political economy is a logician’s nightmare. It calls for
competition and yet it is against the dominance of the winner. It calls
853
for relative non-interventionism by government within an ever grow
ing provision of social services, of efficiency and welfarism. It’s via
bility is not so much a function of the American spirit, (whatever that
may be) but rather the fact that it delivers. It delivers goods, it de
livers a standard of living which for the most Americans at least is the
envy of the world. But to stay in power, it must be continuous in
its pay-off capacity. And those pay-offs for the vast bulk of Ameri
cans have been promulgated endlessly and very effectively, by the ad
vertising and the mass media. There is the house with detached two
car garage, and the cars to fill that garage and all the other symbols of
the “good life.”
True, there are carpers in this hardware paradise, but their ranks
are relatively thin. One of the basic challenges of our time obviously
is to fit this triumph of goods orientation into the needs of our econ
omy which desperately calls for enormous increases in capital invest
ment whose payoff may be long in coming, and into a society which
cries out for much more in the way of creative public service in
puts. Not the least of the incongruities in the former is the increas
ing contradiction between the capacity to provide goods and the eco
logical capacity of the earth to absorb those goods.
How do we provide a workable resolution? Certainly, the simple
primitivism which calls for a no-growth economy, which demands the
cessation of additions to the power capacity of the economy, has great
appeal— particularly to those people who use to relish Robinson Cru
soe or the cornucopia of goodies found by the Swiss Family Robinson
on their wrecked ship. They will not do for a nation whose population
has long passed the 200 million mark and continues to soar.
What is a happy balance here? To wiiat degree, must we optimize
within the present known problems, at the possible cost of the future ?
One relatively trivial example may be appropriate in this regard; it is
the case of large lot zoning. A t one and the same time, the requirement
of large land areas for individual houses undoubtedly has substantial
impact on reducing the housing amenities that are available to many
Americans— yet it is probably the most effective form of land bank
ing and preservation of development options for the future that we
have. Do we take a cookie cutter shaped by present requirements and
impose it over our entire terrain or do we turn our back on the im
mediacies in order to minimize future opportunity costs ?
None of the problems that are mentioned are new and certainty are
not original. Neither their lack of novelty nor perhaps even "their
shapelessness prevent answers to them from being an absolute neces
sity for our future. And their resolution and the forceful promulga
tion 'particularly of the answers, are the responsibility of the Presi
dency.
THE UPPER MIDWEST COUNCIL: A PROGRESS REPORT
ON GROWTH POLICY STUDIES
(By George Thiss, Executive Director, the Upper Midwest Council,
Minneapolis, Minn.)
The following thoughts are presented as a progress report of one of
the studies of the Upper Midwest Council. We are presently involved
in trying to determine how government through the creation of public
policy has and continues to affect population distribution patterns
within the State of Minnesota. This is public policy as seen through
the eyes of the private sector (primarily the business community),
and through the eyes of the public sector (government), both local
and state.
First of all, what is the Upper Midwest Council ?
The Upper Midwest Council is in its fourteenth year as a private,
non-profit, non-partisan corporation supported by foundations, busi
nesses and individuals serving the region identical to the Ninth Fed
eral Reserve District with issue identification, research and action
programs. The Council was established to serve as an independent
synthesizer and disseminator of information about the region, Minne
sota, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, the Upper Peninsula of
Michigan, and northwestern Wisconsin. We seek to understand the
problems and potentials of the region and to establish program prior
ities, meeting and solving today’s problems and anticipating tomor
row’s needs in maximizing our region’s potential.
The Council’s strategy is to arouse concern and stimulate involve
ment in emerging issues of regional importance, working through
leadership in business, government, education, and labor, through or
ganizations and individuals, continually striving to improve the qual
ity of life for all citizens in this multi-state area.
Why study growth ?
The Council has seen in its previous studies some of the results of
di ffering patterns of population distribution. The patterns of dis
tribution within the state sometimes hinders and sometimes helps the
achievement of the best quality of life. The Council has wondered
whether the past policy of having the population distribution be deter
mined by random governmental and private decision is in the best
interest of the public at large.
What is the study ?
