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THE URBAN FIELD

John Friedmann & John Miller
Available online: 18 Dec 2007

To cite this article: John Friedmann & John Miller (1965): THE URBAN FIELD, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 31:4,
312-320
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A Simulation Model for Renewal Programming, A.Z.P. lournal,

XXXI (May, 1965), 128.
For a further discussion of these recommended symptomatic
indicators, see Arthur D. Little, Inc., San Francisco Community
Renewal Progvum: Analysis, Strategy, Program (preliminary final
report), April 1965, pp. 6.28-6.31.
7 See Philadelphia Community Renewal Program, Technical
Paper Number 4, Community Renewal Programming, December
1962.
8 Community Renewal Program, Philadelphia, Program Plans
for Development Activities, (undated, mimeographed).
9 N e w York Department of City Planning, op. cit.
1oFor a description of these models, see: Wilbur A. Steger,
The Pittsburgh Urban Renewal Simulation Model, A.Z.P. /ournul,
XXXI (May, 1965), 144-149; and Ira M. Robinson et al, A
Simulation Model for Renewal Programming, A.Z.P. lorrrnal,
XXXI (May, 1965), 126-134.
11 Arthur D. Little, Inc., Sun Francisco Cornnutnity Renewal
Program: Analysis, Goals, Long-Range Policies and Program (Final
Report), Sept. 1965.
12 Arthur D. Little, Inc., Son Frannrco Community Renewal
Program: Report on Organization and Administration for Renewal,
March, 1963.
13 A subsequent supplemental paper to the 0 & A Study,
A Survey of the Ofice of the Ml7yor, detailed the functions and

John Friedmann and John Miller

In Search of a New Image

There has been a growing dissatisfaction with the historical concept of the city. Don Martindale, in his brilliant introduction to Max Webers essay, The C i t y , has
composed a fitting epitaph:
The modern city is losing its external and formal
structure. Internally it is in a state of decay while
the new community represented by the nation everywhere grows at its expense. The age of the city
seems to be at an end.
If this is so from a sociological standpoint, it is equally
true from the perspective of a physical planner. Various
concepts have been put forward in the endeavor to capture the expanding scale of urban life. Metropolitan
region, spread city, megalopolis, ecumenopolis . . . each
attempt to redefine the new reality has led to a broader
spatial conception. Behind these efforts lies an awareness of the constantly widening patterns of interaction in
an urbanizing world.
Modern utopian constructs have been equally intent on
fitting city concepts to the possibilities created by our
communications-based society. Clarence Steins Regional
City is a constellation of moderately sized communities
separated by great open spaces and bound closely together
by highways.2 Frank Lloyd Wrights Broadacre City
32

rerponsibilities of the proposed position of Development Director.

14 As originally envisioned by Meyerson, the Program would
serve as the central guide to programming housing and renewal
activities (both public and private), to land use changes, to economic and social development programs, to educational, medical
services and similar programs, and to all municipal investments in
general. I t would cover a 10-year period, but would only be
detailed for the first 6 years.
1 5 David A. Crossman, The CRP: Policy Development, Progress and Problems, A.Z.P. lournal, XXIX (November, 1963), 267.

Authors Note:
For some of the ideas expressed in this paper, the author has
benefitted from innumerable discussions with various members
of the Arthur D. Little staff who were involved with him
in the San Francisco Community Renewal Program,
particnlm.ly Tom Kingsley and George Williams. He has also
benefitted from a continuing dialogne with Melvin 14. Webber,
extending over some three years, on the subject matter of
this paper. However. none of these persons is responsible f o r
the authors views.

T h e inherited form of the city no longer corresponds t o

reality. T h e spatial structure of contemporary American
civilizntion consists of metropolitan core regions and the
intermetropolitan peripheries. T h e former have achieved
very high levels of economic and cultural development at the
expense of the latter, leaving the periphery in a decadent
state. Current and projected trends in techiiology and tastes
suggest that a new element of spatial order is coming into being-the urban field--which will unify both core and periphery within a single matrix. T h e implications of. t h e urban
field f o r Iiving patterns and for planning are discussed.

represents a complete melding of the urban and rural

worlds that, without pronounced centers, would uniformly dissolve throughout a r e g i ~ n . ~Both these constructs see the city as an essentially unlimited form of
human settlement, capable of infinite expansion.
None of the new concepts, however, has been completely successful. The Bureau of the Census has had to
shift the meaning of metropolitan region from metropolitan district to standard metropolitan area to
standard metropolitan statistical area in order to keep
pace with our improved understanding of what constitutes the fundamental ecological area of urban life, and
it is once more reexamining the question?
The much looser conception of spread-nty has been
applied only to the New York region, and no attempt
has been made to generalize from it to other urban areas.5
Jean Gottmanns megalopolis appears as a geographic
place name for the chain of metropolitan giants along
the Boston-Washington axis. Although later writers
have taken it as a generic term fw contiguous metropolitan regions, the concept, lacking precision as well as
generality, has frequently been misapplied. One writer
has gone so far as to extend its meaning to the entire
region from Phoenix to Minneapolis.7 His Midwest
Central Megalopolis is a geographic and conceptual absurdity. Finally, C. A. Doxiadis ecumenopolis is no

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concept a t all but a poetic vision.8

Planners therefore, are left in a quandary. Modern
metropolitan trends, wrote the late Catherine Bauer
Wurster, have destroyed the traditional concept of urban
structure, and there is no new image to take its place.O
Yet none would question the need for such an image, if
only to serve as the conceptual basis for organizing our
strategies for urban development. Our hope in this paper
is to meet this great need, suggesting an image of the
new polis that will be adequate to the tasks that face the
nation in the decades ahead.

