College of Architecture

AR 423 INTRODUCTION TO URBAN

AND REGIONAL PLANNING
UNIT 1 DEFINITION OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

PREPARED BY:
AR. JOHN REY B. BRIONES
AR 423- Introduction to Urban and Regional Planning

Definition of Urban and Regional Planning

The definition of this practice in the Philippine Context differs from what it has been defined
internationally. The scope of the practice may have been defined differently due to the
Philippines’ existing political, economic status, and professional resource capacity.

In the Philippines, based on RA 10587 or the “Environmental Act of the Philippines” the practice
of Urban and regional Planning falls within the definition of Environmental Planning as “a multi-
disciplinary art and science of analyzing, specifying, clarifying, harmonizing, managing and
regulating the use and development of land and water resources, in relation to their environs, for
the development of sustainable communities and ecosystems.”

In the Global Context, Urban and Regional Planning focuses in the design and regulation of the
uses of spaces- its physical form, economic functions, and social impacts of the urban
environment and the activities within its context. Furthermore, it concerns with the
comprehensive development of lands.

It is a process that involves and requires political will, public participation, and academic
discipline, and draws upon architecture, engineering, social and political concerns, and with
wide spectrum of technical professions.

Scope based on definition

Urban- it is a characteristic of a city. It is a City that exhibits a large amount of developments

and small amount of space between buildings.

https://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/how-do-we-define-cities-towns-and-rural-areas

Regional- relating to a particular region, area, or district.

According to Petter Hall “‘urban’planning conventionally means something more limited and
precise: it refers to planning with a spatial, or geographical, component, in which the general
objective is to provide for a spatial structure of activities (or of land uses)” this kind of planning is
also known as “’Physical’ Planning.
The word urban is always associated with the term rural for these two dines the class and
capacity of a city or municipality. To be able to learn with the Policies used here in the
Philippines and other Countries and to meaningfully compare all the Development Goals
Indicators set by local and international agencies because the definition may vary from different
countries.

“Many countries use a minimum population size to define an urban area, but that size can be
200 (as in Denmark), 2,000 (Argentina), 5,000 (India) or 50,000 (Japan) or even 100,000
(China). Some countries don’t use a statistical definition but designate urban areas by
administrative decision. In other countries, the sectoral employment or provision of infrastructure
and services is used to determine whether settlements should be classified as urban or rural.

Finally, once categorized as urban or rural, places are rarely recategorized. Some of this
resistance may come from the allocation of fiscal transfers – consider India, where getting
reclassified as urban may cause places to lose government transfers, or Egypt, where getting
reclassified as urban would trigger additional public investment for higher-level service delivery
requirements, including police stations and courthouses.” – World Bank

Additional Reading: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/statcom/51st-session/documents/BG-

Item3j-Recommendation-E.pdf

https://www.unodc.org/pdf/criminal_justice/Introductory_Handbook_on_Policing_Urban_Space.
pdf

Brief History and Evolution of Urban and Regional Planning

The first towns were human settlements that were established when human society evolved
from hunting-gathering to an agricultural one. Agriculture as an occupation required settling
close to water sources that are needed for irrigation. Thus, ancient civilizations were cities and
settlements on riverbanks such as Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa (Indus Valley); Egypt (Nile),
Mesopotamia (Tigris and Euphrates) going back to the Bronze Age i.e. 3000 BC – 150 BC.

As society became more complex, cities started being planned on the basis of societal and
religious hierarchies. The great cities of Rome, Athens etc. all had hierarchical planning where
the most important structures (public or religious) occupied the centre and all other functions of
the town were planned concentrically or radially around this structure with their importance
decreasing as their distance increased from the centre. Similar examples are seen in many
Islamic cities or temple towns in South India where the main mosque or temple occupies the
highest or central point and the rest of the town is planned around it.