The Council’s Board established a Growth Study plan and objec
tives early this vear under the leadership of its newly elected president,
Bruce Iv. MacLaury, who is also president of the Federal Reserve
Bank of Minneapolis. The chairman of the study committee is James
C. Peterson, Chairman of the Executive Committee, Dain, Kalman &
Quail, a region-wide investment and securities broker.
Several hypotheses behind the study are:
(855)
81-745— 72— pt. 2------- 20
856
1. There is not a national or a state growth policy.
2 . Government can affect population distribution.
3. State government ought to consider a policy.
The objectives of this study are:
1. To gather information by answering the following two questions:
{a) What public policy decisions or actions, primarily state and
local, influence the population distribution policy ?
(b) What policies in the public sector, national, state, and local,
does business think has influenced, both in a positive and negative
way, its decisions to expand or relocate ?
2 . To determine the conflicts from the information.
3. To determine discrepancies.
4. To develop options for policy decisions and the consequences of
each.
This present study is just for Minnesota, but it is believed that the
results will be of assistance for other states throughout the country.
The methodology has been for the staff to do personal interviewing
to gather the information. The results are presented to a 30-person
committee established in an advisory role to this study. The committee
is broad based geographically and represents many disciplines. Gather
ing the information the staff has personal interviews with business ex
ecutives who have recently made a corporate decision to expand or re
locate part or all of their basic employment facility, and also with
leadership at the state government level, primarily department com
missioners. We have also conducted interviews at the local level with
private and public individuals in many communities. Because the re
sults cannot be tabulated in the sense that some studies are, it is some
what subjective. The final report will be the results of the interview,
staff analysis of relevant material, conclusions drawn, and the advisory
committee’s responses.
There are many studies, primarily industrial location studies, that
have been carried out in the general area in which our study has a con
cern. As a part of our effort, we have analyzed those studies that might
help us achieve our objectives. The outline of our analysis is attached.
What are we finding ?
First, it may be obvious but important to say there is not an aware
ness of a national growth policy on settlement or population distribu
tion. As we talked with businessmen and government leaders within
the State of Minnesota, we found that they did not recognize a national
policy. The present administration also said this in its report, Report
on National Growth 1972. A t the same time, we do find individuals
saying that recent past actions or decisions at the federal level are
affecting settlement. We have to assume from this that they are affect
ing it in a way that is not under an overall plan or a conscious effort by
a generalist at the federal level.
Federal decisions that have had or are having an effect, according to
those we have consulted, are the following:
1 . The original decision on where to place freeways— which states
and which parts of the specific states.
2 . Where dollars are allocated between states.
3. Where dollars are allocated within the state.
4. Projects that generate capital or employ people.
857
5. The financial incentives to regional multi-county development and
the financial guarantees to new town development.
6. Regulations and guidelines for transportation decisions made
within a state.
The committee sees the welfare system as having had an effect be
tween rural and urban areas, but cannot prove this; nor does it know
the specific results. It merits further study than our committee will
undertake.
How do state decisions affect population settlement ?
W e are also finding that there is not a state growth policy or policy
on population distribution. In fact, there is probably less at the state
than there is at the national level, because there is no single document
which has addressed the subject. At the national level at least this has
happened. Again, we find that there are decisions or actions at the state
level that are affecting settlement. These decisions or actions are being
made by private decisions or public decisions with objectives other than
population distribution. The effect on settlement is random and obvi
ously not planned or taken into account.
We find that the following state decisions are having the greatest
effect on population distribution within the state:
1 . Location of highways.
2 . Location of airports.
3. Location of public post secondary education institutions.
4. Location of other state employing institutions and offices.
5. The quality of elementary and secondary education.
We then find that state public sector decisions which are having the
greatest effect on the population distribution between states are the
following:
1. The decisions listed above particularly transportation decisions
and quality of education.
2 . State attitude toward business and industry.
3. State taxes (actual and believed).
4. The state’s role in training the labor force.
Government decisions are not the main reason for population dis
tribution between states, but these decisions and attitudes do have an
effect.
These conclusions are not shared equally by the private decision
makers and government leaders. For instance, government believes
that the state attitude toward business and industry is less important
while business and the private sector sees this as being exceedingly im
portant. We find that almost everybody agreed that local attitude can
have an effect— positive or negative— toward settlement in the partic
ular community.