The Enlarged Scale o f Urbaiz Life

It has become increasingly possible to interpret the spatial
structure of the United States in ways that will emphasize a pattern consisting of one, metropolitan areas and
two, the inter-metropolitan periphery. Except for thinly
populated parts of the American interior, the inter-inetropolitan periphery includes all areas that intervene among
metropolitan regions that are, as it were, the reverse
image of the trend towards large scale concentrated
settlement that has persisted in this country for over half
a century. Like a devils mirror, much of it has developed
a socio-economic profile that perversely reflects the very
opposite of metropolitan virility.
Economically, the inter-metropolitan periphery includes
most of the areas that have been declared eligible for
federal area redevelopment assistance. This is illustrated
in Map I, which shows the geographic extent of substandard income and high unemployment areas relative
to the urbanized regions of the United States? Situated
almost entirely outside the normal reach of the larger
cities, these areas are shown to be clearly peripheral.
They have a disproportionately large share of low-growth
and declining industries and a correspondingly antiquated economic structure. Nevertheless, one-fifth of
the American people are living in these regions of economic distress.
Demographically, the inter-metropolitan periphery has
been subject to a long-term, continuous decline (Map 11).
This trend reflects the movement of people to cities,
especially to the large metropolitan concentrations. Although the smaller cities on the periphery have to some
extent benefitted from migration, their gains have been
less, on the average, than for all urban areas.ll In addition, migration from economically depressed regions has
been highly selective, so that the age distribution of the
remaining population has become polarized around the
very young and very old. In Appalachia, for example, the
two million people who left the region during the 1950s
were, for the most part, drawn from the productive age
groups from 18 to 64. At the same time, the population
over 65 years old increased by nearly one-third.* In
some areas, recorded death rates now actually exceed
birth rates.3

luhn Frirdmnnn i s c i ~ r r e ~ ~dirrrting

tly
ihr Ford l~oiindir/ions
progrum jor urhun und regional d ri d o p mrn t in Cfiile. H r wtis
jorinerly un usroc;utc professor uf A4.I.T.
1P JOURNAL
JOVEMHER 1965

1ohn Miller is a docforul cundidute iit planning ut A4.I.T. ond

i5 ciwrcntly .wring 11s ii Ford 1:uiinrlaiion o d ~ i s o rlo n regional
plunning prugriim hascn on ConmpciGn in Chile.

33

Syniimiuin on Irr~pratntning ;ind thc Ncw Urban Planning

Fricdnnnn and Miller

Socially, the standard indices of education and health

are substantially lower along the periphery than in metropolitan areas. The quality of public services has deteriorated (though their per capita cost has increased),
the housing stock is older, and the level of educational
attainment is significantly below the average for metropolitan America. Rapid and selective outmigration, a
declining economic base, the burden of an aging population, and low incomes have rendered many peripheral
communities helpless in their desire to adapt to changing
circumstances in the outside world. The remaining
population is frequently short both on civic leadership
and hope. They can neither grasp the scope of the events
that have overtaken them nor are they capable of responding creatively to the new situation^.'^
Politically, ninny peripheral areas have lost their ability
to act. They are fragmented, disorganized, and without
effective economic leverage. The Area Redevelopment
Administration has for a number of years been at work
in these regions on a county by county basis (itself a
fragmented strategy) and now the Appalachia program
has been launched amidst much fanfare. Yet neither of
these programs has adequately recognized the relationship between metropolitan cores and their peripheries,
so their scale, though ambitious, has been dwarfed by
the extent of the social and economic problems of the
periphery.
The emergence in large sections of the country of the
inter-metropolitan periphery as a major problem area
has been the direct result of the concentration of people
and activities around closely contiguous metropolitan
cores. Growth in and around these cores has drawn off
the productive population, economic activities, and investment capital of the periphery, but the forces of urbanization are now in the process of reversing this trend.15
Looking ahead to the next generation, we foresee a
new scale of urban living that will extend far beyond
existing metropolitan cores and penetrate deeply into
the periphery. Relations of dominance and dependency
will be transcended. The older established centers, together with the intermetropolitan peripheries that envelop them, will constitute the new ecological unit of
Americas post-industrial society that will replace traditional concepts of the city and metropolis. This basic
element of the emerging spatial order we shall call the
urban field.
The urban field may be viewed as an enlargement of
the space for urban living that extends far beyond the
boundaries of existing metropolitan areas-defined primarily in terms of commuting to a central city of metropolitan size-into the open landscape of the periphery.
This change to a larger scale of urban life is already
underway, encouraged by changes in technology, economics, and preferred social behavior. Eventually the
urban field may even come to be acknowledged as a
community of shared interests, although these interests
may be more strongly oriented to specific functions than
to area. They will be shared because to a large extent
they will overlap and complement each other within a
specific locational matrix. Because urban fields will be
large, with populations of upwards of one million, their
social and cultural life will form a rich and varied pattern

