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In our Introduction we argued that the present preoccupation with the economic imperative restricts our understanding of the city in its entirety. Nevertheless, in trying to develop a new perspective we need to understand the key assumptions that underlie mainstream views. Here, in Part I, we begin that process by examining some of these ideas and assumptions. Given the enormous differences in context between cities in different parts of the world, Part I looks separately at cities in the First and Third Worlds. Indeed, even within these two broad categories, major differences exist and the essays draw attention to some of them.
In Chapters 1 and 2 the authors describe the forces and events that have shaped the cities of Europe and North America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, pointing to the role of technology in both their growth and decline, before going on to give an impression of the direction in which these forces are taking us. The emphasis is upon the economic rationale of the city and its need to meet the demands of new forms of industrial and commercial activity. Rather ominously, at the end, we are warned that âcasualties are to be expectedâ.
Chapters 3 and 4 examine two central concerns relating to Third World cities. Chapter 3 questions the extent to which forecasts of mushrooming mega-cities are justified and suggests that the growth rates of many metropolitan centres are being overtaken by secondary cities whose needs have not yet attracted similar attention. Chapter 4 questions widespread assumptions regarding the breakdown of urban administration under conditions of rapid growth and examines current thinking on management options relating to the private sector and community groups.
This examination of mainstream views provides a basis for the development of new perspectives that place the economic imperative into a wider context of concerns. The essays in Part II begin this process by exploring some of the social, political, ecological and technological issues which must be considered if we are to take a more comprehensive and balanced view of the city.
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Chapter 1
On the development of cities1
Dennis Hay
In this Chapter; Dennis Hay begins the examination of current orthodoxy by describing the forces and events that have shaped the cities of Europe and North America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, pointing to the role of technology in both their growth and decline. He draws attention to Knightâs distinction between âtraditionalâ and âindustrialâ cities and suggests that the dilemma lies in the way in which these different kinds of city can pass through the transition to âadvanced industrial citiesâ. Focusing upon the concept of the Functional Urban Region, and describing eight stages of centralization and decentralization, Hay finally identifies four broad trends that, in the eye of the urban and regional economist are seen to affect the future of cities in the First World â a continuing decline of the heavy manufacturing sector, a continuing trend towards suburbanization and exurbanization for the most mobile sections of the population, the emergence of new forms of manufacturing and communications industries with new locational preferences, and, for the âtraditional citiesâ a new role as centres for office, finance and knowledge based activities.
Dennis Hay is currently Research Manager for the College of Estate Management in Reading. Former positions include Research Officer to Peter Hall in the Department of Geography, University of Reading; Research Assistant at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria; Visiting Research Fellow at the Institut fur Raumplanung, Universitat Dortmund; and senior Research Fellow in the Joint Centre for Land development Studies and in the department of Economics at the University of Reading. Earlier research covered the comparative analysis of urban systems in Europe with Peter Hall and the evaluation of urban problems in the European Community, the latter commissioned by EEC. He has a continuing interest in urban regeneration projects and the alternative use of industrial land and redundant property for recreation and tourism.
Until relatively recently in western Europe, the predominant dynamic characteristic of cities was growth of population and economic activity competing with each other for urban space, whilst the primary concern for policymakers was how to contain that growth and at the same time stimulate the lagging peripheral and rural regions. Today the positions are almost reversed. The trend is away from agglomeration and towards dispersal, whilst a malignant disease of decline and decay spreads through once proud cities. But not all cities are similarly affected. There seem to be differences between the performances of cities in terms of their patterns of growth and change and their economic success. But there are cities which have done very well in the past and are now in deep trouble and others which have lain dormant for centuries and have now erupted into feverish activity.
Most cities want to be successful, not only for the improvement and maintenance of the standards and quality of life for their present inhabitants, but also for those of their descendents. There are obviously a multiplicity of complexly interrelated forces which determine this state of satisfaction, and it is partly the evolution and partly the regulation and manipulation of these forces which condition how well cities perform. In order to understand the picture more clearly, it is useful to first divide cities into Richard Knightâs simple classification of cities.2 In this classification, âtraditional citiesâ are taken generally to mean the older, historic cities which have evolved over many centuries through their role as major or subsidiary central places. These are cities which generally survive because of the range of activities they perform and the durability of some of those activities â such as administration or as centres of communication. They are not, however, without their periodic problems, but these are seen as relatively transitory and reflect a cityâs adjustment process to changing global and market conditions. âIndustrial citiesâ, on the other hand, are those which for reasons of siting of raw materials, or of raw-materials processing, grew through their industrial role. These are the cities which have seen the most spectacular turnaround from explosive economic success into seemingly irreversible decline. It is the means of transition of these industrial cities into the third category, the âadvanced industrial cityâ, which is the current dilemma.
Urban and regional economists and urban geographers have tried to find some order or pattern from the apparent randomness and complexity of city development and to assess the impacts of the different forces which are operating. This can be done, for example, by analysis of population and economic changes in the geographical areas which make up cities and their regions,3 and can be correlated with periods of major technological advances or innovations. In essence, the argument here is that at each stage of economic development, the dominant technology that is available to society (be it coal and steam power, electricity or micro-electronics) determines its prevailing pattern of production across the main sectors of the economy (such as agriculture, industry and commerce). The requirements of production and the capability of technology determine the scale, concentration, and location of economic activity, which in turn influence the pattern of human settlement and the flows of trade. Technology can therefore be said to influence where people live and work, the nature of the work they undertake as producers and the means by which they are able to travel. The totality of these influences is a crucial determinant of the pattern of urbanization at each stage of economic development.
