THE ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF DECENTRALIZED METROPOLITAN REGIONS.

The preceding phase of this study examined the role of urban form as a passive defense variable and established criteria of spatial arrangement and density, which were designed to reduce metropolitan vulnerability to nuclear weapons. The resulting configuration consists of compact, discrete community units having populations of 100,000, separated from one another by 4 to 7 miles of open space, and grouped around a central or core unit. Services and facilities that are obtainable in a metropolitan area of several million are made available in this configuration by high intercommunity mobility. The study configuration is taken to be this ordered sprawl urban pattern. The economic feasibility of this form of regional city is assessed. The focus is necessarily on costs, which are to some degree measurable, and although cost data directly pertinent to the idealization do not exist, it is possible to proceed inferentially by analyzing information derived from extant metropolitan areas. The primary approach is the specification of a reference region that incorporates structural and linkage characteristics representative of existing urban areas, and the division of this region into components that approximate community units of the study configuration.