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MAP

MAP

1 ARA-Designated 1950-60 by County Eligible Areas

3 The Urban Field

\\\

capable of satisfying most human aspirations within a

local setting.
It is no longer possible to regard the city as purely an
artifact, or a political entity, or a configuration of population densities. All of these are outmoded constructs
that recall a time when one could trace a sharp dividing
line between town and countryside, rural and urban man.
From a sociological and, indeed, an economic standpoint,
what is properly urban and properly rural can no longer
be distinguished. The United States is becoming a
thoroughly urbanized society, perhaps the first such society in history. The corresponding view of the city is
no longer of a physical entity, but of a pattern of point
locations and connecting flows of people, information,
money, and commodities. This new understanding of
the city has been incorporated into the census concept of
a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area and has since
been widely accepted as a basis for public and private
decisions.
The idea of an urban field is similarly based on the
criterion of interdependency. It represents a fusion of
metropolitan spaces and nonmetropolitan peripheral
spaces centered upon core areas (SMSAs) of at least
300,000 people and extending outwards from these core
areas for a distance equivalent to two hours driving over
modern throughway systems (approximately 100 miles
with present technology). This represents not only an
approximate geographic limit for commuting to a job,
but also the limit of intensive weekend and seasonal use
(by ground transportation) of the present periphery for
recreation. A system of urban fields delineated by this
criterion without attempting to draw a dividing line
between metropolitan cores that are less than 200 miles
apart, is presented in Map 111. Between 85 and 90 percent of the total United States population falls within
the boundaries of this system while less than 35 percent
of the total land area of the country is included. These
are facts of signal importance, for as the area of metropolitan influence is substantially enlarged nearly all of
us will soon be living within one or another of the 7O-odd
urban fields of the United States.
The choice of core areas of at least 300,000 inhabitants
as a basis for delineating urban fields requires some justification. Karl Fox, for instance, recommends a reduction of central city size to 25,000 or less for his proposed
set of Functional Economic Areas which, in a sense, is
alternative to our concept of a system of urban fields.?
The threshold size of 300,000 was suggested to us by
the work of Otis Dudley Duncan and his associates.
According to Duncan, a Standard Metropolitan Area of
300,000 people in the United States in 1950 marked a
transition point where distinctively metropolitan characteristics first begin to appear. Adequately to describe
the base of the urban hierarchy-consisting of almost
all urban centers smaller than this size-one would have
to shift the emphasis from metropolitanism to other
principles of functional diff erentiation.18 Although the
SMAs of 1950 are not equivalent to the SMSAs of 1960,
the two concepts are similar enough to suggest the possibility of a transfer of Duncans threshold size to the
SMSA. An additional consideration was the expectation that core regions of this size and larger will continue
to expand over the next several decades and will consequently generate a vast demand for various uses of
internietropolitan space.

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AIP JOURNAL
NOVEMBER 1965

The urban field of the future, however, will be a far

less focussed region than todays metropolitan area. The
present dominance of the metropolitan core will become
attenuated as economic activities are decentralized to
smaller cities within the field or into the open country,
but because proximity will continue to account for a
good deal of local interaction, the urban field will be a
coherent region.
To define this region on a map, the main criterion
should be that exchange relations within each field are
more intensive than among them, during the course of
an entire year. The calculation of this measure on an
annual basis instead of at a single point in time is important because some of the functional relationships
among subareas may be subject to seasonal variations.
The enjoyment of summer and winter recreation areas is
the outstanding example of this phenomenon. These
areas should be allocated to that realm whose population
makes the most intensive use of them.
It is important to recollect what this projected geographic expansion of urban living space will accomplish.
First, it will turn the resources of the inter-metropolitan
periphery to important uses by existing metropolitan
populations; second, as the periphery becomes absorbed
into the urban field, it will be eliminated as a distinctive
problem area. The remaining parts of the United States
will either remain in low density agrarian uses or revert
to wilderness for the enjoyment of distant populations.

Forces Underlying the Emergence of Urban Realms

Our case for the urban field rests on two propositions.
The first is that the future growth of population in the
United States will take place almost exclusively within
the areas we have defined as urban fields. The second is
that within each urban field substantial centrifugal forces
will propel the settlement of population and the location
of activities from existing metropolitan centers into the
present periphery.
CONTINUED POPULATION CONCENTRATION I N URBAN FIELDS

One of the clearest national trends of the past few decades

has been that of increasing demographic concentration.
Most of the discussion, however, has emphasized the
pulling together of people in metropolitan and coastal
regions. It has been less well publicized that the great
majority of counties that lost population during the 1950s
are predominantly rural and lie outside the boundaries
of any urban realm. The gains, as Map I1 clearly demonstrates, have occurred almost entirely within these
boundaries, though not exclusively in metropolitan counties. We have no reason to expect this trend to be reversed during the coming generation.
In 1960, an estimated 150 million Americans lived in
potential urban fields. We have projected their number
to more than double the present number by the year
2000. This increase of 150 to 180 million will have to
be accommodated within roughly the same area that we
have provisionally delimited. The question arises as to
where, within a given field, this population will be living.
In approaching this question, we are mindful of the
New York Metropolitan Region Study which for 1985
foresees as many people living in the outer ring as in
the central core. This outer ring extends as far as 100
miles from New York City and is not today part of the

35

Symposium on Programming and the New Urban Planning

Friedmann and Miller

daily life of the metropoli~.~Elaborating on this startling projection, Raymond Vernon writes that employment and population trends
cast doubt on any image of the Region as a giant
cluster of human activity held together by a great
nub of jobs at the center. Instead . . . [they afford]
a picture of a Region in which the centripetal pull is
weakening. This, in turn, means a further modification of the oversimplified picture of the Region
as a ring of bedroom communities in the suburbs
emptying out their inhabitants every morning to
the central city. Incomplete and misleading as this
picture is today, it promises to be even more misleading in the decades ahead. . . . And the chronic
complaint of the outlying areas that they lack an
economic base may continue to lose some of its
realism and force.
Vernon has foreshadowed the appearance of an urban
field that would have New York City as its core. What
are the forces, then, which suggest this occupancy of the
periphery by people and activities, not only for New
York, but for all other core regions in the United States?
And what specific forms will it assume?
CENTRIFUGAL FORCES:

RESOURCES OF T H E PERIPHERY

The main pull, we submit, is the increasing attractiveness of the periphery to metropolitan populations. It has
space, it has scenery, and it contains communities that remain from earlier periods of settlement and preserve a
measure of historical integrity and interest.
Demand for these resources will be generated by three
main trends: increasing real income, increasing leisure,
and increasing mobility. Although these trends are
familiar, brief discussion of them will help to suggest
their cumulative impact.
The Presidents Council of Economic Advisors estimates that output per man-hour may undergo a threefold expansion by the year 2000.21 Holding constant
both working hours and labor force participation rates,
this would raise average family income (in todays prices)
to approximately $18,000. Although there is every reason to expect that part of the potential gains in income
will be taken in the form of greater leisure through a
combination of shorter working hours, longer vacations,
later entry into the labor force, and earlier retirement,
the prospective rise in wealth is still very substantial. If
present patterns of consumption are any guide, we can
expect a good share of this new wealth to be devoted to
the purchase of space, privacy, travel, education, culture,
and various forms of recreative leisure.
The present allocation of leisure time is distributed
among numerous activities. The Stanford Research Institute reports that already 50 million Americans are actively participating in amateur art activity; that 32 million are musicians, and 15 million are painters, sculptors,
and sketchers. There are more piano players than fishermen, as many painters as hunters, and more theater
goers than boaters, skiers, golfers, and skin-divers combined.
The United States Department of Health, Education
and Welfare has published statistics showing that new
museums, including aquariums and zoos, are being es-

Downloaded by [Harvard College] at 17:14 21 January 2012

tablished at the rate of one every three days, and that

one-third of all existing musuems in the country have
been opened since 1950.23 Other cultural activities have
shown equally phenomenal gains. For instance, there
are now 1400 symphony orchestras in the United States,
compared to only 100 in 1920.
These new cultural facilities are more mobile, more
intimate, and more dispersed than their predecessors.
They are different from the grand centers of high culture left in our central cores by the nineteenth century
cultural ideology.
Participation in outdoor sports is likewise on an impressive scale. In 1964, there were an estimated 38
million boaters, 20 million campers, 7 million skiers, and
an equal number of golfers. Skiing enthusiasts alone
have jumped by 600 percent during the past ten years.
And attendance in official park and forest areas has been
rising at a cumulative annual rate of about ten percent.
With increasing leisure time available, the prospects
for the future show no abatement in these activities. For
the mass of the people, nearly two-thirds o their waking
hours will be essentially in free, unstructured time.24 It
is therefore not surprising that the Outdoor Recreation
Resources Review Commission has predicted a tripling in
the overall demand for recreation by the year 2000.25
For the hedonistic leisure society we are becoming, this
estimate may indeed be a conservative one.
The combined trends in income and leisure are bound
to arouse great popular interest in the periphery, but their
full effect will be transmitted through the increased mobility which our technology affords.
The gradual lifting of constraints which during the
industrial era packed jobs and people into tightly confined urban spaces will encourage what Jean Gottman
has called the quasi-colloidal dispersion of activities
throughout the urban field. Impending communications
technologies suggest the possibility of relaxing the need
for physical proximity in distribution, marketing, information services, and decision-making.
A few examples may be cited. Computers which keep
business inventories and send information on replenishment items over T V or telephone are now technically
feasible. They may also be used to alert suppliers to
periodically recurring needs for product service. In retailing, a major revolution is in the making, as videophones have been developed that can transmit images of
products and convert these images on signal into photographic reproductions. The use of coded cards to send
information, order items, and transfer funds by telephone
has already passed the laboratory stage and no doubt will
soon be introduced on the market.
Transport technology continues to advance toward
greater speed and versatility. Supersonic and short-distance jets, automated highways, and rail transport which
moves at several hundred miles an hour through densely
built-up regions, are expected to pass from drawing board
to commercial application within ten to twenty years.
The result will be a further shrinkage of the transportation surface and vastly increased accessibility on a national
scale no less than within each urban field.
One effect of increased accessibility especially worthy
of note is the estimated 3.5 to 7.5 million acres which
will be opened up for urban development when the federal interstate highway program is completed. This
land newly available for urbanization will represent a

major resource to the national economy.

The combined effects of greater income, leisure, and
mobility will be felt, by virtue of these arguments, primarily on the present periphery of metropolitan regions,
as demand for the use of its resources are vastly intensified. Some of these uses are shown in Table 1. They
are distinctly urban in character. And they remind us
of Lewis Mumfords prophetic vision of the Invisible
City.
Gone is primitive local monopoly through isolation:
gone is the metropolitan monopoly through seizure
and exploitation. . . . The ideal mission of the city is
to further [a] process of cultural circulation and
diffusion; and this will restore to many now subordinate urban centers a variety of activities that
were once drained away for the exclusive benefit of
the great city.26

TABLE

Uses of the Intermetropolitan Periphery

RECREATION
camps
parks
forests
wilderness areas
nature sanctuaries
resorts
outdoor sport areas
quietist retreats

INSTITUTIONS
boarding schools
junior colleges
universities
museums
cultural centers
scientific research stations
conference ccnters
hospitals
sanatoria
government administrative offices

COMMUNITIES
holiday communities
retirement communities
vacation villages
art colonies
diversified new towns
historical communities
second home areas

ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES
agro-business
space-extensive manufacturing plants
rcsearch and communications-based industries
mail order houses
warehouses
insurance companies
jet airports

