THE GROWING CITY AS A POLITICAL PROCESS Jean Gottmann* A city is a large agglomeration: a certain size and a rather high density are prime requirements for a place to be a city. The concept of city, however, requires beyond the size and the density of population a personality of its own, usually embodied in the form of a unit of government. In the com plexity of the contemporary very rapid growth of urban centers, this govern mental unity of the community and area defined as a city is being occasional ly lost: clusters ofmunicipalities, or entire metropolitan areas, are sometimes described as vast or continuous “cities;” I am often told that what I des cribed under the name of Megalopolis, an enormous urban region stretching from Greater Boston to Greater Washington, was, after all, just one big city by modem standards. These standards are changing so fast that it be comes increasingly difficult to differentiate in every sentence the central city within its governmental limits and the suburban ring or rings. Indeed, when one speaks of Greater London or Greater Paris as a “city,” one refers to a much broader agglomeration of people and activities than used to be meant by “city” in a purely municipal sense. New institutions are taking shape which may encompass the whole “Greater City Area,” but they do not erase the older political units. One ought to beware of confusion. It is too easily taken for granted that continuous urban sprawl will ultimately become one community: whether it achieves a unified or coordinated system of government, or remains a maze of contiguous but different uncoordinated units, makes a great deal of difference for the local population and economy. Another and perhaps more serious set of problems arises in the relations between urban areas and central governments because of the usual trend to underestimate the changes wrought by urbanization in the political structure of a nation. The densities achieved in the large modern urbanized regions call for substantial reforms. Mankind experiences today the greatest redis tribution of its habitat and constant modifications in the densities of pop ulation grouping over the land. To resolve their daily problems and provide for their needs, the growing cities require that the available resources be redistributed according to the new relocation of needs; a new regulation of the use of resources and of the customs of neighborhoods suggests consider *Dr. Gottmann is professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne), Paris and professor of geography at Oxford university, England. This paper is a m odified version of a special University Lecture in Architecture and Town Planning delivered at University College, London on February 9, 1967. The larger lecture series of which it is a part is recorded in Transactions, Bartlett Society, Vol. 5, 1967. It was accepted for publication in April 1969. Vo l. IX, No. 2 5 able legislative changes, new institutions, and, to obtain such reforms, a reshuffling of the political system inherited from past centuries. In practice, this means that taxes are paid and budgetary expenses appropriated accord ing to another map than previously. To receive their share of the available resources and to plan adequately for their future in a period of growth, the cities or urbanized regions clamor for a new order in the patterns and channels of distribution of means. The response of established authorities is seldom favorable. DENSITY AND SIZE OF URBAN AGGLOMERATIONS. In the modem city, as it grows, the size of the densely urbanized area expands usually faster than the average density rises for the whole urbanized space. In fact, the residential density tends rather to decrease as against what it used to be in the cities of yesterday. This is true of the central city because of a generalized exodus of residences towards the suburban rings; it is also true of the average density of the urbanized area in the older cities which were already important and very crowded in the past. Today the average citydweller requires, and in the Western countries usually enjoys, a large acreage per capita. However, never before have such high densities spread over such wide spaces as now in the urban regions either...
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Mar 1, 1990
A.E Cawkell 
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