"ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, The"

Laconte, Pierre

doi: 10.1177/000271628045100101pmid: N/A

De Sola Pool, Ithiel

doi: 10.1177/000271628045100102pmid: N/A

At the turn of the century, telecommunications had a centripetal effect on the topography of cities. It encouraged the separation of offices from factories and the consequent concentration of offices downtown. Thus telecommunications led to urban concentration. By the middle of the century, a more flexible and universally available telecommunications technology was used to escape urban concentration, with both homes and work places moving out of the city's center and even into exurbia. In that period, the effects of telecommunications were predominantly centrifugal. In the future, a still more malleable communications technology is likely to give people more choice in how they use it. Until now, each of the trends and effects noted for communications could be simultaneously noted in transportation. Now, however, in the prospect of an energy shortage, one of the very likely uses of telecommunications may be to overcome some consequences of high energy prices. Most particularly, improved telecommunications may be used to offset the centripetal pressure for achieving energy savings by renewed urban concentration.

Berry, Brian J.L.

doi: 10.1177/000271628045100103pmid: N/A

Urbanization, the process of population concentration, has been succeeded in the United States by counterurbanization, a process of population deconcentration characterized by smaller sizes, decreasing densities, and increasing local homogeneity, set within widening radii of national interdependence. This article reviews this shift, the means by which a national society is producing a national settlement system.

Rabin, Yale

doi: 10.1177/000271628045100104pmid: N/A

State highway departments wield a disproportionately great influence on the comprehensive planning process and on patterns of decentralization in metropolitan areas because highways are a fundamental influence on land development and because highway departments control the production of highway facilities from planning and construction to operation. Because of that influence, highway departments have been able to pursue the narrow objective of accommodating traffic despite congressional attempts to redirect transportation goals toward meeting the land-use needs of declining central cities and avoiding the adverse social, economic, and environmental impacts of highways. These adverse effects have included the isolation of central city transit-dependent minorities from suburban employment and the creation of an excessive dependence on gasoline. The inertia of this limited purpose highway program has been sustained by massive federal funding, a bureaucratically embedded and technologically intimidating planning methodology, and a system of federal plan and impact reviews whose major effect has been to expedite the approval and construction of highway projects. These deficient impact analyses and token reviews have deprived the public and elected officials of vital information about foreseeable adverse impacts and have unreasonably restricted their ability to judge highway proposals or make important decisions affecting decentralization.

Frieden, Bernard J.

doi: 10.1177/000271628045100105pmid: N/A

Local governments across the country have been enacting new growth control regulations, usually in the name of environmental protection. The effects of these new controls can be seen most clearly in northern California, where a large number of San Francisco suburbs have all tightened their restrictions on home building. The new control systems have made it easy for groups that oppose growth to block or curtail new housing developments. Growth control tactics and the environmental politics that surround them have succeeded in reducing the amount of housing built in many new developments, restricting competition among home builders, raising costs to consumers, and restricting the locational choices available to families with average incomes. At the same time, they have contributed little to the improvement of the public environment, but have protected many established suburban communities against the inconveniences of growth and the loss of open land. By blocking growth in locations close to job centers, opponents have shifted home building to the suburban fringe, where the environmental costs are usually greater.

Hall, Peter

doi: 10.1177/000271628045100106pmid: N/A

The study discussed in this article specifically set out to ask whether recent American urban trends—de— concentration, growth of nonmetropolitan areas, stagnation or decline of larger urban areas, and regional shifts from frostbelt to sunbelt—had any parallels in Europe. The conclusion is that, overall, Europe does not offer many parallels except for an increasing tendency to core-ring decentralization. There is no movement to nonmetropolitan areas, except in France during the early 1970s, and indeed until that time some countries still tended to centralize their urban populations. The industrial heartland has continued to grow, and while the European sunbelt has also grown rapidly, the causes are different from those operating in the United States. Finally, in much of Europe—although not in Great Britain, the country where the trends are most like the American ones—larger urban areas have tended to show vigorous growth.

Drewett, Roy

doi: 10.1177/000271628045100107pmid: N/A

Centralization and subsequent decentralization of population and employment is a phenomenon that characterizes urban systems as they evolve over time. To observers of urban change in individual European nation-states, a significant gap exists between monitoring changes in spatial distributions and understanding the processes that steer patterns of urban growth, stagnation, and decline. This gap needs to be narrowed, especially since locational preferences of companies, households, governments, and other major sectors are changing rapidly. Such complex issues suggest a need to relate present knowledge to what is happening in city systems in other advanced economies. This is difficult because a cross-national comparison of urban systems within Europe itself does not exist. Such a ready-made perspective poses a practical and conceptual problem. However, attempts have been made to articulate the comtemporary organization of urban systems through inductive rules, theories, and theoretical frameworks. This article largely concerns such attempts.

Merlin, Pierre

doi: 10.1177/000271628045100108pmid: N/A

The new town movement, originated in Britain in the ideas of Howard, was active in successfully implementing two new towns on a cooperative basis, Letchworth and Welwyn. These ideas became important on the Continent when the new town movement continued on a wider scale, mostly with government initiative. A remarkable exception to this is Tapiola, Finland, built by a nonprofit organization.

Collins, Richard C.

doi: 10.1177/000271628045100109pmid: N/A

Historic preservation has become a major force in urban development, urban planning, and city design. It has been propelled into the stream of political action, and controversy, because of a series of demographic, economic, and legal changes which have generated a "back-to-the-city" movement. This movement, although still highly selective in area, particularly affects older urban neighborhoods with distinctive architectural quality and downtown areas with a stock of old but distinctive buildings. The 1966 Historic Preservation Act, especially the provisions of Section 106, is comparable to the National Environmental Policy Act in its impact on redevelopment in built-up areas and in its requirement for environmental impact statements in natural settings. An expanded federal law calling for the inclusion of properties on the National Register of Historic Places and the creation of the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation creates leverage for the national heritage movement in development decisions. The 1966 Historic Preservation Act gives advantages to rehabilitating historic properties rather than to demolishing them and also includes economic disincentives to those who would construct new properties on those sites. This same law provides for federal certification of local historic districts in order to establish eligibility for the tax provisions. Developments in historic preservation are changing local planning and zoning concepts.

Spirn, Anne Whiston

doi: 10.1177/000271628045100110pmid: N/A

The city is a part of nature, albeit altered. For the most part, the builders of cities have disregarded this fact, with dangerous and costly consequences: increased flooding, pollution, and energy demands, depletion of resources, and higher construction and maintenance costs. In recent years, scientists have documented the character of the urban, as distinct from the more rural, natural environment. This current understanding of nature in cities affords a tremendous opportunity for a new direction in city planning and design, one which has been shown to yield substantial economic, aesthetic, health, and safety benefits. Many cities, both in Europe and North America, have applied this knowledge piecemeal with great success. But to date, no city has implemented a comprehensive program which addresses all factors of the urban natural environment. The integration of natural processes with other concerns of the city's social, economic, and physical environment will result in healthier, safer, and more beautiful cities which are less costly to build and maintain.