Emerging Life Styles of the Urban Field

The projected incorporation of the periphery into the
urban realm will be accompanied by significant changes
in American patterns of living. On the whole, we expect that these changes will be evaluated favorably.
Derogatory slogans, such as sprawl and scatteration,
bandied about in ideological campaigns, will have to be
discarded in any serious search for what it means to live
on the new scale. Although not all the consequences
can be foreseen now, a few merit closer attention. We
shall restrict our comment to only three of them: a wider
life space on the average, a wider choice of living environments, and a wider community of interests.
1. A wider life space
The effective life space of an
individual includes all the geographic areas within which
his life unfolds. It includes his home and its immediate
vicinity; his place of work or schooling; the places in

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AIP JOURNAL
NOVEMBER 1965

which he does his shopping and engages in leisure activities; the more distant places to which he travels for business, recreation, or learning; the residence areas of the
friends and relatives he visits; and the connecting paths
over which he travels to reach his destination.
It is possible to map these spaces for individuals-distinguished by age, sex, and socio-economic status-as well
as for entire communities. These maps would show
which areas of the total available space are actually being
used by different parts of the population as well as the
intensity of their use. An important feature of these maps
would be data relating to the percentage of the individuals total annual time spent at different localities and
travelling over various routes. A further distinction with
regard to the seasonability of use could be made.
Such maps for an urban field would reveal greatly expanded and more complexly structured systems of life
spaces for the total population compared to existing patterns. The higher speeds, greater versatility, and lower
costs expected in transportation and communication during the next few decades will encourage a dispersion of
people and activities throughout the urban field and a
further thinning out of metropolitan core areas on an
unsurpassed scale. Technological innovations will make
it possible to substitute mobility for location. The strong
likelihood that this will occur is suggested by foreseeable
changes in patterns which underlie the location decisions
of families and firms.
For individual families, locational decisions will be
increasingly influenced by larger incomes that will permit the purchase of more space, more privacy, and more
transportation; by a growing concern with the qualitiative
aspects of life, especially with the quality of the physical
environment; by the gradual relaxation of the puritanical
distinction between work and play, especially among professional and business elite groups; and by the desire for
an environment that will permit a richer family life.
All of these forces will tend to render the intermetropolitan periphery more attractive as a place to live, and help
to tie it more closely into the urban field.
The location of business firms will encounter fewer
economic constraints within the urban field than at
present. This is especially true for the new kinds of
service activities-professional, managerial, research- and
communications-based-which are the leading edge of a
post-industrial society. Urban infrastructure and services
will be nearly ubiquitous throughout the urban field; the
pressing need for physical propinquity among firms is
declining; and the expansion and improvement of transport and communication services will tend to make
regional as well as national markets equally accessible.
If only those economic factors that operate generally
throughout a given field are taken into account, thereby
excluding local subsidies or differences in local tax structure, which provide only small and temporary advantages,
it is possible to assert that firms may locate nearly at
random throughout the field, subject only to the constraint of labor force distribution. Location of the labor
force will then become a primary determinant in business
location decisions, with the result that firms will be
attracted in increasing numbers into what is now the
inter-metropolitan periphery. Firms as well as families
will substitute mobility and machine-interposed communications for location.
2 . A wider choice of living environments both for

37

Symposium on Programming and the New Urban Planning

Friedmann and Miller

resident and non-resident use and more frequent interchange among environments
The urban field offers
a heterogeneous landscape, consisting of metropolitan
cores, small towns, and varied open spaces.27 Within
it, a wide variety of living environments may be sought
and created. There is nothing rigid or predetermined
about the physical form of the field: rather, it may be
viewed as a mosaic of different forms and micro-environments which coexist within a common communications framework without intruding spatially on each
other.
For the family, the urban field offers a far greater
choice of living environments than do the old metropolitan areas. Alternatives include country and in-town
living, perhaps combined, through a steep increase in the
frequency of second homes for year-round use; single
family dwellings and apartment towers; dense metropolitan clusters and open countryside; new towns and
towns with an historical tradition; and functionally
specialized communities.
No part within the urban field is isolated from
another. There is rather an easy-going interchange among
all the parts, encouraged not only by the wider distribution of population but also by the larger amounts of time
available for the pursuit of leisure. All areas are located
no further than two hours driving distance from old
metropolitan cores. And although these cores will lose
much of their present importance to the people of the
field as functions are decentralized, they will continue
for at least a few more decades to attract many people
to the activities that are traditionally carried out within
them, such as major educational and governmental institutions, famous museums, outstanding music, artistic,
and sport events. Many cultdral facilities, however,
will be dispersed throughout the realm and many metropolitan services will become available at any point within
it through extended distribution systems. At the same
time, easy access to other urban fields can be provided
through a regional system of airports capable of handling
short-distance jets and vertical take-off craft. High-speed
railtransport may be a significant means for inter-realm
travel in some parts of the country, such as the Northeast Corridor.
3. A wider community of interests
The already
noted increase in the effective life space of the population
suggests that each person will have interests in happenings over a larger segment of the field than at present.
In the course of a year, he may actively participate in the
life of a number of spatially defined local communities.
As a result, he is likely to be less concerned with the
fate of the community where he resides and more with
activities that may be scattered throughout the field
but are closest to his interests, leading to a stronger
identification on his part with the realm as a whole at
the cost of a declining interest in purely local affairs. (In
some places, this loss may be offset by the smaller size
of his resident community which would encourage more
active participation in problem-solving.) We foresee continuation of the present trend toward a cosmopolitanization of values, attitudes, and behavior, with politically
relevant behavior organized principally along functional
lines, and with the governing of local communities

