Ecological Considerations in Planning for Rurban Fringes

Abstract

F ROM the standpoint of ecological theory the rurban fringe may be viewed as a marginal area. In this respect it is comparable to the blighted zone which generally lies between a city's business district and the surrounding residential districts, as well as to the many inaccessible rural areas whose isolation makes them indifferently suited to farming as against forestry or grazing. Common to all three of these land use phenomena is the fact of marginality between alternative types of utilization. This marginality derives, not so much from any intrinsic qualities of the land as such, but rather from what is known as position or situss as distinct from location.' In other words, the rurban fringe is a marginal land use area, not because of its geographical location, its soil type, or its topography, but rather because of its particular degree of accessibility (relative to that of other land uses) to some central transportation point. The same is true of the other two marginal land use types. This fundamental identity between seemingly unrelated land uses suggests the possibility of a single inclusive theory of slums, in which the rurban fringe, the ghetto, the rooming house area, and the rural creekbottom or forest-farm slum all appear as varieties of a single land use phenomenon. The hypothesis to be advanced rests upon the substitution principle of marginal utility

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