----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: I am especially interested in including a historical section on location theory and agglomeration economies, etc. - Larry Moss Larry Moss CALL FOR PAPERS City and Country : An Interdisciplinary Collection American Journal of Economics and Sociology In 1883, the social reformer Henry George complained that "the cities grow, unwholesomely crowding people together till they are packed in tiers, family above family, so are they [also] unwholesomely separated in the country." Many other social thinkers expressed alarm at the manner in which the migrations to the city robbed humans of the gratifications that are so necessary to both health and dignity. Today, the problems of suburban sprawl, country greenfields, traffic congestion, and ghostly Edge Cities springing up at highway intersections seems to have confounded, submerged, and overwhelmed George's late nineteenth-century world of stark contrasts and simple dichotomies. The monocentric city model that informed George's thoughts also informed Johann von Thuenen's influential model of land use. The urban reformers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries -- a group that includes Ebenezer Howard and Patrick Geddes of the "garden city" movement fame -- carried over the monocentric city paradigm and pondered what it implied for reform. This pattern of thinking informed the historical studies about the origins of the city in history, especially under the towering influence of Lewis Mumford. Mumford's architectural criticisms and insights about civic space influenced the (Chicago) Prairie school of modern architecture identified with Frank Lloyd Wright. In recent years, the monocentric model has given way to the "the polycentric pattern of urban development." Polycentricism now characterizes most of the cities in the world today as captured by the sophisticated density functions that Edwin S. Mills and others have prepared. The irregularity of the resulting spatial forms, and the politicians' stubborn resistance to value-based taxation of land values have spawned an enormous policy-oriented literature. Why cannot financial incentives be used to alter the otherwise natural shape and pattern of urban spatial development? Civil society requires and depends on public access to civic spaces. Platforms of public discourse and expression are essential to democratic forms and as Peter G. Rowe insists "the most productive opportunities for creating public spaces . . . are across the conceptual divide between the state and civil society." These platforms can be found at shopping malls, city plazas, and even gambling casino lobbies. Still, as philosopher Jurgen Habermas reminds us, these opportunities for meaningful communication can be lost when the market system is allowed to deform and destroy its precious public spheres. There are a growing number of economists who have joined with the early reformers and urban sociologists to provide new types of analysis that stubbornly refuse to ignore or abstract from location and geography. This includes the new economics of what Brian Arthur and Paul Krugman others describe as "increasing returns and path dependence." The presence of the agglomeration economies as positive feedback expanding the scale of the economy have changed the way we work and live and given new shape to the evolution of the city. The October 2000 issue of The American Journal of Economics and Sociology will have a focus on the broad theme of "City and Country." Interdisciplinary studies are cordially welcomed as are papers in urban economics and planning. All proposals in the form of 200-250 word abstracts must be sent to the editor by March 1, 2000, with a target date for delivering the final paper on July 15, 2000. Please write to: Professor Laurence S. Moss, Editor / The American Journal of Economics and Sociology Babson College / Mustard Hall / Babson Park, Massachusetts 02457 USA (FAX: 617 728 4947) Email: [log in to unmask] ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]