patterns and tested against a gravity model. It is clear

that the boundaries so delimited for statistical purposes
will be shifting over time as the region begins to be
Implications for Public Policy more fully developed, transportation technology advances,
In the preceding sections of this essay, we have speculated and the inevitable phenomenon of zones transitional to
openly about the future. The urban field would emerge adjacent fields is better understood. Once the region has
as a normal consequence of the forces that are currently been roughly defined, its present uses and potential
operating on the space economy of the United States. assets should be investigated and evaluated against the
Its designation as an ecological unit, however, is purely changing pattern of metropolitan demands, with parconceptual: it is only one of the many spatial patterns ticular attention to the trends of change in spatial
that might have been recognized. Specifically, its choice structure. These investigations would culminate in a
was dictated by our belief in the utility of the urban general regional development plan as a guide to locafield as an appropriate region for planning. The vastly tion decisions. The plan which, like all good plans,
enlarged scale of urban living we envisage for the future would need to be constantly in elaboration, would sugholds clear implications for public action. We shall gest broad land use patterns as well as desirable new
comment on only two of these: actions to reinforce exist- investments, public and private. The final step would
ing trends toward the incorporation of the inter-metro- involve the establishment of an information and monitorpolitan periphery into the urban field and actions that ing system for the realm to maintain close watch over
will assure the environmental integrity of all activities regional changes as they occur.
If the urban
2 . Assuring environmental integrity
within the field.
field
is
to
be
developed
as
a
meaningful
living
environ1 . Reinforcement of existing trends
W e have
portrayed the emergence of the urban field in approving ment, it is essential that its manifold uses do not enlanguage. W e might have spoken out, as others have, croach upon each other and in the process destroy its
against the rootlessness of modern man, the loss of com- most valuable assets: open space, scenic attractiveness, and
munity, and the misfortune of urban sprawl. Our words, historical tradition. Indiscriminate metropolitan growth
however, were carefully selected; they represent our should be minimized; new towns should be selected with
conviction that there is, indeed, a social good to be ob- attention to the total pattern of land uses and the
tained from the substitution of mobility for location. evolving distribution of population, activities, and transNot only is the urban field the living environment most portation. Cultural institutions should be so located as
consistent with the aims of a wealthy leisure society, to reinforce other forms of recreation, present and conit will also help to reverse the steady deterioration of templated. Areas for agricultural production should be
the periphery; and this we see as a major social ob- set aside, not only for economic reasons, but also to
provide a richer visual and environmental experience to
jective. There are losses as well as gains to be incurred
by allowing the expansion of metropolis into the periph- the inhabitants of the realm.
Assuring an appropriate environmental setting for
ery, but we believe the gains will outweigh the losses.
Political considerations strengthen this judgment: it each activity (or bundle of activities) in the field will
would be difficult in the extreme to change the direction involve something more than the judicious application
of existing trends and squeeze an urban population to of traditional land use controls, though no doubt these
be doubled in size within the next thirty years into will be necessary. It will require forthright programs of
the confines of existing metropolitan areas. W e conclude area development and resource conservation, including
that public policy should in this instance cooperate the preservation of old townscapes and the more outwith the inevitable and support the penetration of the standing features of the rural landscape.
A suggestion for this type of program is provided by
inter-metropolitan periphery by forms of urban life.
Governments can exercise two modes of influence to experience in France. Throughout France, the fasthasten the arrival of urban fields: the first is the loca- spreading ownership of automobiles is making it possible
tion of government-financed investments; the second is to restore and maintain the rural villages that are so
information. The former is perhaps the more persuasive much a part of her charm. A national inventory of
in the long view. There is a singular opportunity for abandoned houses is published, and liberal government
planning on the scale of urban fields in the design of credits are given to purchasers who restore them. In
regional highway and railroad systems, in the location recent years, thousands of old country homes have
and design of regional airports, in the siting of regional become summer houses for city people. Whole villages
colleges and government-sponsored research institutions, have come to life again. Much can be done at the
in the distribution of administrative oflices, and in the national or state level to encourage the repossession of the
designation and development of public land reserves for inter-metropolitan periphery in view of the varied uses
recreation. Somewhat less direct controls over location proposed for it within the urban field.
can be used in connection with subsidy programs for the
The institutional basis for developmental planning in
acquisition of second homes as well as for the building the urban field will have to face up to new constraints
of retirement communities and new towns.
that will limit social decision-making. These include the
T o contribute to the emergence of urban fields, de- multiplication of governments, (not 1400 as in New
termination of public and private locations should occur York but perhaps 4000!), overlapping jurisdictions and
within an adequate framework of information. The responsibilities, the increasing functional rather than
potential reality of the urban field should be captured in spatial orientation of interests among the population,
statistical series and maps. As a first step, the boundaries the gradual loosening of communal ties, the fuzziness of
of the realm must be empirically ascertained on the basis field boundaries, lagging citizen response to the enlarged
of careful studies of daily, weekly, and seasonal flow scale of living, and the extension of urban fields into

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(places) passing increasingly into the hands of professionals.

Downloaded by [Harvard College] at 17:14 21 January 2012

adjacent states as well as the continuing conflicts of

values, (public versus private, conservationist versus expansionary, traditionalist versus modern, residential
Of the Planversus productive). No easy
ning process is possible under these conditions nor,
perhaps, is it desirable. 1f metropolitan-wide planning
is onlv now corning into being-decades after the disof the &&politan
region as the new urban
scale, and just when this scale is about to be replaced
bv the even broader concept of the urban realm-it
seems futile to argue for the exclusiveness of the urban
field as a planning unit. Field planning will have to
coexist with other forms. Primary responsibility for the
development of urban fields will unquestionably come to
rest with the states; but this is only a beginning. The
federal government will have a role to play as important
as that of local governments, while interstate and intercommunity cooperation in developmental planning will
become much more common than it is at present. The
coordination of these different levels of planning presents
a major problem that must be solved through both
formal and informal methods of program cooperation.
The formulation of a regional development plan in joint
consultation with all the relevant parties will be necessary
to provide the common framework for decisions.