In the 16 th -17th century, land occupation by communities or tribes for settlement became the
primary objective and thus cities started being planned as citadels, fortifications or within walled
enclosures. Urban Planning metamorphosed into its modern form owing to the Industrial
Revolution, with the advent of machines, new construction technology and cars. The scale of a
town underwent tremendous expansion in terms of having wider roads, taller buildings, spread
out cities due to extensive railroad networks, huge industries etc. Areas that were not very good
for crops, started developing into industrial centres and manufacturing townships called ‘factory
towns’. But in a few years, all these towns were brought with squalor as people had been
accommodated in minimum living area with no attention towards sanitation. The only focus was
industrial mass production in these towns whereas the elite lived in more sanitized quarters of
the cities. Epidemics and diseases resulted in further transformation in city planning with more
attention to sanitation and aesthetics.

Planning gained popularity in the mid-to-late 19th century, when it became obvious that there
should be some kind of plan or larger goals for the growth of big cities like New York, London,
and Paris etc. as they had grown haphazardly and disproportionately to the available
infrastructure. In America, this transformation was called the ‘City Beautiful Movement’ and
large tracts of land were cleared for the purpose of building public areas like parks and plazas.
Urban Designers, Landscape Designers and Architects gained great importance as
professionals besides urban planners. Land use planning and Zoning became the most
necessary tools for planning of cities. There have been criticisms of this movement in terms of
non-involvement of common people and pushing the poor to the periphery in order to make the
city ‘look good’. Urban Planning for the past 100 years has sadly not transformed much. It is
only recently that ‘environmental sustainability’ and ‘people’s participation’ have become
pertinent issues to be considered by planners and hopefully, city planning will evolve into a
more inclusive, just and ecologically sensitive practice.

EKISTICS

In order to create the cities of the future, we need to systematically develop a science of human
settlements. This science, termed Ekistics, will take into consideration the principles man takes
into account when building his settlements, as well as the evolution of human settlements
through history in terms of size and quality. The target is to build the city of optimum size, that
is, a city which respects human dimensions. Since there is no point in resisting development, we
should try to accommodate technological evolution and the needs of man within the same
settlement.

We cannot acquire proper knowledge about our villages, towns and cities unless we manage to
see the whole range of the man-made systems within which we live, from the most primitive to
the most developed ones - that is, the whole range of human settlements. This is as necessary
as an understanding of animals is general is to an understanding of mammals - perhaps even
more so. Our subject, the whole range of human settlements, is a very complex system of five
elements - nature, man, society, shells (that is, buildings), and networks. It is a system of
natural, social, and man-made elements which can be seen in many ways - economic, social,
political, technological, and cultural. For this reason only the widest possible view can help us to
understand it.

There is a need for a science dealing with human settlements, because otherwise we cannot
view these settlements in a reasonable way. Is such a science possible? The answer can be
given in two ways. First, by observing that, in some periods in the past, people must have had
such a science, which was probably written down only in ancient Greek times (in documents by
the architect and engineer Vitruvius). Otherwise, how did people create cities that we still
admire? Second, we are now convinced that man, in creating his settlements, obeys general
principles and laws whose validity can be demonstrated.

These principles and laws are actually an extension of man's biological characteristics, and in
this respect we are dealing with biology of larger systems.

Fig. 1. (left) Static picture of a group

of people as given in plans. (right)
The real picture of the same group as
given by energy measurements.

Fig. 2. Fourth principle: optimization

of the quality of man's relationship
with his environment.
It can be argued perhaps that we are dealing with a phenomenon with a ridiculously short life -
some tens of thousands of years, as compared with billions of years for the phenomena of
microbiology and even longer periods for the phenomena of chemistry and physics. However,
there is no way of proving that a certain period is too short, or long enough, for the development
of principles and laws. In this case, it is long enough to convince us of certain truths to achieve
the needed knowledge and develop the science of human settlements we must move from an
interdisciplinary to a condisciplinary science; making links between disciplines is not enough. If
we have one subject we need one science, and this is what ekistics, the science of human
settlements has tried to achieve. Has it succeeded? The answer is that it is beginning to
succeed, and that with every day that passes we learn more and more. How far have we come?
How can we answer this question for any road we take, if we know only the beginning and not
the end?

The Principles

In shaping his settlements, man has always acted in

obedience to five principles.