Economic historians have identified a series of âlong wavesâ or âgrowth cyclesâ of development, whereby the emergence of fundamental new technologies leads to a major new wave of economic growth, which is accompanied by a corresponding wave of new building investment. For each new technology, there is thus a distinctive pattern of urban development, and a shift in the type and location of buildings which make up the physical fabric of towns and cities.
This process can be identified over a long period. The most easily recognizable upswing in the cycle began between about 1740 and 1780 in the United Kingdom, when the large-scale shift of employment from agriculture to industry heralded the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The combined effects of advances in agriculture (which reduced demand for labour) and the developments of technology led to the âtake-off into self-sustained growthâ,4 including the growth of new cities linked to the sources of raw materials.
This upswing lasted for well over 100 years. The nineteenth century was both the age of industrialization and the age of urbanization. In the United Kingdom during most of the period, the real national product nearly doubled every two decades, increasing fifteen-fold over the century as a whole. The proportion of the national product accounted for by agriculture declined from 33 per cent to 6 per cent; the share of services remained fairly constant at 35-40 per cent, while the share of industrial production nearly doubled from 23 per cent to 40 per cent. The population as a whole grew nearly four-fold, from 10 million in 1801 to 37 million in 1901, and the proportion of people in cities leapt from around 30 per cent to nearly 80 per cent. Londonâs population increased from 1 million to 5 million, and the great industrial cities of the North and Midlands grew out of small pre-industrial towns â there being no towns over 100,000 outside London in 1801, but there were twenty-three by 1891.
Underlying this dramatic transformation of the British economy and society lay the revolution in methods of industrial production based on steam-power, and iron and steel manufacture. First, between 1780 and 1840, there was the application of steam-power to textile manufacture, leading to the growth of the factory towns centred on Manchester. Later, between 1840 and 1895, iron and steel production and the building of the railway networks created the conditions for massive expansion of heavy engineering, based in cities such as Birmingham and Glasgow. The corresponding wave of building which took place in these industrial towns in the second half of the nineteenth century created the physical fabric of what constitutes todayâs inner city areas.
The twentieth century brought an ever increasing pace to fluctuations in the economic cycle, with depression and recession and two major wars interspersed with periods of growth and new technological change â and with changing patterns of urbanization. The broad mix of activities within the economy changed little, however, in the first half of the twentieth century, with the share of manufacturing industries in the national product remaining fairly stable at around 40 per cent. But this concealed a major shift from already declining heavy engineering industries based on nineteenth century technology to more modem industries based on new technologies such as electric power, assembly line techniques, and motor vehicles. In particular, the transport and communications revolution (represented by electric trains, the telephone, and wider use of automobiles) stimulated a shift in emphasis in established towns from urbanization to suburbanization. Increased opportunities for commuting led to a reduction in the density, and improvement in the quality, of urban development, while new, clean factories were built along arterial roads radiating from the major cities. Rather than being largely determined by the needs of production, the pattern of urban development was now as much influenced by the residential preferences of households.
In the post-war period, this shift in the balance of forces between the needs of production and the locational choices of households has been further strengthened, to such an extent that the predominant characteristic of urban development has now changed from suburbanization to decentralization or de-urbanization. The most important factors underlying this trend have been the further increase in household mobility, due to mass ownership of motor cars and the construction of the motorway network, and the locational flexibility of the new consumer industries based on new technologies such as electronics, synthetic materials, and pharmaceuticals. Unlike the declining heavy industries of the last century, these new industries are not constrained to locations close to ports or sources of raw materials, but rather are free to move where their managers and workforce choose and where the motorway network or airport locations allow convenient access.
Consequently, the search for good housing and social facilities such as schools, plus a pleasant living and working environment, is now pulling urban development away from the industrial cities and back into smaller market towns, particularly those in the south of the country which had apparently been left behind by the Industrial Revolution 150 years earlier. This out-migration from the cities, which has been reinforced by planning policies such as new-town development and green belts, also reflects a rejection by large segments of the population of the congestion, dereliction, and the fear of crime which they perceive within established cities. The result is a vicious circle of decline within the inner city, as the most mobile social groups move out (particularly the younger skilled middle-class families), leaving the most disadvantaged and immobile social groups (such as unemployed manual workers, the elderly, and the racial minorities) to cope with shrinking job opportunities, declining social services, and a decaying physical fabric of nineteenth-century housing and infrastructure.
The process of de-urbanization in Britain is still in its early stages, and it is likely to be greatly influenced by the current transformation or latest upswing which is taking place within the structure of the economy, involving the change from an industrial to a post-industrial âinformation economyâ. It should be remembered that Britain has been a âservice economyâ throughout most of this century, in the sense that total services have accounted for a greater proportion of the national product, at around 50 per cent, than all production industries (including manufacturing with a share of no more than 40 per cent). These relative shares reflect both the continued strength of the countryâs commercial and financial services when heavy industry has been in decline, and the large investment in social services (particularly health and education) in the post-war welfare state. Since these service industries in general enjoy the same locational mobility as the new consumer goods industries, they have also tended to follow the out-migration of population from the cities, thereby assisting the de-urbanization trend.
Nevertheless, despite the growth of the service sector, manufacturing industry in Britain was maintaining i...