A Challenge of MourPting Urgency

It would indeed be a pity if our era were to fail in
taking advantage of the great opportunities which the
dynamism and tensions of our society are creating for
building a new urban culture. The expansionary forces
that suggest the possibility of urban fields are irreversible;
what we make of them is our choice. They could well
terminate in the desecration of the urban landscape, in
a grey formlessness, the spoliation of resources. In place
of designing an environment for exuberant living, we
could acquiesce in the gradual attrition of life by neglecting to take the appropriate measures now. The pattern
of the urban field will elude easy perception by the eye
and will be difficult to rationalize in terms of a Euclidean
geometry. It will be a large
- complex pattern which,
&like the traditional city, will no longer be directly
accessible to the senses. We might think of it rather
as a time-space continuum that muSt first be reduced, to
a meaningful abstract model before it will submit to
beinn managed as a whole. Such models are not yet in
sigh; But ;he challenge to search for them confronts
the planning profession with mounting urgency.

NOTES

.IP JOURNAL
JOVEMBER 1965

1 Max Weber, The City (Glencoe, Illinois: T h e Free Press,

1958), p. 62.
2 Clarence S. Stein, A Regional Pattern for Dispersal, Architrctural Record, CXXXVI (September, 1964), 205-206.
3Erank Lloyd Wright, The Liuing City (New York: Horizon
Press, Inc., 1958).
4 The review is being conducted by the Social Science Research
Council Committee on Areas for Social and Economic Statistics.
5 Christian Science Monitor, November 14, 1964, p. 3.
6 Jean Gottmann, Megalopolis, (New York: The Twentieth
Century Fund, Inc., 1961).
Herman C. Berkman, Our Urban Plant: Essays in Urban
Affairs (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Extension, 1964), pp. 4-5.
8 T h e final stage in the hierarchy of living spaces. Cf., for
example, The Ekistic Grid Ekistics, XIX (March, 1965), 210.
9Catherine Bauer Wurster, The Form and Structure of the
Future Urban Complex, in Lowdon Wingo, Jr., ed., Cities and
Space. Published for Resources for the Future, Inc. (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins Press, 1963), p. 73.

39

Symposium on Programming and the New Urban Planning

Friedmann and Miller
10 ARA eligibility criteria are rather complicated. They are
fully stated in U. S. Department of Commerce, Area Redevelopment
Administration, Summary List of Redeuelopment Areas and Eligible
Areas, Public works Acceleration Act, October 1, 1964. Washington, D. C., p. 2.
11 Rav M. Northam. Declinine Urban Centers in the United
States: 1450-1960, Annals of the-Association of American Geographers, LlII (March, 1963), 50-59.
12Appalachian Regional Commission, Appalmhia (Washington: U. s. Government Printing Office, 1964).
1s U. S. Department of A&ulture.
Economic Research Service,
Recent Population Trends in the United States with Emphasis on
Rural Areas, Agricultural Economic Report No. 23 (Washington:
The Department, 1963), pp. 24-25.
14 Harry M. Caudill has documented this physical and social
deterioration of declining inter-metropolitan peripheral areas in
his able study of eastern Kentucky. Night Comes to the Cumberlands (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1962). See especially
Chapter Twenty: The Scene Today, pp. 325-351. Evidence that
this is not an isolated phenomena exists for other inter-metropolitan
peripheral areas. The New York Times, March 21, 1965, reports
that hundreds of Texas towns and smaller cities that once drew
incomes from agriculture are finding few farmers left today to
trade in their stores and banks. Massive depopulation has been
the rule. Only where agressive local leadership in a few communities has grasped opportunities in regional and national markets has the decline been decelerated. According to the University
of Texas Bureau of Business Research, regional and national
corporations are not attracted to invest in these communities.
Disintegration of morale, physical facilities, and the economic
climate was also characteristic of large parts of the inter-metropolitan
periphery of Western Massachusetts within the dynamic megalopolis described by Gottmann. A regional study of this area by
M.I.T. students elicited a general expression of disintegrating community through the comments of local citizens. People feel, as
one citizen volunteered, it is a second rate town. Young people
get it from their parents. The people move out, leave their
houses vacant, and after awhile they look dingy. We are in a
rut. We have an inferiority complex. Young people dont plan
to stay. Look at those vacancies on main street. Its depressing.
The people who should be leading just are not. Leadership.
Business people think it is a thankless job-dont want any part
of it.
15 The Economic Research Service of the U. S. Department
of Agriculture in a study of the effects of metropolitan growth
trends on rural counties asserts that the existence of a large, dense,
and growing urban population in a region tends to create conditions of population growth in rural counties of the same region.
This is true not only because an ever-larger number of the rural
counties are within commuting range of urban centers, but also
because more distant counties are affected by the accession of
businesses or residents who do not need frequent commutation to
the citv but whose work or choice of residence is related to the
city-especially the large metropolitan city. These are counties
beyond exurbia which the geographer Wilbur Zelinsky has
referred to as the urban penumbra. oP,it.,
p. 14.
16 It is significant to note that if all present SMSAs of between
2 ~ ~ , 0 0and
0 300,000 people were to reach the critical threshold
size of 300,000 during the next generation, only a small expansion
of the area now included in urban realms would occur. Most of
these centers are located within or close to the edge of an existing
urban realm and are thus encompassed by the boundaries we have
provisionally defined.
For his most recent statement, see Karl Fox, Programs for
Economic Growth in Non-Metropolitan Areas, paper prepared for
the Third Conference on Regional Accounts, Miami Beach, Florida,
November 19-21, 1964.
18Otis D. Duncan, W. Richard Scott, Stanley Lieberson,
Beverly Duncan, and Hal H. Winsborough, Metropolis and Region.
Published for Resources for the Future, Inc. (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins Press, 1960), p. 275.
1 9 T h e Core (New York Citys four major boroughs and
Hudson County) total population in 1985 is estimated by Vernon
to be 7,810,000, a decline of almost half a million from the 1955
population. The Outer Ring (90 minutes from Manhattan to up
to 30 miles beyond that) total is given to be 7,809,000, an increase
of over 300 percent. Raymond Vernon, Mefropolis 1985 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 221.
ZOIbid., p. 224.
21 Presidents Council of Economic Advisers, 2964 Annual Rcport, as reported in Christian Science Monitor, January 28, 1965.
22 As reported by Ralph Lazarus, An Age of Fulfillment, in
Christian Science Monitor, February 6, 1964.
2 3 As reported by Josephine Ripley, U. S. Cultural Crescendo,
in Christian Science Monitor, January 1, 1965.
24 The National Planning Association has projected an average

