ABSTRACT
Traditionally, an urban community was a city, and the nature of a city was obvious. In a limited space it brought together a wide variety of people; it made them accessible to one another, provided them with communication with the outside world, and stimulated them to engage in many kinds of specialized but interdependent activity. Modem metropolitan trends have destroyed the traditional concept of urban structure, and there is no new image to take its place. The movement to save old cities has been narrowly focused on central problems thus far, with little concern for the pattern of outlying development or the desirable form and structure of the region as a whole. At the moderate scale of a single municipality, the urban community had problems of slums and services, but the pattern itself posed no great difficulties. For the metropolitan complex, however, communications and integration are critical issues which raise questions about social, economic, and political structure.