We also find that the non-private sector is more prone to think
in terms of the services such as education being of high value whereas
the private sector tends to take them for granted.
Other factors or decisions that we find are having an effect on popu
lation settlements within a state are:
1 . Land use decisions,
2 . Regionalism— multi-county development and planning distribu
tion.
3. Power plant siting.
4. Quality of higher education.
858
5 . Quality of vocational education.
6. Differing real estate taxes between communities.
Local government decisions that seem to have the strongest effect
on distribution are:
1. Community attitude (mentioned earlier).
2 . Local taxes.
3. Zoning, coding, etc.
4. Sewer placement.
The committee feels that the areas of environment, land use, and
energy will have a great effect on population distribution in the
future, even though in our study we are not finding much evidence at
this time. This would include recent federal and state decisions and
also decisions about to be made. The attitude of both government and
citizens toward energy and the environment add to this probable
effect.
Through all of this we see no policy and minimal decisions by
generalists.
The state and the federal have no comprehensive policy— many good
separate examples exist that show the effect of decisions that are made
by individual departments such as H I 7D or H E W at the national
level or the highway department or education committees at the state
level. There is a pushing and pulling between levels of government , and
between the single issue programs. In many wavs this is accepted and
promoted as part of our American system— specific programs for spe
cific objectives—but concern exists over the duplication and over
lapping of programs due to lack of coordination.
It can be reasonably asked: why have a policy ? why not continue as
in the past ? or, if we have a policy, will it do any good ?
There seems to be more of a desire to have some settlement guide
lines or goals at the national, state and regional levels. Our discussion
so far leads to some thinking that says:
1 . There are not enough resources, physical, human or financial so we
can afford to continue our present policy of no policy at either the
national or state level. Increasingly there is evidence or a shortage of
money, a shortage of natural resources, a shortage of human resources
to accomplish the goal of maximum quality of life for all people in the
country.
2 . The absence of a growth policy probably means we do not use our
present resources as well as possible.
3. The state has a concern that the federal government may be de
veloping a growth policy and determining priorities not in the best
interest of the state. It is very possible the federal may view the situ
ation in reverse— states setting up separate policies that may not be
in the total national interest.
859
4 . The great number of units of government makes for an admin
istration that is inefficient, costly and uncoordinated.
Our committee has not proceeded to the point of dealing with these
questions in depth, but in discussions so far, the following thoughts are
being discussed:
I f the present policy (no policy) is continued at the federal and
state level, the results may lead to more problems than we can
afford.
Even if a policy cannot be developed, for political reasons or
shouldn't be developed because it won’t be successful, it may be
important to have a public discussion on the alternatives and the
consequences.
It may be better to try a policy, even though it is recognized that
the effect may be minimal, and changes will have to occur.
State government leaders and decision makers in the private
sector are showing signs that they might prefer a policy. Our com
mittee, though, realizes that the persons we have interviewed may
wish a policy but once it is decided, they might be very reluctant to
make the changes to implement the policy.
We find in our study that the private sector and public sector are
cautiously looking for some carefully developed goals and guidelines
in population distribution. Before this study is completed the Council
plans to outline the policy options open to the state, develop objec
tives, strategies, and consequences of each option.
After reviewing the results to date of our study and rereading the
Report on National Growth 1972. there are several thoughts that come
to my mind:
The reason “why” we might need a national growth policy is not
faced. It would be helpful if the administration or Congress were
to project the future if the present policy of no policy is con
tinued . . . maybe there is not a problem or maybe it is a severe
problem.
The administration’s report does not discuss the role of the
private sector. It should.
The federal level should consider a national study similar to the
one we are conducting in Minnesota—-determine how past federal
decisions have affected population distribution.
The federal government ought to work closely with states and
regions, public and private, as it proceeds in this area of a growth
policy.
The 1974 report ought to develop reasons for and against and
the options open to the federal government.
HIGHLIGHT SUMMARY -FACTORS INFLUENCING INDUSTRIAL LOCATION
Study
Most important factors
Role of Governm ent
Importance of tax considerations
Study 1967 A C IR s tu d y __________ Market, basic cost and economic factors____ ____ ____1. Rules, regulations and attitudes of Governm ent more
1. Not prim ary in interstate comparisons.
important than height of taxes.