The first principle is maximization of man's potential

contacts with the elements of nature (such as water and
trees), with other people, and with the works of man (such
as buildings and roads). This, after all, amounts to an
Fig. 3. Energy model for hunters who
begin to cultivate the land. Daily per operational definition of personal human freedom. It is in
capita consumption, 3000 calories.
accordance with this principle that man abandoned the
Garden of Eden and is today attempting to conquer the
cosmos. It is because of this principle that man considers himself imprisoned, even if given the
best type of environment, if he is surrounded by a wall without doors. In this, man differs from
animals; we do not know of any species of animals that try to increase their potential contacts
with the environment once they have reached the optimum number of contacts. Man alone
always seeks to increase his contacts.

The second principle is minimization of the effort required for the

achievement of man's actual and potential contacts. He always
gives his structures the shape, or selects the route, that requires
the minimum effort, no matter whether he is dealing with the floor

Fig. 4. Energy model of a village.

Daily per capita energy consumption,
8000 calories.
 of a room, which he tends to make horizontal, or with the creation of a highway.

The third principle is optimization of man's protective space, which means the selection of such
a distance from other persons, animals, or objects that he can keep his contacts with them (first
principle) without any kind of sensory or psychological discomfort. This has to be true at every
moment and in every locality, whether it is temporary or permanent and whether man is alone or
part of a group. This has been demonstrated very well, lately, for the single individual, by
anthropologists such as E. T. Hall (Ref. 1) and psychiatrists such as Augustus F. Kinzel (Ref. 2),
and by the clothes man designs for himself, and it may be explained not only as a psychological
but also as a physiological problem if we think of the layers of air that
surround us(Ref. 3) or the energy that we represent (Fig.1). The walls of
houses or fortification walls around cities are other expressions of this third
principle.

The fourth principle is optimization of the quality of man's relationship with

his environment, which consists of nature, society, shells (buildings and
houses of all sorts), and networks (ranging from roads to
telecommunications) (Fig. 2). This is the principle that leads to order,
physiological and aesthetic, and that influences architecture and, in many
respects, art.

Finally, and this is the fifth principle, man organizes his settlements in an
attempt to achieve an optimum synthesis of the other four principles, and
this optimization is dependent on time and space, on actual conditions, and
on man's ability to create a synthesis. When he has achieved this by

Fig. 5. (A) Energy model of the creating a system of floors, walls, roofs, doors, and windows which
central settlement of a system of
villages. Daily per capita energy allows him to maximize his potential contacts (first principle) while
consumption, 12,000 calories.
(B) Energy model of the central
minimizing the energy expended (second principle) and at the same
settlement of a system of villages
during the era of the automobile.
time makes possible his separation from others (third principle) and
Daily per capita energy consumption,
25,000 calories.
the desirable relationship with his environment (fourth principle), we
speak of "successful human settlements". What we mean is
settlements that have achieved a balance between man and his man-made environment, by
complying with all five principles.
The Extent of Human Settlements

Each one of us can understand that he is guided by the same five principles; but we are not
aware of their great importance unless this is pointed out to us, and we make great mistakes in
our theories about human settlements. This is because we live in a transitional era and become
confused about our subject, even about the nature and extent of human settlements, confusing
them with their physical structure ("the built-up area is the city") or their institutional frame ("the
municipality is the city"). But human settlements have always been created by man's moving in
space and defining the boundaries of his territorial interest and therefore of his settlements, for
which he later created a physical and institutional structure.

When we view human settlements as systems of energy mobilized by man - either as basal
metabolic or as muscular or, recently, as commercial energy systems – we get new insights. We
see man spreading his energy thin in the nomadic phase of his history (Fig. 3), then
concentrating in one area and using both energy and rational patterns when he organizes his
village, where he spends more energy in the built-up part than in the fields (Fig. 4). Later, we
see him concentrating in the small city and using a wider built-up area, where he expends even
more energy, and then, when more people are added, we see him spreading beyond into the
fields (Fig. 5). Finally, when he has commercial forms of energy available and can dispose
much more energy without properly understanding its impact on his life and therefore without
controlling its relationship to his settlement, man becomes completely confused by his desire for
more energy. He suffers because, through ignorance, he inserts this additional energy into the
system that he creates in a way that causes problems such as air and thermal pollution (Fig. 6).

