The Edge of the CityAuthor(s): David ThomasReviewed work(s):Source: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1990),pp. 131-138Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/622860 .

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131

The edge of the city DAVID THOMAS

Professor of Geography, School of Geography, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT

(Presidential Address delivered at the Annual Conference of the Institute of British Geographers, Coventry, 3rd January 1989)

MS received 2 October, 1989

ABSTRACT The paper is a reflection upon the parallel but largely unconnected modes of study of the rural-urban fringe, which had their origins in the 1930s, each stemming from a different country and owing their development to quite separate academic perspectives. The work of urban morphologists is set alongside that of urban fringe researchers and land-use planners to demonstrate the lack of appreciation of the importance of cognate, but different research traditions.

KEY WORDS: Britain, United States, Germany, Urban morphology, Urban fringe, Green belts

INTRODUCTION

If it is expected that, given my bible-black chapel- racked origins, I should begin my sermon with a text, then I would be obliged to derive it, not from Dylan Thomas, whom I parody, but from a well-worn piece by Rudyard Kipling-The Ballad of East and West- 'Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgement Seat'.

AN ENIGMA

I have long found it intriguing that similar, but quite original pieces of work can emerge independently and at more or less the same time. Not infrequently the research originates in different countries and stems from quite diverse scholarly traditions. The coincidence of timing is sometimes, seemingly, chance; sometimes a response to a particular set of circumstances, or a particular phase of a discipline's development. Slowness in the communication of results and language difficulties are at least part expla- nation of the duplication of activity. So it is possible to understand how it came to be that von Thuinen and David Ricardo had arrived at their concepts of econ- omic rent without knowledge of each other's work, though by 1826, when The Isolated State was pub-

lished, von Thunen had read the work of Ricardo, which had appeared a few years earlier. Similarly, R. E. Dickinson, working in East Anglia, and Walter Christaller, in southern Germany, were publishing within a year of each other notions of an urban hier- archy and of urban fields which, though derived from work different in philosophy and method, pointed to very similar conclusions.

But there is more to the puzzle. How is it possible, with little delay in communication and negligible language difficulty, for some recent parallel studies to be pursued independently, and over a lengthy period? It can only be explained in terms of the perception of the relevance of other traditions. It is the privilege of the President to be self-indulgent. I intend to support my contention by re-examining work in which I have been personally involved, and as much to blame as anyone in ignoring the output of other approaches. I turn therefore to the edge of the city.

THE RURAL-URBAN FRINGE

Like the poor, the rural-urban fringe we have always had with us. Certainly, it has been with us since civi- lization first emerged over 6000 years ago, and settle- ments gradually began to expand in function and size at the expense of the rural sector. What the first urban

Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. N.S. 15: 131-138 (1990) ISSN: 0020-2754 Printed in Great Britain

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revolution began, the second, which came in the wake of the industrial revolution, and the megalopolitan tendencies of this century, have completed. The rapid growth of towns and cities is now a common phenomenon, and its complement, the widespread encroachment of urban land usage into the country- side, a feature to be accepted and managed. While cities in flood create markets and opportunities for rural population, they also generate conflicts of activi- ties and societies, difficulties which have led to attempts to manage or plan the land surrounding urban centres, and to control the processes of suburbanization, and counter-urbanization.

Clearly, rural-urban interaction is at a maximum immediately beyond the edges of the continuously built-up areas. Here lies the undeveloped space into which the cutting edge of the city scythes by circum- ferential or radial growth. It is a zone of mixed land-use elements and characteristics in which rural activities and modes of life are in rapid retreat, and into which not only residential, but also commercial, educational, recreational, public service and other largely exten- sive uses of land are intruding. In a land-use, and often in an administrative sense too, the area is only partially assimilated into the growing urban complex.

While rural-urban fringes have existed over a long period, and though their characteristic features are plainly evident in the plans of towns of medieval origin and since, no geographer or other social scien- tist had paid them other than scant attention until the 1930s. Then, almost simultaneously, but indepen- dently, there evolved three distinctive approaches, each having its origins in a different country and owing its development to quite different academic perspectives; three approaches that were to remain largely uninfluenced by each other for many decades.

