Individual Business Units Research Articles

Urbanization as Measured by Newspaper Circulation

This paper is predicated on the assumption that culture, since it is based finally on communication, is always more or less a local phenomenon. In so far as this assumption is valid, every community having its own local tradition and its own institutions may be regarded as a cultural unit. The cultural and political organization of the community invariably tends to conform, and when the community achieves a stable organization it will conform to the economic. Changes in economic relations, under these circumstances, may be accepted as a index of changes that are taking place or impending in cultural life. Recent studies indicate that within the limits of the metropolitan areas of great cities, a process of devolution is going on. Changes in the metropolitan areas of great cities are identical in kind with the changes that are taking place whole region which the metropolis, with is satellites, dominates. Business and industry is moving out to the smaller cities, increasing their population to be sure, but changing still more their character and function. The smaller cities are beginning to assume the role of the larger urban centers. The changes which are taking place are embodied, on the one hand, in the concentration of individual business units, as, for example, in our chain store; on the other hand, as represented in our chain store in an orderly dispersion of these units throughout the whole metropolitan area. This process of devolution, therefore, is not so complete as to impair the organization which was achieved through the movement toward concentration and consolidation. Though the units are dispersed, financial control and administrative organization remains at the center. The changes taking place are really in the direction of a more complete and more efficient organization. In the small towns or villages the population is stationary and they are losing their original character as independent units. They are, in short, becoming satellites of the small cities. All of these changes are very accurately reflected in newspaper circulation.