Throughout this evolution there is only one factor which defines the extent of human
settlements: the distance man wants to go or can go in the course of his daily life. The shortest
of the two distances defines the extent of the real human settlement, through definition of a
"daily urban system" [for a discussion of this process in urban settlements see "Man's
movement and his city" (Ref. 4)] In each specific case, the process starts with the circle whose
radius is defined by man's willingness to walk daily up to a certain distance and to spend a
certain period of time in doing so (the limit for the rural dweller is 1 hour, or 5 kilometers, for
horizontal movement; the limit for the urban dweller is 20 minutes, or 1 kilometer). This leads to
the conception of a circular city, and of a city growing in concentric circles (Fig. 7). When the
machine – for example, the motor vehicle - enters the picture we are gradually led toward a two-
speed system (Fig. 8), and then toward interconnected settlements (Fig. 9); then the road
toward larger systems the universal city of ecumenopolis is inevitable (Ref. 5).

The idea that the small, romantic city of earlier times is appropriate to the era of contemporary
man who developed science and technology is therefore a mistaken one. New, dynamic types
of settlements interconnecting more and more smaller settlements are the types appropriate to
this era. To stop this change from city (polis) to dynapolis (Ref. 6), we would have to reverse the
road created by science and technology for man's movement in terrestrial space.

Fig. 6. Energy models of the central settlement of

a system of villages during the era of the
automobile and of industry. Daily per capita
energy consumption, (up) 25,000 calories;
(middle) 45,000 calories; (right) 100,000 calories.

The Quality of Human Settlements

We can now face the important question of quality in human settlements since we can refer to a
specific unit by first defining its size. A small town, especially in older civilizations, can satisfy
many of our aesthetic needs for picturesque streets and squares, and this is why we like it. But
most people want to visit it, not to become its permanent inhabitants, as they are guided by the
first of the five principles discussed above and try to maximize their potential contacts in the big
cities, in order to have more choices for a job, for education and health facilities, and for social
contacts and entertainment.
 In our era, which begins with London at the time it was
approaching a population of 1 million, about two centuries
ago, and in other areas later, we lost the ability to satisfy all
five principles. Guided by principles 1 and 2 we reached the
stage of the big city, but in these cities we do not satisfy the
Fig. 12. Outward movement of the
higher-income groups in the other principles, especially principles 4 and 5, and we are not
Detroit Standard Metropolitan
Statistical Area. The curves show happy. We say that our settlements have no quality, and this is
the per capita income of people
residing at several distances from true in many respects, but we have to define what we mean.
the central business district
(C.B.D.).. We need such a definition because we must remember that we
now have much more water and of better quality in our homes
that man has had at any previous time, and we have much more energy available for
conditioning our environment and for making contacts. A statement closer to the truth would be
that our cities are better than the small cities of the past in many respects and worse in others.

Judgement about quality can be made in several ways in

terms of the relation of every individual to his environment -
that is, his relation to nature, society, shells, and networks -
and the benefit that he gets from these contacts. We can
measure his relations to air and to its quality; to water in his
home, in the river or lake, and at sea (its quality and his
access to it); and to land resources (their beauty and
accessibility) and the recreational and functional facilities
provided by them; and we can express judgements based on
the measurements of many physical and social aspects of
Fig. 13. (top left) Toward organization
of a dwelling group unit, showing first the cities. Out of the great number of cases that I might cite I
phase of organization: formation of
dwelling groups, connections in have selected three of the most complex ones.
certain areas, economy in use of
space and time (top right) Toward
organization of a dwelling group unit, We often talk about the greater contacts that the big city
showing third phase of organization:
order in function and stucture, offers us, but we do not measure these contacts at every
maximum economy in use of space
and time, (bottom) Compexity and unit of the ekistic scale. If we do so, we will discover that in
simplicity.
units 2 and 3 (room and home) we have fewer personto-
person contacts that we had before, because of smaller families and new sources of information
(radio and television); that in units 4, 5 and 6 (that is, in the dwelling group and neighborhoods)
we have far fewer contacts because of the multi-storey building and the intrusion of automobiles
in the human locomotion scale (Ref. 9); and that in the larger units we have increased contacts
 because of the news transmitted to us by
telecommunications media, the press, and so on (Fig. 10). In
this way, we see that we increase our one-way and (by
telephone), two-way potential contacts with people and
objects far away from our living area and decrease
Fig. 14. (left) A city of 50,000 people.
(right) Case of a citizen in a city of potential contacts with those close by. Is this reasonable for
50,000 people. (solid line) Theoretical
number of possible contacts: 50,000; any of us, and especially for the children who cannot cross
(dashed line) actual number of
possible the street? This is a problem of quality of life seen in human
contacts: 50,000.
terms. The answer to this problem is, I think, a city
designed for human development (Ref. 10).