2. Can be significant within States or economic regions
2. More technical assistance and reorganization for
especially due to local property tax differentials,
efficiency and equity recommended.
1971 Manvel s t u d y ____ . .. ______ Sa m e............................................. ................................................................................. ......................... ..................... ........The researcher must look at financing capacity and
effort of the whole State system.
1972 Wisconsin s tu d y_____ _____ Specific factor importance (allocation of 100 points):
1. Viewed as relatively significant in this study. All 1. T h is stu d y notable for high attention given to business
1. Proxim ity to market 11.5 percent.
labor factors account for 28.4 percent of total.
taxes especially when viewed negatively. The 2
2. Business taxes- 10.1 percent.
Government follows with 25.7 percent of total,
most important single factor and most important
3. 4, 5. Supply of skilled labor, per unit labor cost
w ith negative aspects of business taxes and Govgovernmental factor.
and worker attitudes— 26.3 percent.
ernment attitude weighted more heavily than 2. Different industries do not show as much range of
6. Governm ent attitude toward in d u stry-6 .9
positive aspects of quality of services and efficiency.
difference on negative tax perceptions as on other
percent.
2. Different industries give different relative ranking.
factors.
Am ong labor factors adequate supply of appropriate
labor is most important.
1962 John D u s________ ________ Markets, bisic labor, and economic considerations most Recognizes that business climate and negative pub- 1. Attitudes, beliefs, and tax climate often overwhelm
important. Attitude as significant as facts, especially
licity m ay Influence decisions even before or without
tax facts.
w h e n v ie w in g taxes.
any factual investigation.
2. Must identify which firms gain and lose from specific
1957 Boblett (industrial realtors).. 4 prim ary factors are:
1. Appears definitely secondary.
tax rules. N T A 1970-72 studies make the same.
1. Markets.
2. Business and tax climate reputation, and regulations 1. Local tax climate as important as facts, but only
2. Labor.
important if basic supporting facilities available.
Sth on list.
3. Tra n s p o rta tio n (access to m ark et, q u a lity of
2. Special inducements are on the list of factors, but
s e rvic e anil government regulations).
are last of 18 (only tertiary). Th e y are not valuable
4. Raw materials— in that order.
or wanted if basic economic advantages are not
Then site, city character, utilities and facilities are
present.
secondary, followed by local tax climate, planning
and zoning and local governm ent reputation as items
9 ,1 0 ,1 1 , out of 18 factors.
00
O
Tennessee Study (opinions of 307
m anufacturing executives)
(1955-65).
Low cost and availability of labor.
Low cost electricity.
Favorable labor-management relations.
Com m unity leaders cooperation were most im por
tant. Small plants often made decisions on a “ per
sonal basis (without any economic advantage"
they admitted.
Kentucky study (before 1 9 6 4 New firm s em phasize distance to customers, coopera
old; after— new).
tion of com m unity, and financial assistance. Older
firm s consider labor and marketing factors more
important. Availability of labor, distance and cost
of shipping, quality of labor and wage rates were
view ed as most important.
Fortune magazine survey, 1963___ Ava ilability of workers and proxim ity to customer,
transportation and raw materials were viewed as top
3 of 10 factors. Labor, market, transportation, and
other cost and economic factors are l isted *
Experience, Inc., 1972.
1. No 1 pattern show n____________________________
2. Labor, market, material, transportation most im
portant.
National T a x Association studies,
1970-72.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Cooperation by officials and com m unity leaders viewed
as important (rank 4).
Favorable com m unity or State tax structure was 8th
out of 10 factors and plant financing with revenue or
G.O. bonds were mentioned 9th most frequently.
New firms put more emphasis on cooperation and as
sistance than older firms.
Taxes were not mentioned by newer firms as they
looked for other assistance; taxes were more import
a n t to older firms but still ranked down the line, 6th
or 7th after m arket, labor, ana other economic and
cost considerations.
Governm ent is not specifically mentioned or evaluated. Not listed at all in top 10 considerations.
1. Some firms welcomed financial assistance. Others Taxes described as “ seldom a decisive influence.” 20
refused.
out of 39 companies made no comment at all on taxes.
