ABSTRACT
Influenced by such theorists as Park and Hawley, contemporary ecologists and city planners have tended to view the metropolis and its sub-areas as habitats and the deployment of urban people as the end result of a geographic competition amongst land users. It is generally presumed that certain areas of the landscape are more desirable than are others—a condition that leads to a competition amongst potential land users with "victory" going to that land user who utilizes the contested urban space most intensively. An awareness of the competition by those who make the planning decisions, and thus of the axes which various lobbying groups have to grind, might function to inject an ingredient of rationality into the resource distribution process. The planner should not be seen as a servant of the neighborhood association; rather a practical goal may be to establish the planner as arbiter of conflicting and often mutually exclusive demands.