Fig. 15. (left) A city of 10,000 people Fig. 16. (left) A city of 10,000 people
in a region of 50,000 people. (right) in a region of 50,000 people. (right)
Case of a citizen in a city of 10,000 Case of a "peasant" in an outlying
people in a region of 50,000 people. village of a region of 50,000 people.

Theories of Urban and Regional Planning

A Theory is an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of

circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena.

The following theories explain the emergence of towns:

Central Place Theory

Central-place theory, in geography, an element of location theory (q.v.) concerning the size and
distribution of central places (settlements) within a system. Central-place theory attempts to
illustrate how settlements locate in relation to one another, the amount of market area a central
place can control, and why some central places function as hamlets, villages, towns, or cities.
The German geographer Walter Christaller introduced central-place theory in his book entitled
Central Places in Southern Germany (1933). The primary purpose of a settlement or market
town, according to central-place theory, is the provision of goods and services for the
surrounding market area. Such towns are centrally located and may be called central places.
Settlements that provide more goods and services than do other places are called higher-order
central places. Lower-order central places have small market areas and provide goods and
services that are purchased more frequently than higher-order goods and services. Higher-order
places are more widely distributed and fewer in number than lower-order places.

Christaller’s theory assumes that central places are distributed over a uniform plane of constant
population density and purchasing power. Movement across the plane is uniformly easy in any
direction, transportation costs vary linearly, and consumers act rationally to minimize
transportation costs by visiting the nearest location offering the desired good or service.

The determining factor in the location of any central place is the threshold, which comprises the
smallest market area necessary for the goods and services to be economically viable. Once a
threshold has been established, the central place will seek to expand its market area until the
range—i.e., the maximum distance consumers will travel to purchase goods and services—is
reached.

Since the threshold and range define the market area of a central place, market areas for a
group of central places offering the same order of goods and services will each extend an equal
distance in all directions in circular fashion.

The German economist August Lösch expanded on Christaller’s work in his book The Spatial
Organization of the Economy (1940). Unlike Christaller, whose system of central places began
with the highest-order, Lösch began with a system of lowest-order (self-sufficient) farms, which
were regularly distributed in a triangular-hexagonal pattern. From this smallest scale of
economic activity, Lösch mathematically derived several central-place systems, including the
three systems of Christaller. Lösch’s systems of central places allowed for specialized places.
He also illustrated how some central places develop into richer areas than others.

Edward Ullman introduced central-place theory to American scholars in 1941. Since then
geographers have sought to test its validity. Iowa and Wisconsin have been two areas of
empirical research that have come closest to meeting Christaller’s theoretical assumptions.
 Fig. 17 The hexagon pattern formed
by the distribution of different order
settlements in Central Place Theory.
https://www.geographyrealm.com/ce
ntral-place-theory/

Public Choice Theory

Public choice theory is a branch of economics that developed from the study of taxation and
public spending. It emerged in the fifties and received widespread public attention in 1986, when
James Buchanan, one of its two leading architects (the other was his colleague Gordon
Tullock), was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Buchanan started the Center for Study of
Public Choice at George Mason University, and it remains the best-known locus of public choice
research. Others include Florida State University, Washington University (St. Louis), Montana
State University, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Rochester.