2. Highways important to all.
3. Police and fire taken for granted.
1. No single measure or conventional average is reli 1. Role of Government from tax side must be measured 1. Given any State-local tax system some firms in some
able or representative of the States’ position.
in different ways for different purposes.
industries gain and some lose, from the given set
2. Representative firms must ba analyzed, distinguish 2. It is recognized that other studies indicate the need
of features.
ing industry differences.
for consideration of attitudes and services as 2. It is probable that no State w ill be superior or inferior
w ell as taxes and charges.
on all features for all types of firms and industries.
PROPOSAL FOR A NEW HOUSING PROGRAM: SATELLITE
COMMUNITIES
(By Bernard Weissbourd, President, Metropolitan Structures, Inc.,
Chicago, 111.)
The term “urban crisis” has different meaning to different people.
Those most immediately affected by hunger, lack of health services, un
employment, poor education, and housing shortages are the black and
the poor— and their neighbors. Problems of air and water pollution,
traffic congestion, and municipal finance, on the other hand, clearly af
fect everyone in the metropolis, whether he lives in the suburb or in the
city. But to the poor these problems are not as immediate as their pov
erty. The “urban crisis” has a significantly different impact on different
segments of the population, living in different sections of the metropo
lis. The severity of the problems also varies widely between metropoli
tan areas. In general, it is directly proportional to the size of the popu
lation, the growth of the population, and the size of the ghetto.
What strategies can we employ to combat these pressures ? Financial
aid to the cities, either by means of revenue-sharing or through the
federal government’s bearing a larger share of expenditures for educa
tion and welfare, will certainly be essential. Unwieldlv governmental
machinery will have to be bypassed, since problems of this urgency
will not wait for the reorganization of fragmented governmental
jurisdictions.
The program proposed here focuses on the problems of migration,
pollution, transportation, unemployment, and segregation. Specifi
cally, it recommends that:
1 . The federal government, in cooperation with the states, should
embark upon a land acquisition program for new satellite communities.
Acquiring enough land in the metropolitan areas where the problems
are the greatest to accommodate half of the population growth expected
by the year 2000 would require the surprisingly small investment of less
than $3 billion. I f the land were properly located, this investment could
yield a profit, unlike other governmental housing programs, which are
typically operated at a loss.
2 . Antidiscrimination laws should be affirmatively enforced through
the lending policies of the F.H .A., Y .A ., and federally insured savings
and loan associations and through the denial of federal funds to build
ers of segregated developments.
3. Existing federal subsidies for housing should be redirected to
ward families earning between $6,000 and $12,000 a year, and income
limits on persons eligible for subsidized housing in satellite new com
munities should be removed.
4. An income-maintenance program should be established for lowerincome people to assist them in buying or renting older housing.
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5.
The federal government should provide funds to rebuild sub
standard central city areas, perhaps as “new towns-in-town,” after
making a sufficient number of n ew homes available through the new
satellite communities program. This would assure immediate accom
modations for those displaced from the buildings to be demolished.
The heart of this program is the acquisition of land for new satellite
communities which would house part of the population growth of se
lected metropolitan areas. The need for new communities is now widely
acknowledged, although there is widespread confusion regarding their
fundamental purpose as well as their financing, location, and size.
For example, David Rockefeller has called for a $10 billion private
corporation to build satellite new communities on land acquired
through the aid of a federal land corporation. The New City, a book
produced by an impressive group of senators, congressmen, and na
tional organizations of cities, counties, and mayors, advocates:
“ . . . financial assistance . . . from the federal government to enable
the creation of one hundred new communities averaging one hundred
thousand population each and ten new communities of at least one mil
lion in population.’7
Moreover, the Congress has passed new legislation authorizing fed
eral loan guaranties for financing new communities. This new legisla
tion identifies four types of new communities as eligible for federal
assistance: satellite communities (on the outskirts of existing metro
politan areas as an alternative to subdivision development), urban
growth centers (additions to small towns and cities), new towns-intown (within central-city areas), and independent new cities unrelated
to metropolitan areas that are already in existence.
Yet, the Congress, by enacting legislation providing funding for all
four kinds of new communities, has avoided answering such basic ques
tions as: What are the fundamental purposes of new communities?
