This volume gives a broad picture of the processes of U.S. urban-industrial growth and urban competition in space during the period from 1800 to 1914. It is the first in its field to answer two major deficiencies in the literature on the growth and development of cities: the inability to see urban growth as a process and the tendency to explain it solely in economic terms.
Professor Pred develops a model that shows urban-sized growth as an unbroken circular and cumulative process rather than a series of discrete stages of change. In addition, by viewing urbanization and industrialization as interacting spatial processes he supplements the traditional economic location theory of urban development with a contribution toward the formation of a geographic and dynamic location theory. Walter Isard comments in his Foreword that Dr. Pred “boldly sets forth hypotheses such as circular and cumulative causation. He unhesitatingly assigns a major role to the spatial framework within which invention takes place and diffuses. He portrays the parallel processes of industrialization and urbanization as spatial interaction phenomena. He does this, exhibiting considerable acumen and skill in the interweaving of diverse empirical materials, unhesitatingly drawing upon the diverse social sciences.”
To support his conception of industrialization and urbanization as interacting spatial processes, Professor Pred cites the parallel timing of concentrated large-scale manufacturing and the growth of huge “multifunctional” metropolises. The geographic location theory allows the urban geographer to examine specific spatial manifestations of the economy and to take account essential noneconomic factors that had previously been ignored. It also generates a new interpretation of industrial concentration, urban-size growth, and systems of cities. Professor Pred makes wide use of factual material and insights from the fields of economics, economic history, and the behavioral sciences.
The book consists of three essays, each of which centers on one historical period and develops one theme. The first essay attempts to explain why some cities grew more rapidly than, and at the expense of, others during the half-century that followed the Civil War; the second essay examines the locational relationship between industrial inventions, industrial innovations, and urban growth. In the third, Professor Pred reverts to the period (1800-1840) when major American cities were still mercantile in character, not yet having been launched into the transition that terminated with manufacturing as the major sector of urban economies. He explores the relationship between manufacturing and the whole saling-trading sector, illustrating his theories with examples taken from the history of transportation and specific manufactures in New York and other cities during this formative period.
