Metropolitan Growth Research Articles

Studying Regional Development: The Regional Context of Economic Development

This essay reviews four recent books on regional development and change. Taken as a group, these books illustrate the contribution of a wide range of disciplines and methods for studying regional development. The following essay presents their major arguments and conclusions. The advantages and disadvantages of their various methods are briefly discussed as well. Sources of Metropolitan Growth offers insights on the contribution of geographers and economists toward understanding locational factors that influence metropolitan growth and decline. The Rise of the Gunbelt and From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt provide historical analyses of how national policies influence regional development. The Pentagon and the Cities illustrates the contribution of multiple disciplines toward understanding effects of a federal policy.

Urban Planning in Curitiba

Smog, gridlock, overcrowding and blight sometimes seem like the inevitable price of metropolitan growth, but a fast-rising city in southeastern Brazil has found a better way. Simple technologies, creative use of resources and a public transportation system that is pleasant, efficient and affordable have turned Curitiba into a model of what more cities could be.

New Visions for Metropolitan America

Here, Anthony Downs discusses the largely unrecognized symbiosis of central cities and suburbs. As suburbs develop, he argues, their residents come to believe - wrongly - that their welfare no longer depends on the economic and social health of central cities' fiscal and social problems, even though they have helped to create those problems by deliberately excluding most low-income households from their own communities. Such continuation of unlimited sprawl can only further intensify the problems it generates. Downs proposes that Americans consider at least three alternative visions of metropolitan growth that he identifies as Bounded High-Density, Limited-Spread Mixed-Density, and New Communities and Green Belts.

Review: Social Justice and Local Development Policy, People in Cities: A Transatlantic Policy Exchange, Economic Reforms in New Democracies, Sources of Metropolitan Growth

Review: Social Justice and Local Development Policy, People in Cities: A Transatlantic Policy Exchange, Economic Reforms in New Democracies, Sources of Metropolitan Growth

The metropolis revisited

The 20th century is the century of the metropolitan revolution. In North America, the majority of people live in metropolitan areas, and the Northern metropolis is the centre of global economic and political power. Inequalities between and within metropolises are at the heart of the ‘urban question’. Despite attempts to stop metropolitan growth and warnings of the demise of big cities due to new technologies, the metropolis appears to be a relatively durable form of human settlement because of its economic and social complexity. Urban growth following the model of the North American metropolis, with its sharp central city-suburban imbalance, and automobile-centred, sprawled growth, is becoming more prevalent around the world. Thus, the socioeconomic inequalities and environmental problems associated with this model may well accompany global metropolitan growth in the 21st century. In the 21st century, planners will need to develop strategies for metropolitan growth and preservation that maximize the potential, inherent in this new settlement form, for energy efficiency and social equality.

THE EFFECTS OF METROPOLITAN JOB GROWTH ON THE SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF FAMILY INCOME*

ABSTRACT. This article examines how a metropolitan area's job growth affects its income distribution, using CPS data from 1979 to 1988. Metropolitan growth increases the poorest quintile's income by a greater percentage than for the average family. Metropolitan growth also increases the value of property owned by the richest quintiles. Economic development programs to increase local growth will have a net progressive effect if the cost per job created is low, and these costs are financed by personal taxes. But programs with a high cost per job, or financed by cutting welfare, will reduce the net income of the poorest quintile.

Metropolitan Population Growth and Distribution in the American South, 1970-1990

"Southern Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) are rated among the nation's leaders in [U.S.] population growth in recent decades. Growth and rankings of MSAs are examined using Pannell's (1974) method. A linear rank-size pattern of cities is revealed, with centers of greatest population growing larger while smaller centers follow with proportionally smaller population changes. A regression model provided some support for the contention that city sizes affect city growth rates. Additional factors in southern metropolitan growth and decline were considered. Introduction of a labor cost factor into the regression model provided moderate support in accounting for variation in MSA growth rates. Several MSAs grew at rates predicted by the regression model while others performed differently than expected. Explanations for variations are presented for selected MSAs."

Exploring the links between political structure and metropolitan growth

Abstract Considerable scholarship documents a causal link between metropolitan growth and the resultant number and arrangement of local governments in metropolitan areas. Only scant research explores the reverse phenomena, that patterns of local government structure influence metropolitan population growth. Yet ample social science theory and case study evidence suggest support for such a causal link. This study examines empirically the influence of levels and changes in political structure on metropolitan population growth for 129 large US metropolitan areas between 1962 and 1982. The analysis extends previous research in two ways: first, by replacing aggregate measures of political fragmentation with a more sophisticated set of variables that capture different aspects of the multifaceted concept of political structure; and second, by examining the dynamic association between change in political structure and metropolitan growth. The results reveal mixed support for theories linking political structure to metropolitan growth. Of methodological importance is the finding that different dimensions of political structure interact differentially with metropolitan growth, suggesting that traditional aggregate measures of political structure obscure more than they reveal.

Book Review: Sources of Metropolitan Growth EDWIN S. MILLS and JOHN F. MCDONALD (Eds), 1992 New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research 307 pp., US$29.95, hardback

Book Review: Sources of Metropolitan Growth EDWIN S. MILLS and JOHN F. MCDONALD (Eds), 1992 New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research 307 pp., US$29.95, hardback

Urban development, collective consumption and the politics of metropolitan fragmentation

Abstract The territorial partition of the metropolis is a theme central to discussions of urban problems in the US. Metropolitan political fragmentation per se is far from understood, however. Theories of metropolitan political fragmentation have tended to emphasize interests in consumption to the neglect of matters of production. Moreover, the role of state managers tends to be marginalized in such theories. This paper situates an actual politics of metropolitan fragmentation in relation to the two dominant discourses of contemporary urban theory: the politics of local economic development and the politics of collective consumption. Consideration is paid to pressures for territorial organization emanating from coalitional forces that span the state-civil society boundary. These conceptual themes are examined concretely through a detailed study of post-war patterns of territorial organization in metropolitan Columbus, Ohio. While integration of the metropolitan area in terms of the provision of water and sewerage for local economic development projects has been a project of the metropolitan growth coalitions and the city of Columbus, that integration has only been possible to the extent that interests in collective consumption or, more specifically, in education, have been politically neutralized.

