Population density and the city

Abstract

It is possible that in no previous age has so large a proportion of the citizenry been so directly and so vocally concerned about environmental deterioration and its threat to the quality of life. If the fervor and the insistence with which the matter is discussed is a measure of its importance, then it surely is one of the most significant issues of our time. The clamor rises to an emotional peak when its attention fastens upon the city. There, it would appear, our reckless disregard of standards of efficiency, resource conservation, health and aesthetics reaches its fullest expression. Cities, we are told, are cancerous growths. They occupy space where wildlife once lived, they overlay arable land with ugly structures that soon will be reduced to blight, they pollute the atmosphere, the soils and the streams, they foster mean, antisocial and materialistic behaviors, and they harbor the poor, the lawless and the underprivileged. The indictment is sweeping. It is strange, indeed, that so many people live in cities. Critics of urban life have been among the more vociferous members of American society from the beginning. The anti-urban tradition, which started with Thomas Jefferson, was carried through the nineteenth century by men of letters -the Adamses, Thoreau, Emerson, Melville and many others.' In the late ninete-enth century the attack was pressed by city planners, who sought an urban antidote in constructing the city beautiful.

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