Public choice takes the same principles that economists use to analyze people's actions in the
marketplace and applies them to people's actions in collective decision making. Economists
who study behavior in the private marketplace assume that people are motivated mainly by self-
interest. Although most people base some of their actions on their concern for others, the
dominant motive in people's actions in the marketplace—whether they are employers,
employees, or consumers—is a concern for themselves. Public choice economists make the
same assumption—that although people acting in the political marketplace have some concern
for others, their main motive, whether they are voters, politicians, lobbyists, or bureaucrats, is
self-interest. In Buchanan's words the theory "replaces... romantic and illusory... notions about
the workings of governments [with]... notions that embody more skepticism."
In the past many economists have argued that the way to rein in "market failures" such as
monopolies is to introduce government action. But public choice economists point out that there
also is such a thing as "government failure." That is, there are reasons why government
intervention does not achieve the desired effect. For example, the Justice Department has
responsibility for reducing monopoly power in noncompetitive industries. But a 1973 study by
William F. Long, Richard Schramm, and Robert Tollison concluded that actual anti-competitive
behavior played only a minor role in decisions by the Justice Department to bring antimonopoly
suits. Instead, they found, the larger the industry, the more likely were firms in it to be sued.
Similarly, Congress has frequently passed laws that are supposed to protect people against
environmental pollution. But Robert Crandall has shown that congressional representatives from
northern industrial states used the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments to reduce competition by
curbing economic growth in the Sunbelt. The amendments required tighter emissions standards
in undeveloped areas than in the more developed and more polluted areas, which tend to be in
the East and Midwest.

One of the chief underpinnings of public choice theory is the lack of incentives for voters to
monitor government effectively. Anthony Downs, in one of the earliest public choice books, An
Economic Theory of Democracy, pointed out that the voter is largely ignorant of political issues
and that this ignorance is rational. Even though the result of an election may be very important,
an individual's vote rarely decides an election. Thus, the direct impact of casting a well-informed
vote is almost nil; the voter has virtually no chance to determine the outcome of the election. So
spending time following the issues is not personally worthwhile for the voter. Evidence for this
claim is found in the fact that public opinion polls consistently find that less than half of all
voting-age Americans can name their own congressional representative.

Public choice economists point out that this incentive to be ignorant is rare in the private sector.
Someone who buys a car typically wants to be well informed about the car he or she selects.
That is because the car buyer's choice is decisive—he or she pays only for the one chosen. If
the choice is wise, the buyer will benefit; if it is unwise, the buyer will suffer directly. Voting lacks
that kind of direct result. Therefore, most voters are largely ignorant about the positions of the
people for whom they vote. Except for a few highly publicized issues, they do not pay a lot of
attention to what legislative bodies do, and even when they do pay attention, they have little
incentive to gain the background knowledge and analytic skill needed to understand the issues.
Public choice economists also examine the actions of legislators. Although legislators are
expected to pursue the "public interest," they make decisions on how to use other people's
resources, not their own. Furthermore, these resources must be provided by taxpayers and by
those hurt by regulations whether they want to provide them or not. Politicians may intend to
spend taxpayer money wisely. Efficient decisions, however, will neither save their own money
nor give them any proportion of the wealth they save for citizens. There is no direct reward for
fighting powerful interest groups in order to confer benefits on a public that is not even aware of
the benefits or of who conferred them. Thus, the incentives for good management in the public
interest are weak. In contrast, interest groups are organized by people with very strong gains to
be made from governmental action. They provide politicians with campaign funds and campaign
workers. In return they receive at least the "ear" of the politician and often gain support for their
goals.

In other words, because legislators have the power to tax and to extract resources in other
coercive ways, and because voters monitor their behavior poorly, legislators behave in ways
that are costly to citizens. One technique analyzed by public choice is log rolling, or vote trading.
An urban legislator votes to subsidize a rural water project in order to win another legislator's
vote for a city housing subsidy. The two projects may be part of a single spending bill. Through
such log rolling both legislators get what they want. And even though neither project uses
resources efficiently, local voters know that their representative got something for them. They
may not know that they are paying a pro-rata share of a bundle of inefficient projects! And the
total expenditures may well be more than individual taxpayers would be willing to authorize if
they were fully aware of what is going on.