Sources of Metropolitan Growth

Sources of Metropolitan Growth

Rapid Metropolitan Growth and Community Disparities

ABSTRACTDoes rapid growth in a metropolitan area amplify or reduce disparities among its differentiated communities? Theoretical economic and political arguments can support both tendencies but lean in the direction of greater differentiation and disparities following a period of rapid regional growth. This article examines uneven population, employment and tax base growth as both causes and consequences of economic and social disparities. The analysis posits that growth bypasses the built‐up and lowest income communities in favor of the more distant middle‐income suburbs with extensive land for development. The implications of these uneven growth patterns are widening inter‐municipal disparities consistent with growth rates. The analysis is carried out for the 365 contiguous jurisdictions in northern New Jersey, a region that experienced modest growth in the 1970s and rapid growth in the 1980s. The findings confirm the uneven pattern of growth and widening disparities during the growth spurt of the 1980s.

Reviews: Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World's Economy and the Earth's Ecology, Land Water and People: Geographical Essays in Australian Resource Management, Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment, Sources of Metropolitan Growth, Earth, Air and Water: Resources and Environment in the Late 20th Century, Rural Development and Planning in Zimbabwe, State Policies and Techno-Industrial Innovation, Problems of Developing

Reviews: Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World's Economy and the Earth's Ecology, Land Water and People: Geographical Essays in Australian Resource Management, Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment, Sources of Metropolitan Growth, Earth, Air and Water: Resources and Environment in the Late 20th Century, Rural Development and Planning in Zimbabwe, State Policies and Techno-Industrial Innovation, Problems of Developing

Sources of Metropolitan Growth

Sources of Metropolitan Growth

Sources of metropolitan growth

Sources of metropolitan growth

The Revival of Metropolitan Population Growth in the United States: An Assessment of Findings from the 1990 Census

In this article we assess metropolitan-area growth patterns in the United States during the 1980s as revealed by 1990 census data. We evaluate these patterns against various explanations that were proposed to account for the altered developed-world redistribution tendencies of the 1970s....Urbanization reasserted itself after the rural renaissance of the 1970s....U.S. metropolitan areas once again grew faster than nonmetropolitan areas and the geography of metropolitan growth displayed some rearrangement. Rapid growth in the South and West continued but its pace slowed considerably in the interior parts of these regions. Large coastal metropolitan areas showed the steadiest gains. (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA) (EXCERPT)

Census monographs on community growth and change

Why did the editor of Demography choose to package these three 1980 census monographs together? Two of the books, Rural and Small Town America and Regional and Metropolitan Growth and Decline in the United States, represent opposite sides of the same coin; both deal with American communities, small and large, rural and urban. The third, Migration and Residential Mobility in the United States, represents the main demographic process that reshaped those communities. So, in his wisdom, the editor created a substantively coherent set of books. The books were written as part of the census monograph series, sponsored by three foundations in collaboration with the U. S. Bureau of the Census. The series was administered by The National Committee for Research on the 1980 Census, and each monograph, in turn, had an advisory panel. All of the authors are established arid esteemed demographic researchers in their respective fields. That they were well qualified and wisely chosen for these projects is shown by the (appropriate) prominence of their own previous publications in the bibliographies of these new monographs: each of these authors built upon his previous demographic research. Fuguitt, Brown, and Beale describe their intended audience, and perhaps their description speaks for the other authors as well: . . . Interested nonprofessionals, public officials, planners and others working in public and private agencies, and professional social scientists (p. 3). These are definitely technical volumes, and are not appropriate for undergraduates or general readers. Frey and Speare, in their introduction to Regional and Metropolitan Growth and Decline in the United States, set forth a major goal: Our main objective is to interpret the redistribution patterns of the 1970s and early 1980s in light of the changing social and economic contexts for redistribution that emerged during this period (p. 6). Their units of analysis are regions and metropolitan areas. However, as they examine the metropolitan population, they often compare it with the nonmetropolitan population, which, in turn, becomes an object of investigation. Frey and Speare divide their book into two major sections. Part 1 views the nation as a whole, divided into regions and into metropolitan and

Metropolitan growth and decline in the United States: an empirical analysis.

"Urban growth rates are documented for the largest United States Metropolitan Statistical Areas for the periods 1965-70 and 1975-80. The spatial pattern associated with these growth rates tends to reinforce the sunbelt-frostbelt dichotomy, as the majority of cities with positive migration rates for both time periods are located outside of the heavily industrialized Northeast and Midwest regions of the country. Two and three-group discriminant analyses indicate that manufacturing activity, local tax rates, and spending on education, are particularly important discriminators between growing and declining cities."

Review: The Changing Agenda of West German Public Policy, Public Policy under Thatcher, Geographic Dimensions of United States Social Policy, Urban Planning for Latin America: The Challenge of Metropolitan Growth, Consuming Public Services

Review: The Changing Agenda of West German Public Policy, Public Policy under Thatcher, Geographic Dimensions of United States Social Policy, Urban Planning for Latin America: The Challenge of Metropolitan Growth, Consuming Public Services

Regional and Metropolitan Growth and Decline in the United States.

Regional and Metropolitan Growth and Decline in the United States.