ABSTRACT
In 1979 John Friedman and Clyde Weaver published an influential little book in which they proposed the idea of agropolitan development. Consciously influenced by the Chinese model of development, this Utopian and anti-free-market notion embraced three principles: selective territorial enclosure; communalisation of productive wealth, particularly land and water; and equalisation of access to the basis of the accumulation of social power (Friedman and Weaver 1979:194-5). The third of these was the most Utopian and could never have been expected to be achieved in China or anywhere else. The first two, however, are quite consistent with market-driven economic growth and spatial development-at least at the urban scale.
