ABSTRACT
The United States is of special interest in connection with the study of all aspects of regionalism. Its vast area is roughly three-quarters that of the whole of Europe, but it forms one political and economic unit. It has had a rapid modern development and transformation from a producer and exporter of primary products to a dominantly manufacturing country, absorbing the great bulk of its own agricultural production. It has experienced a great and rapid growth of its large metropolitan cities and is today primarily an urban society. The recent development of federal enterprise has displaced the ‘rugged individualism’ of the nineteenth century. There is an awareness of the need for the development of principles of nation-wide planning based on the conception of regional development. Two chief problems in the field of regional planning have received much attention in recent years. First, there is need for the conservation and scientific development of the country's natural resources. Second, changes have been brought about in the social structure by the increasing dominance of city life, made possible, above all else, by the advent of the automobile, which in the United States is not a sign of affluence, but a first claim by every citizen. The boundaries of the constituent States of the Union and their divisions—country and township—are entirely arbitrary and there is need for the creation of new units, large and small, more in conformity with the distribution and movements of population and with conditions of living and organization. 1
