Urban Linkage and Regional Structure in Wales: An Analysis of Change, 1958-68

Abstract

The common bond uniting the communication theory of urban growth and the general theory of polarized development is the emphasis placed upon the contemporary communications process. Both urban and regional growth are held to be a product of the intensification of connections between previously poorly linked areas. This proposition is empirically examined in a study of telecommunications in Wales. The major patterns of trunk telephone calls were isolated at two points in time by multivariate analysis and were integrated by canonical analysis and a step-wise grouping procedure. These techniques highlighted the extent of linkage change in urban and regional contexts. The evolution of the Welsh urban system was determined by the way in which areas, particularly in the rural interior, focused their calls upon the major urban centres. Regionally this trend involved the decline of the traditional core as a receiver of calls on account of its increased connection with the urban fringe. URBANIZATION is traditionally seen as a process of settlement growth involving increases in the size or number of urban places.' This approach reflects a philosophical viewpoint of the city as a physically urbanized and locationally discrete area which is isolated in some way from its environs. A fundamental difference is held to exist between urban and nonurban places, a conceptual dichotomy finding convenient expression in the real world as the boundary of the continuously built-up area. Today, urbanization is associated with the vast range of commodity, personnel and information exchanges that characterize contemporary society. The growth of these connections constitutes both a means and a measure of urbanization, the flows bringing regular urban contact to many people who live outside the city limits. Rather than as a process of physical settlement growth, it is more useful to see urbanization as a process of social communication. The communication theory of urban growth is most closely associated with recent approaches to urban and regional planning. Part of its origins can be traced back to R. L. Meier's view of cities as social systems in space, created and maintained by a complex network of interconnections.2 Similarly M. M. Webber has investigated the importance of flows and linkages in his integrated model of metropolitan spatial structure.3 More recently, the role of communication in the process of regional growth was emphasized in J. Friedmann's general theory of polarized development.4 The theory introduces the idea of cities as agents of change, generating and transmitting waves of innovation through wider regional systems. Both urbanization and regional development are a product of the increased involvement of remote areas within the field of influence of the major urban centres. Viewed cross-sectionally, the theory distinguishes between innovative peripheries and traditional cores, the process of regional development involving the encroachment of the former upon the latter. The model seems particularly applicable to Wales, a country within which an expanding fringe and a rural heartland with population decline is a well-recognized geographical feature.5