What kinds and sizes of new communities are most urgently needed ?
Where should they be located ? The program proposed here is based on
the conviction that new communities developed under current legisla
tive policies will be located in the w ron g places, will be too few, and
only a small percentage of them will be desegregated.
I propose to show that while we need new communities for many
reasons, their most important function is as part of a desegregation
strategy that deals realistically with race and class : that we need sat
ellite new communities rather than isolated n ew towns; and that the
federal government should begin now to acquire the land for these
new satellite communities instead of continuing to guarantee loans for
private land acquisition. Finally, I propose to identify those metropoli
tan areas with the greatest need— where the land should be acquired
for satellite new community programs significant enough to have an
impact on the ghetto.
DE>E<rREG ATTOX— RACE AXI) CLASS
The 1970 census returns demonstrate all too clearly that the dire
prophecies of black inner cities encircled by white suburbs are being
fulfilled. A t least four major American cities, Atlanta, Newark, Gary,
and Washington, now have central cores that are over 50 percent black.
In addition to these, seven other cities have black ghettos of more than
865
40 percent of the central city population. One reason is the flight of
white population from the ccntral cities. In Chicago, for example, the
white population declined by more than half a million between 1960
and 1970; in Detroit there was a decline of 345,000 during the same pe
riod. The other factor, according to the Bureau of the Census, was that
the “increase in the black population of the central cities proved to be
both large and widespread, thus changing the racial mixture substan
tially.” Though this situation is recognized as critical, most current
proposals fail to deal realistically with political obstacles resulting
from attitudes toward race and class.
Before addressing ourselves to this question, let us turn our atten
tion toward another aspect of the problem. It has now become common
place to recognize that the new suburbs are also the location of the new
jobs, particularly the new industrial jobs, since industries find it more
economical to build single-story plants on cheap suburban land than to
build multistory plants on expensive city land. Only office jobs are in
creasing in the cities, and this trend is expected to continue. So we
daily witness the remarkable phenomenon of inner-city blacks filling
the expressways en route to their industrial jobs in the suburbs while,
at the same time, suburban whites are fighting traffic in the opposite
direction to get to their office jobs in the cities. This is a consequence of
the separation of place of work from place of residence carried to
absurdity.
The core of the problem is race, Black people need places to live near
their work, yet white suburbia's level of anxiety at the prospect of
an influx of black neighbors was expressed by President Nixon when
lie opposed Secretary Komnev's proposal for using federal funds to
open up the suburbs by calling it “forced integration” ; and there are
voices within the black community advocating total separatism.
The strong resistance of white suburbia to the acceptance of black
neighbors, in large part, is based upon a fear of inundation by an alien
culture. Each suburban community fears that, if it becomes the first of
its neighboring areas to welcome blacks, it will become the central
focus of the entire black migration. Given this white resistance and the
understandable reluctance of black families to move into an inhos
pitable environment, legal and legislative efforts can open up the
suburbs to only a few highly motivated black families intent upon
securing better housing, better jobs, and better education for their
children. Large numbers of black families will not be affected nor
will the lower class or the unemployed.
Nevertheless, overcrowding in the ghetto and the resulting pressure
on the white neighborhoods adjoining it must be relieved. Where
housing is scarce and segregation prevails, the growing black popula
tion can only expand into the adjoining white neighborhoods. Block by
block, as these white residents are squeezed out of their neighborhoods,
they tend to reassemble in other ethnic or cultural enclaves farther out,
which become that much more resistant to any black entry.
Land is scarce in the city, and urban renewal has destroyed more
housing than it has created". It is very difficult to reproduce the high
density of our ghettos except by building high-rise apartments— very
high; these are now generally considered by ghetto residents as unde
sirable places to raise their children. The only land available, then, for
housing the growing black population of our cities— if they are not
866
simply to displace their white neighbors— is in the areas next to be
developed at the suburban fringes or on inner-city industrial land no
longer suitable for industry. Once population pressures in the ghetto
have been relieved through new construction in outlying areas, our
inner cities can be rebuilt. London, for example, built new towns before
the East End was cleared so that the residents of the East End had
someplace to go before their homes were destroyed.