work week of only 30 hours for the year 2000.

25 Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, Action
for Outdoor heo.eution for America (Washington: Citizens Cominittcc for thc ORRRC Report, 1964), p. 8.
26 Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York: Harcourt,
I3racc and World, Inc., 1961), p. 564.
27 l r will be rccallcd that thc definition of an urban field is
based on a metropolitan ccnter of at least 300,000 inhabitants.
From this it follows that an urban ficltl may include within its
perimeter smaller metropolitan arcas as well as satellitc cities
of varying sizc u p ti) the sizc of the metropolitan corc area.
28 Archie Robcrtson, Europe Moves to the Suburbs, T h e
Lamp, XLVII (Spring, 1965), 29.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Post-industrial rrrbanization is discussed also in these puhlications.

T h e American Assembly. Columbia Univcrsity. Automation
and Technological Change (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: PrenticcHall, Inc., 1962).
Barlowc, Raleigh, Our Future Needs for Nonfarm Lands,
Land: The Ycarbook of Agriculture 1958 (Washington, D. C . :
The United States Department of Agriculture, 1958), pp. 474-479.
Hlcssing, Charles A. A Comprehcnsivc Role for Urban Design, lorrrnal of American Instirrrze of Archiiecrs, XLIll (Novembcr, 1964), 73-06.
Blumenfcld, Hans The Urban Pattern, T h e Annals of the
.4mericun Academy of Political and Social Science, CCCLII (March,
1964), 74-83.
B id d i ng, Kenneth E. The Death of the City: A Frightened
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York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1945), pp. 147-186.
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Resources in the Context of Long-Range National Needs, lournal
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Clawson, Marion How Much Leisure: Now and in the
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Social Science, (Monograph No. 4, 1964).
Dickinson, Robert E. The City Region, City Region and
Regionalism (London: Routlcdge and Kegan Paul, 1947), pp. 165171.
Dyckrnan, John The Changing Uses of thc City, Daedalrrs,
XC (Winter, 1961), 111-131.
Fleisher, Aaron The Influence of Technology on Urban
Forms, Daedalus, XC (Winter, 1961), 48-60.
Gaffney, M. Mason Urban Expansion-Will
It Ever Stop?
Land: The Yearbook of Agriculture 1958 (Washington, D. C.:

Thc Unitctl States Dcpartmcnt of Agriculture, 1958), pp. 503-522.

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e
XLIII (August, 1962), 98-108.
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(August, 1964), 129-138.
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197-206.
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S. Perloff (Pittsburgh: Univcrsity of Pittsburgh Press, 1961),
pp. 28-42.
Mumford, Lewis, The Future of the City: The Disappearing City, Architectural Record, CXXXlI (October, 1962), 121-128.
Mumford, Lewis, Planning for Urban Growth, T h e City in
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5 14-524.
New York State. Office of Regional Development, Change,
Challenge, Response: A Development Policy for New York State
(Albany: The Oflice, 196-1).
Wingo, Lowdon, Jr., Recreation and Urban Development:
A Policy Perspective, T h e Annals of rhe Americart Academy of
Political and Social Science, CCCLII (March, 1964), 129-140.
Woml, Samuel E., and Alfred E. Heller, California Going,
Going . . . (Sacramento, California: California Tomorrow, 1962).
W m d , Samuel E., and Alfred E. Heller, T h e Phantom
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for Family Living? Architecrural Record, CXXXVI (December,
1964), 149-156.

Frecdom of movement is basic to the dchieuement of national

Bernard J. Frieden

wide variety of residential choices to all groups.

. Yet rirban
development policies in many cities and suburbs tend to
restrict residrntial choices aunilable to the poor and to minorities. These policies r e d t in patz f r o m coinpetition for local
tax resources, which reinforces social prejudices. Several
approaches are suggested for reorienting local development
policies in support of national socia? objectiws.

It is no accident that social reform movements

in the United States have been preoccupied with the
quality of life in the cities. Many of our national problems are not only highly visible in urban areas, but are
even reinforced and made more difficult to solve by the
way we build and organize our cities. Now the United

States has dedicated itself to the achievement of important objectives in civil rights, education, housing, and
the war on poverty. These national purposes imply
parallel goals in the planning of our urban areas. Extending equal opportunities to minority groups means,
among other things, making it possible for minorities

CI

LJRBAN 0 pp0 RTUNITy

320