Thompson Many are impatient today with questions such as: how big should cities be, what mixtures of work should they perform, and where should they be located? This emphasis sounds too dated and too closely related to the impersonal focus of the earlier city planner who was almost wholly a physical planner. It is people not places that demand our attention, the new breed of urbanists sternly insist. It is poverty, race, crime and the quality of the environment that are at issue. This charge can not be answered without first admitting that at many times and in many contexts --in policy contest with local merchants, landlords, land-owners and publix officials -- vested business, property or job interests of people and places are in sharp conflict. But in more extended discussion among persons with less vested interest in particular pieces (academics, with little at stake any place?), it should be possible to reaffirm quickly the primacy of people and then to move quickly on to a consideration of the size, function and location of cities as a means to good ends. We might choose to save some small place because we wish to save some elderly poor person an expensive and unnecessary move, or we may wish to conserve a stock of good, used housing during a housing shortage. Or we may elect to shut down a small place to break a cycle of poverty that threatens persons yet unborn. We may limit the size of a city or empty out a fragile natural area to avoid creating an ecological "hot spot" that would be very costly or impossible to reverse. We may see in •* national settlement 27 May 1971

DOI link for Thompson Many are impatient today with questions such as: how big should cities be, what mixtures of work should they perform, and where should they be located? This emphasis sounds too dated and too closely related to the impersonal focus of the earlier city planner who was almost wholly a physical planner. It is people not places that demand our attention, the new breed of urbanists sternly insist. It is poverty, race, crime and the quality of the environment that are at issue. This charge can not be answered without first admitting that at many times and in many contexts --in policy contest with local merchants, landlords, land-owners and publix officials -- vested business, property or job interests of people and places are in sharp conflict. But in more extended discussion among persons with less vested interest in particular pieces (academics, with little at stake any place?), it should be possible to reaffirm quickly the primacy of people and then to move quickly on to a consideration of the size, function and location of cities as a means to good ends. We might choose to save some small place because we wish to save some elderly poor person an expensive and unnecessary move, or we may wish to conserve a stock of good, used housing during a housing shortage. Or we may elect to shut down a small place to break a cycle of poverty that threatens persons yet unborn. We may limit the size of a city or empty out a fragile natural area to avoid creating an ecological "hot spot" that would be very costly or impossible to reverse. We may see in •* national settlement 27 May 1971

Thompson Many are impatient today with questions such as: how big should cities be, what mixtures of work should they perform, and where should they be located? This emphasis sounds too dated and too closely related to the impersonal focus of the earlier city planner who was almost wholly a physical planner. It is people not places that demand our attention, the new breed of urbanists sternly insist. It is poverty, race, crime and the quality of the environment that are at issue. This charge can not be answered without first admitting that at many times and in many contexts --in policy contest with local merchants, landlords, land-owners and publix officials -- vested business, property or job interests of people and places are in sharp conflict. But in more extended discussion among persons with less vested interest in particular pieces (academics, with little at stake any place?), it should be possible to reaffirm quickly the primacy of people and then to move quickly on to a consideration of the size, function and location of cities as a means to good ends. We might choose to save some small place because we wish to save some elderly poor person an expensive and unnecessary move, or we may wish to conserve a stock of good, used housing during a housing shortage. Or we may elect to shut down a small place to break a cycle of poverty that threatens persons yet unborn. We may limit the size of a city or empty out a fragile natural area to avoid creating an ecological "hot spot" that would be very costly or impossible to reverse. We may see in •* national settlement 27 May 1971