In addition to voters and politicians, public choice analyzes the role of bureaucrats in
government. Their incentives explain why many regulatory agencies appear to be "captured" by
special interests. (The "capture" theory was introduced by the late George Stigler, a Nobel
Laureate who did not work mainly in the public choice field.) Capture occurs because
bureaucrats do not have a profit goal to guide their behavior. Instead, they usually are in
government because they have a goal or mission. They rely on Congress for their budgets, and
often the people who will benefit from their mission can influence Congress to provide more
funds. Thus interest groups—who may be as diverse as lobbyists for regulated industries or
leaders of environmental groups—become important to them. Such interrelationships can lead
to bureaucrats being captured by interest groups. Although public choice economists have
focused mostly on analyzing government failure, they also have suggested ways to correct
problems. For example, they argue that if government action is required, it should take place at
the local level whenever possible. Because there are many local governments, and because
people "vote with their feet," there is competition among local governments, as well as some
experimentation. To streamline bureaucracies, Gordon Tullock and William Niskanen have
recommended allowing several bureaus to supply the same service on the grounds that the
resulting competition will improve efficiency. Forest economist Randal O'Toole recommends that
the Forest Service charge hikers and backpackers more than token fees to use the forests.
This, he argues, will lead Forest Service personnel to pay more attention to recreation and
reduce logging in areas that are attractive to nature lovers. And Rodney Fort and John Baden
have suggested the creation of a "predatory bureau" whose mission is to reduce the budgets of
other agencies, with its income depending on its success.

Public choice economists have also tried to develop rule changes that will reduce legislation that
caters to special interests and leads to ever-expanding government expenditures. In the late
eighties James C. Miller, a public choice scholar who headed the Office of Management and
Budget during the Reagan Administration, helped pass the Gramm-Rudman law, which set a
limit on annual spending and backed it with automatic cuts if the ceiling was not met. The law
had at least a temporary effect in slowing spending. Support for term limits and for a line-item
veto also reflects the public choice view that additional legislative rules are needed to limit
logrolling and the power of special interests. Public choice scholars, however, do not
necessarily agree on the potential effectiveness of specific rules.

Because of its skepticism about the supposedly benign nature of government, public choice is
sometimes viewed as a conservative or libertarian branch of economics, as opposed to more
"liberal" (that is, interventionist) wings such as Keynesian economics. This is partly correct. The
emergence of public choice economics reflects dissatisfaction with the implicit assumption, held
by Keynesians, among others, that government effectively corrects market failures.

But not all public choice economists are conservatives or libertarians. Mancur Olson is an
important counterexample. Olson is known in public choice for his path-breaking book The Logic
of Collective Action, in which he pointed out that large interest groups have trouble gaining and
maintaining the support of those who benefit from their lobbying. That is because it is easy for
individuals to "free-ride" on the efforts of others if they benefit automatically from those efforts.
That is why, Olson explained, nineteenth-century farmers' groups, which were organized to be
political lobbying groups, also sold insurance and other services. These provided a direct
incentive for the individual farmer to stay involved. (As the number of farmers has declined in
recent decades, they have become more politically powerful, an observation that supports
Olson's contention.)

More recently, Olson wrote The Rise and Decline of Nations, which concludes that Germany
and Japan thrived after World War II because the war destroyed the power of special interests
to stifle entrepreneurship and economic exchange. But Olson still favors a strong government.

Many public choice economists take no political or ideological position. Some build formal
mathematical models of voting strategies and apply game theory to understand how political
conflicts are resolved. Economists at the California Institute of Technology, for example, have
pointed out that "agenda-setting"—that is, identifying the options that voters choose from, and
even specifying the order of voting on the options—can influence political outcomes. This
explains the role of initiatives and referenda as ways for voters to set agendas, opening up
options that legislatures otherwise would ignore or vote down.

Some of these economists have developed a separate and quite mathematical discipline known
as "social choice." Social choice traces its roots to early work by Nobel Prize-winning economist
Kenneth Arrow. Arrow's 1951 book, Social Choice and Individual Values, attempted to figure out
through logic whether people who have different goals can use voting to make collective
decisions that please everyone. He concluded that they cannot, and thus his argument is called
the "impossibility theorem."

In addition to providing insight into how public decision making occurs today, public choice
analyzes the rules that guide the collective decision-making process itself.

Bid-rent theory

In order to have a good understanding of the way urban areas are likely to grow, it is important
to have an understanding of Bid-rent theory.