There is still another aspect of the situation that should not be
neglected. Besides simply relieving the overcrowding in the ghetto it
is also necessary to speak to the condition of despair in which most of
its inhabitants find themselves. Satellite new communities provide an
opportunity for white America to convince black America that there
is someplace in the United States where there can really be hope, where
Americans put into practice the ideals we profess, where there are good
jobs, good housing, and a good education for children. Many black
Americans may prefer to stay where they are. rejecting the new com
munities and the racial mixture they offer: but they would still be
aware that this opportunity exists if they choose it.
W e will be confronted for many years to come with a situation in
which a number of central cities will be dominated by black groups.
This means that one route for the black community will be the devel
opment of their own economic and cultural institutions, depending on
their own initiative and on negotiations with white people having eco
nomic power in the city. Here an analogy to the biculturalism of
their own initiative and on negotiations with white people having eco
nomic power in the city. Here an analogy to the biculturalism of
Quebec might be relevant, where the French majority faces an English
minority holding economic dominance.
An alternative route for black advancement lies in desegregation
and the accompanying improvement in education, employment oppor
tunities, and housing that a desegregated society can provide. The
term “ desegregation,” however, does not imply that every street or
apartment building has black residents in precise proportion to the
total population. Obviously, economic status, distance from work,
arbitrary personal preferences (including those based on race), and
many other factors will continue to affect where and how- people choose
to live.
Desegregation does require, however, that black people have the
same opportunities to make choices that white people have. We must
continuously be reminded that the success with which we develop an
environment that w ill close the unconscionably wide gap between the
opportunities available to black and white people w ill not only deter
mine the future of manv of our cities, if will also have an enormous
infhv.nce on our national character and on our international relation
ships.
A n y desegregation strategy must beirin bv making a proper distinc
tion between race and class. This distinction has long been blurred,
perhaps deliberateiv. Anyone with anv experience in leasing apart
ments or in sell in sf homes knows that it ^s murh more difficult to mix
different economic classes than to m ix different races in this country.
The 1970 r*e?isus shows, in fact, that we are p-ettingf some small m ix
ture o f middle-income black and white families in suburban areas,
and there are numerous examples of integrated buildings and neigh
867
borhoods in the cities. However, comparable examples of economic
integration of rich and poor are rare.
Almost all present financing- for new homes and apartments involves
the federal government in one way or another. About half of the out
standing mortgage debt on single-family homes is either F.H .A. or
V.A. insured, and most of the balance is financed by savings and
loan associations with deposits insured by the federal government and
investments regulated by federal law. The remaining factor in home
and apartment mortgage financing is the life insurance companies,
and they most certainly would cooperate with any Equal Opportunity
Program affecting the F.H .A., Y.A., and savings and loan associa
tions. I f these lenders or loan guarantors were to provide funds only
for equal opportunity developments, almost all new construction of
homes and apartments would be desegregated, just as equal opportu
nity employers have partially succeeded in desegregating the work
force.
It will be necessary, however, to design separate programs for dif
ferent income groups. Only families earning more than $ 10,000 per
year are able, at current market prices, to afford new homes or apart
ments outside the South. In the northern and western metropolitan
areas approximately 32 percent of all black families earn more than
$ 10,000 a year, as compared to 5*2 percent of all white families. This
means that in a metropolitan area with a population which is, say, 20
percent black (though most, of course, have a smaller percentage of
black families), approximately 13 percent of the total families who
could afford to move into suburban areas might be black.
However, because the white families are already there, and because
black families might hesitate to move into a potentially hostile en
vironment, a much smaller percentage of black families can be ex
pected to purchase or rent new housing in already built-up areas or
in traditional suburban subdivisions, even with a free housing market.
Since the percentage is likely to be relatively small, any action taken
by the federal government in relation to open housing should not
arouse enormous fears. Experience suggests that such a mix would be
stable.
Moreover, the fact that practically all new developments would
have to be equal opportunity developments under such a plan means
that no single development would run the risk of becoming the focus
of more extensive change. Builders would be able to prove compli
ance by demonstrating that they have, in fact, sold or rented to black
families or show that they have unsuccessfully advertised for, and have
not discriminated against them. Thus a modest degree of racial deseg
regation would be achieved; it will not, however, produce any sub
stantial amount of economic mixture, since only families earning more
than $ 10,000 a year would be involved.
