ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the changes brought about by the Depression restructuring of the 1930s. They involve a process of horizontal integration of business activity coupled with metropolitan regional expansion. The chapter considers equally important changes that have occurred since 1960. It traces the development of settlement forms from the colonial period to the industrial period to the metropolitan period by linking these forms to changes in the political economy of the United States. The chapter covers several features associated with urbanization in the United States. One of the most distinctive is the phenomenon of population turnover, or churning, which for a time was quite exaggerated here compared to other countries. New areas of development became, in turn, new cities; in many cases, urbanization simply engulfed the smaller towns adjacent to the large cities through a region-wide process of suburbanization.