THE URBAN MORPHOLOGICAL APPROACH

British urban morphologists have developed their own distinctive style, but the origins of the field of study are clearly German, and influenced strongly by the work of M. R. G. Conzen, who emigrated from Germany to Britain in 1933 (Whitehand, 1981). An important part of this inheritance is what in this field of enquiry is termed a fringe belt (from the German Stadtrandzone). Last year Whitehand (1988) was able to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the formulation of the concept by Herbert Louis in 1936.

In his study of Berlin, Louis (1936) recognized that fringe belts owed their origin to physical limitations upon urban growth, in particular, city walls and the open space that was often maintained beyond them for defensive purposes. With outward city growth, new defensive lines were needed and so, as in Berlin, a number of fringe belts would result. Though their land uses might vary, depending upon position within the city, they tended to be of an extensive kind: institutions, large houses with parkland, public utilities, recreational areas, allotment gardens and so forth.

Conzen's work, notably on Alnwick, greatly extended the research of Louis and laid the foun- dations for present urban morphology studies (Conzen, 1960). Not least he recognized that land- scape changes were driven by cyclical events. The urban fringe sometimes moved outwards rapidly, sometimes slowly, and sometimes was stationary. An understanding of the reasons for fluctuation in build- ing was necessary and this needed to be set against constraints on urban fringe development, of which physical limitation was but one important type. Dur- ing slow growth or standstill, extensive peripheral uses became established beyond the 'fixation line', and themselves might then constitute an obstacle to further growth of the built-up area until a strong resurgence of growth caused new, mainly residential, development to leap-frog to sites beyond the fringe belt. Repetition of the process produced concentric zones of residential and fringe uses which would then be fossilized in the urban fabric.

Modern British studies in urban morphology have been enriched by understandings derived from other disciplines: urban history, architectural history, the social and statistical sciences. Building cycle and rent theory particularly have introduced a deductive element to explanation. Meanwhile fringe belt research has been re-exported to Germany and also has practitioners in Spain and the USA among others (Whitehand, 1987).

In a review published 5 years ago, my predecessor as President, Professor Harold Carter (1984), wrote of a collection of four papers by Conzen, republished by this Institute (Whitehand, 1981), as follows:

'Urban morphology, or in broader terms the study of townscape, has been largely unaffected by those chang- ing or shifting paradigms which supposedly have domi- nated geographical methodology. Quantitative analysis merely brushed ineffectively the periphery of morpho- logical studies, while the present destruction of buildings is not seen in terms of its welfare consequences but rather

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The edge of the city 133

in its impact on the cultural inheritance. More recent considerations of the structure of socio-political systems and their determinant organization of space have again had little impact other than on the most general of scales. Morphological studies have, therefore, remained outside the mainstream of urban geography constituting, to retain the metaphor, a backwater which if not stagnant was not subject to the currents and surges of the central flow'.

The comment may be somewhat harsh, especially as applied to current work in urban morphology, but it does identify, however exact and meticulous the scholarship may be, a lack of reference over a long period to other work on the urban fringe, and indeed to more general trends in urban geography.

ZONE OF PROBLEMS APPROACH

Those closer to the mainstream of urban geography had no cause for self congratulation. In studying the urban fringe as a problem area, their own cross- referencing was no better. In a sense, their studies had no beginning and no end; that is to say, they lacked an historical perspective and on the whole were deficient in any real appreciation of the mechanisms needed to rectify the problems posed.

Burgess, in his well-known zonal model of a city produced in the mid-1920s had defined a 'commuters zone', which lay beyond the continuous built-up area of the city, and with an outer limit about I hour's travel time from its centre (Park et al., 1925). Much of the zone would be open country but the villages set within that rural surround would be, or be becoming, dormitory settlements. However the first use of the term 'urban fringe' in this research tradition is usually attributed to T. L. Smith (Pryor, 1968), who in a study of the composition and changes of the population of Louisiana in 1937, that is, 1 year after Louis coined Stadtrandzonen, employed it to signify 'the build-up area just outside the corporate limits of the city'. Within a decade a host of writers, mainly American, had pronounced upon the subject, and the term quickly came to acquire more or less its present meaning (Thomas, 1980).

The literature on the rural-urban fringe is now both copious and diverse. In a recent book, three Canadian-based authors, Bryant, Russwurm and McLellan (1982) include more than 350 papers and books in their bibliography, and it is far from exhaus- tive. Much of that literature is concerned with the problems that arise in fringe areas as urban expansion threatens. Broadly there are six sets of these.

