Concentration Of Urban Population Research Articles

Regional Planning Problems in the Soviet Far East

A variety of approaches are being recommended in regional plans for future settlements patterns in the Soviet Far East. In Magadan Oblast, the present scattered pattern of small populated places is to be superseded by greater concentration of urban population in a set of subregional service centers. In Khabarovsk Kray, different approaches are being recommended for the future development of the Khabarovsk and Komsomol'sk areas. Because limitation of the future growth of Khabarovsk is desirable, new industrial establishments are to be located in the future in nearby small towns and urban settlements of the Khabarovsk industrial district. In the Komsomol'sk area, satellite towns are to be significantly developed, giving rise to a grouped form of urban settlement, including the tin-mining center of Solnechnyy and the paper and chemical center of Amursk. In Amur Oblast, consideration is being given to the development of an iron and steel plant in the Svobodnyy area, giving rise to a city of up to 200,000 population.

Land Values and the Measurement of Highway Benefits

-3 HHE work of several writers appears largely to have succeeded in mak..Ling disreputable the once fashionable practice of crediting public investment activities in the development of water resources, in particular, with substantial "secondary" or "indirect" benefits.2 Secondary benefits in one guise or another still appear to be much in style, however, in dealing with the benefits of investments in highways and other transportation facilities. Among the benefits of highway investment to which reference is commonly made are those presumed to accrue to property owners. More specifically, many studies have demonstrated that land values tend to increase sometimes dramatically-in the vicinity of newly improved highways.3 Since these increases are independent of the extent to which the affected property owners use the highway facilities involved, such gains are quite properly labeled "non-user benefits." They are, furthermore, commonly regarded as benefits over and above those that accrue to highway users. That is to say, they are regarded as benefits that must in some way be added to those arising directly from highway use if total highway benefits are to be estimated accurately. Although widely accepted (particularly among highway planners), this final conclusion is, as it happens, fallacious. That property values increase in the vicinity of highway improvements does reflect the existence of highway benefits. Careful analysis of highwayland value relationships can yield valuable information on the magnitude of these benefits. Increases in land value are not in themselves net highway benefits, however. Rather, they reflect an actual or potential transfer of benefits derived from highways from one population group to another. Furthermore, the fact that land values generally do increase in the vicinity of highway improvements by no means guarantees that a net effect of these improvements is to increase land values as a whole. The primary goal of this paper is to demonstrate these assertions by exploring the relationship between land values on the one hand and transportation costs and reductions in them on the other. More specifically, Section I demonstrates the effects of certain types of transporta1 I am indebted to Robert Clower, William Garrison, William Pendleton, and Stephen Sobotka for much helpful advice. Richard Morrill undertook one of the preliminary analyses underlying the material reported in Section II, while Harold Williamson, Jr., directed most of the statistical work entailed in this section. The work reported here was undertaken as part of a larger study of the nature and measurement of highway benefits carried out with the support of the Bureau of Public Roads. My views do not necessarily reflect those of the Bureau, however.

City and County Manager Plans in the South

Municipal government in the South today concerns 11 million people, or about 35 per cent of the region's populations An even larger number of people is affected by the acts of the county governments within whose jurisdiction they must dwell since this unit of government is inclusive locally within the states. The form of local government, therefore, is a concern of no small consequence. Although the South is still predominantly rural and agricultural in outlook and practice, its pattern of needs in many sections reflects the twin facts of increasing industrialization and of concentration of urban population. An important factor in the efforts of southern counties and municipalities to adjust themselves to a changing environment centers in their attempts to achieve an effective and efficient daily performance. Indeed, far more interest has been aroused in administrative processes and procedures than in the more basic factor of structure and organization. Yet it is not without significance that much attention in recent studies in administration has been focused upon the latter. There is an emerging realization that the lack of coordination in the group activity involved in local government accounts for considerable governmental inefficiency. Signs of this recognition are found in the South in press discussions of local government, various civic programs sponsored by local organizations, and especially in the sharp controversy which surrounds the manager form of government where it is considered. This continuing emphasis upon administrative reorganization, not merely of state governments but of counties and cities as well, is an important and significant develop-

Trends in Municipal Government in the South

Municipal government in the South is no longer the concern of a few as it was not so many years ago.' In an area which has been, and to a considerable extent still is, strongly rural and agrarian in thought and practice, the twin facts of the increase in the number of cities and the concentration of urban population in emerging metropolitan districts have hastened the changes in the pattern of local government. Increasingly the governmental needs of many sections of the South require the attention of city rather than rural government. If an observer of the municipal scene had arranged to space his travels in the early or middle thirties and today, he would be confronted on his second visit with both familiar and changed conditions. He would find, for example, that the answer to the question where the city was going to get the money was as hard and, to municipal councils and administrators, as cruel a question as it had been in the past. Obstacles to municipal fiscal freedom would still be found in state constitutions and statutes. Economy and efficiency would still be staples of conversation, especially among taxpayers before city councils when additional or increased taxes were being considered, and our observer would notice the familiar sight, as he had earlier, of some of the most vociferous objectors appearing the next day at the city hall and demanding increased municipal expenditures for one of their pet projects. (For one verbal symbol, however, our observer would listen in vain; that ominous word retrenchment had disappeared, even if only temporarily, from the municipal lexicon.) If municipal abstinence to achieve survival was the order of the day in the early thirties, however, our observer would find that current municipal revenues and expenditures were