The Dying Village and Some Notions about Urban Growth

Abstract

dying, but are continuing to grow in population, despite their obvious loss of many of their erstwhile economic functions. The present paper, which is based upon extensive field interviews in more than 30 villages scattered over four states, and upon less highly structured field work in scores of other villages, examines some of the implications of the fact of village growth for theories about urban growth.4 We have been somewhat puzzled by 1 John Fraser Hart and Neil E. Salisbury: Population Change in Middle Western Villages: A Statistical Approach, Annals Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 55, 1965, pp. 140-160. 2 Defined as incorporated places with a total population of less than one thousand persons in 1960. 3 Defined as a group of nine contiguous states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. 4 Reports published on the village project, an outgrowth of the First Big Ten Faculty Field Seminar in Geography sponsored by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, include: John Fraser Hart: Smithville, Amo, Coatesville, Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science, Vol. 72, 1962, pp. 228-235; Neil E. Salisbury and Gerard Rushton, Growth and Decline of Iowa Villages: A Pilot Study (Iowa City: State University of Iowa Studies in Geography, No. 4, 1963); and John Fraser Hart, Vermontville and Augusta: A Study of Two Michigan Villages, Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, Vol. 49, 1964, pp. 413-421. the fact that scholars generally have failed to observe that villages are growing. Perhaps part of the explanation lies in the fact that many villages actually did lose population between 1920 and 1930, when the automobile was starting to wreak havoc with the traditional economic functions of small rural service centers. Failure to note

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