The diagram below shows what various land-users are prepared and able to pay for good
access to the CBD:
It can be seen that commerce (in particular large department stores/chain stores) is willing to
pay the greatest rent to be located in the CBD. The CBD is very valuable for them because it is
traditionally the most accessible location for a large population. This large population is
essential for department stores, which require a considerable turnover. As a result, they are
willing and able to pay a very high land rent value. They maximise the potential of their site by
building many stories.

As you move from the CBD, commerce is unwilling to pay as much for a site. In fact, what they
are willing to pay declines rapidly.

Industry is, however, willing to pay to be on the outskirts of the CBD. There is more land
available for their factories, but they still have many of the benefits of the CBD, such as a
market place and good communications.

As you move further out, so the land is less attractive to industry and the householder is able to
purchase land. The further you go from the CBD, the cheaper the land. This is why inner city
areas are very densely populated (terraces, flats and high rises), whilst the suburbs and rural
areas are sparsely populated (semi and detached houses with gardens).
This bid-rent theory explains one pattern of urban land-use that is also identified by Burgess'
concentric ring model.

The pattern is never as simple in reality. Today, out-of-town shopping centres and industrial
sites have influenced the pattern.

Location theory

Location theory, in economics and geography, theory concerned with the geographic location of
economic activity; it has become an integral part of economic geography, regional science, and
spatial economics. Location theory addresses the questions of what economic activities are
located where and why. The location of economic activities can be determined on a broad level
such as a region or metropolitan area, or on a narrow one such as a zone, neighbourhood, city
block, or an individual site.

Johann Heinrich von Thünen, a Prussian landowner, introduced an early theory of agricultural
location in Der isolierte Staat (1826) (The Isolated State). The Thünen model suggests that
accessibility to the market (town) can create a complete system of agricultural land use. His
model envisaged a single market surrounded by farmland, both situated on a plain of complete
physical homogeneity. Transportation costs over the plain are related only to the distance
traveled and the volume shipped. The model assumes that farmers surrounding the market will
produce crops which have the highest market value (highest rent) that will give them the
maximum net profit (the location, or land, rent). The determining factor in the location rent will be
the transportation costs. When transportation costs are low, the location rent will be high, and
vice versa. This situation produces a rent gradient along which the location rent decreases with
distance from the market, eventually reaching zero. The Thünen model also addressed the
location of intensive versus extensive agriculture in relation to the same market. Intensive
agriculture will possess a steep gradient and will locate closer to the market than extensive
agriculture. Different crops will possess different rent gradients. Perishable crops (vegetables
and dairy products) will possess steep gradients while less perishable crops (grains) will
possess less steep gradients.

In 1909 the German location economist Alfred Weber formulated a theory of industrial location
in his book entitled Über den Standort der Industrien (Theory of the Location of Industries,
1929). Weber’s theory, called the location triangle, sought the optimum location for the
production of a good based on the fixed locations of the market and two raw material sources,
which geographically form a triangle. He sought to determine the least-cost production location
within the triangle by figuring the total costs of transporting raw material from both sites to the
production site and product from the production site to the market. The weight of the raw
materials and the final commodity are important determinants of the transport costs and the
location of production. Commodities that lose mass during production can be transported less
expensively from the production site to the market than from the raw material site to the
production site. The production site, therefore, will be located near the raw material sources.
Where there is no great loss of mass during production, total transportation costs will be lower
when located near the market.

Once a least-transport-cost location had been established within the triangle, Weber attempted
to determine a cheap-labour alternate location. First he plotted the variation of transportation
costs against the least-transport-cost location. Next he identified sites around the triangle that
had lower labour costs than did the least-transport-cost location. If the transport costs were
lower than the labour costs, then a cheap-labour alternative location was determined.

Another major contribution to location theory was Walter Christaller’s formulation of the central
place theory, which offered geometric explanations as to how settlements and places are
located in relation to one another and why settlements function as hamlets, villages, towns, or
cities.
https://www.geographyrealm.com/central-place-theory/

https://s-cool.co.uk/a-level/geography/urban-profiles/revise-it/central-place-and-bid-rent-theories

https://www.britannica.com/topic/location-theory