ABSTRACT
We have discussed in the previous chapter the characteristics of the metropolitan city and the expanding impact of urbanism in the United States, with its 180 million people in an area of 3 million square miles. It would now seem appropriate to attempt a similar portrayal of western Europe. Europe without the Soviet Union has about 400 million people living on 2 million square miles. The more restricted area of Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, the Low Countries, Switzerland, Austria, France, and Italy has an area of about one million square miles and 210 million inhabitants. The structure of the city-region and the practices of city, regional, and national planning vary considerably from one country to another. However, we shall briefly bring out some general aspects of special interest to our theme, with a view to comparison with the United States. We shall discuss, first, a selection of the metropolitan cities; second, the limits of the urbanized regions; third, the range of the daily journey to work and fourth, the city-regions. Britain will be dealt with in more detail in the next chapter, and the special aspects of regionalism and the problems of city planning in the last chapters of the book.
