ABSTRACT

Many experts and citizens living in metropolitan areas are beginning to believe that the future is beyond the reasonable control of man. Indeed, with major advances in the fields of systems engineering and analysis and the rapid technological change which has evolved during the last 5–10 years, one is hard pressed to keep up with the broad spectrum of post-industrial developments occurring in the more developed nations. There are a number of technological devices which, once widely diffused, will have short-range effects on the way the city functions and long-range effects on the structures, organisations and institutions of the urban region. Two general trends of population distribution shifts have been identified: a centripetal trend away from smaller towns toward the larger, more dominant urban centres; and a centrifugal trend away from the urban centres toward the suburban field or metropolitan periphery.