R A C I A L A N D E C O N O M IC B A L A N C E
To facilitate the housing of black industrial workers near suburban
plants other programs will be needed. This may be a more difficult goal
because of the greater resistance to mixing economic classes than to
mixing races. A better opportunity for achieving racial and economic
heterogeneity is offered by new satellite communities. Desegregation
S68
here would signify real options in terms of where and how people
want to live. Given a choice of locations in new communities, it is
quite possible that people would sort themselves out: some into white
neighborhoods, some into black, and some into mixed. It is also pos
sible that some management people living in the new communities will
isolate themselves from the factory workers, while others will prefer
to mix with them. These options must always be kept open, because
the principle of free choice is quite as important as any of the other
concepts discussed here.
Housing middle-income people and industrial workers in new satel
lite communities will require some form of subsidy, since some of them
may be earning only about $6,000 a year. This means that such a family
can afford little more than $125 a month for rent. Of all black fami
lies living in the Xorth and West. 65 percent earn at least $6,000 a
year, as compared with 70 percent of all white families in those areas.
This means that in a metropolitan area with a population, say, 20
percent black (again this figure is larger than average), approxi
mately 17 percent of the total families who could move into such new
communities would be black. Experience, again, indicates that such a
population mix in new communities would be stable. However, even
though black families would be welcome in such new communities, in
contrast to the hostility of the existing suburbs, it is doubtful whether
the percentage of blacks, at least in the initial phases of the program,
would be as high as 17 percent .
Income groups earning less than $6,000 a year present an entirely
different problem. It is possible that the best way to deal with poverty
is with money. Income maintenance or some form of negative income
tax might be more effective answers to the problems of low-income fa
milies than housing subsidies. People in this income bracket may pre
fer to select older housing, spending a larger proportion of their total
income on other necessities. I f we are interested in achieving some
degree of economic heterogeneity, new communities should then be
prepared to accept their share of the new housing for this group in
proportion to their presence in the metropolitan area as a whole.
The results of this program are likely to be that a small percentage
of relatively affluent black families will live in the same suburban
neighborhoods as white families of a similar economic level, in new
housing. A larger percentage ,of both working-class and affluent black
people will live in desegregated new satellite communities with whites
of the same economic status. Poor families, both black and white, will
live largely in the older housing and apartments, with a small percentage in new homes and apartments in new satellite communities.
High-rise public housing, on the other hand, should be reserved ex
clusively for adults— either the elderly or young single or married peo
ple without families. The buildings are adequately constructed and can
be utilized in much the same way as luxury high-rise apartments, by
adults. For large families, income maintenance might permit them to
buy older housing, preferably in a neighborhood with good schools,
and provide a much more suitable environment f,or the children.
This approach is the opposite of the one we are now pursuing. We
have for some time been providing new housing for poor people
through public housing projects and for the relatively affluent through
government subsidies for single-family homes. Instead, we should be
869
providing new housing for middle-income people earning between
$6,000 and $ 12,000 a year and allow those with lower income to acquire
older housing through income maintenance. People with incomes over
$12,000 can afford their own housing, subsidized as at present through
special income tax treatment of home ownership.
What has been proposed, then, is a four-point program:
1 . Affirmative action to enforce antidiscrimination laws through
F.H .A., V.A., and federal savings and loan association lending poli
cies so that black families able to afford single-family homes can move
to the suburbs.
2. Housing subsidies for middle-income people earning between
$6,000 and $12,000 a year to enable them to afford new housing in new
satellite communities.
3. An income maintenance program for lower-income people so that
they may be able to purchase suitable older housing.
4. A new satellite communities program offering housing of varying
price range in a choice of black, white, or racially mixed neighbor
hoods.
T H E H I D D E N C O S T O F S U B S ID IE S
The federal government pours at least $10 billion a year in direct or
indirect subsidies into the housing market. The federal budget directly
allocates approximately $4 to $5 billion a year to housing, including
appropriations for urban renewal, public housing, mortgage loan in
terest, and subsidy programs. This figure, however, does not include
rent payments made for welfare recipients, which are indirectly fi
nanced by the federal government through matching funds to the states
(in New York City alone the
@FedFRASER