First, there are those problems which stem from the scattered and piecemeal residential and commercial development that often occurs on unplanned urban fringes. There are a number of dimensions to this set of problems. One aspect is that of amenity (once defined as the right thing in the right place). Whether the sometimes radial, sometimes sporadic, but almost always low-density development on city peripheries is the right way to allow cities to expand, is a long- debated question. Throughout the century, many have argued strongly that it is not, though they have not always been quite so united in their prescriptions for the ideal method of growth. Another aspect is the problem of organizing and articulating administrat- ively the small, often straggling, settlements of the fringe. Administrative control is usually in the hands of a rural-oriented, rather than a city, authority whose attitudes to development may be ambivalent, if not positively confused, by its responsibilities to two quite different groups of interests. Yet another aspect of the problem of development stems from the impact of loosely-knit, perhaps formless, urban expansion upon nearby rural land uses, uses which are often highly susceptible to interference by people and their domestic animals.

Secondly, there are widely ranging problems which, in effect, are a consequence of those just con- sidered above. Great difficulties arise on urban fringes from the intermixture of what are sometimes regarded as non-conforming land uses with the other uses more commonly found in rural areas. Some of the non-conforming activities will have found their way into the fringe zone for purely economic reasons- because their space needs are high, and their competi- tive positions in respect of urban land are low. For this reason extensive land uses such as water storage, service and government depots, large manufacturing plants, public utility installations and heavy transport parks have not developed and expanded within towns, but upon cheaper land on or beyond the city limit. Yet other non-conforming activities, for example junk yards, glue factories, and oil depots, will have located within the fringe because they have been forced to move or are excluded from urban sites by bye-law or planning control on account of their noxious, or in some other way undesirable, nature. Such land uses, if they give offence within towns and cities, are hardly likely to be any more desirable in a rural context. Together these two types of non- conforming activities create conflicts and pressures when juxtaposed with rural and suburban residential land. They present formidable problems to those

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responsible for maintaining adequate levels of amenity and the efficient economic functioning of urban fringe zones.

Thirdly, there are the problems of reserving land for agriculture and ensuring that it remains economi- cally viable. Agriculture is in a weak competitive pos- ition in the urban fringe, and the agricultural area is easily fragmented by urban-based uses. As Wibberley (1959) long ago demonstrated, the processes of change on the peripheries of towns and cities from urban to rural use are far from smooth. Land about to be developed may be 'farmed to quit' (to use the colourful American phrase), that is a farmer may put less into his farm than he removes, causing a sharp decline in fertility, a fall in productivity and a gener- ally run-down farming scene. In other circumstances delays in development may lead to land lying com- pletely idle for a period as abandoned farmland awaits its new use. Problems arise too when urban expansion absorbs only parts of farms. Farms, like any other economic enterprise, are composed of interdepen- dent parts. Remove some of the parts and the whole operates much less effectively, or, alternatively, the system has to be changed radically. In either case there is a tendency towards farm decay. Physical proximity to urban land uses also causes difficulties for the farmer: encroachment on to farmland for rec- reation or other purposes may cause damage to crops and hedges, and disturb stock. Such interference with the farming system is inclined to be greatest where population pressure upon land is high and where towns are expanding and introducing into the countryside an urban population untutored in the ways of the countryside. These are the very conditions which pertain in the urban fringe.

Fourthly, a very similar group of problems arises over the reservation of recreation land. In this case it is not a matter of maintaining the status quo, but of creating recreation areas to serve the growing de- mands of the city and also of the expanding population of the fringe. Greatest demands for recreation land are felt very close to the outer edges of towns and cities: there appears to be a very sharp decline in the number of recreation facilities with distance from centres of urban populations. Competition with residential and commercial land is therefore severe, and without the support of national or local government bodies it has proved to be a very unequal battle.

Fifthly, there is a set of problems which stems from the high costs of services to scattered settlements. Costs are not great when compared with truly rural areas; they are simply high in comparison with the

figures for the nearby urban mass. High costs also arise from the need to cover the heavy capital charges for the installation of completely new services: water, gas, electricity, public transport and so on. Despite the affluence of the urban fringe zone, high costs often lead to a lower level of service provision than in the nearby urban area, and it is this which really highlights the problem.

Lastly, there are the difficulties which follow from the intermixture of different social groups, some with urban-based and others with rural-based attitudes and ways of life. The early work of Pahl (1965) has exemplified the major differences and possible areas of conflict. But modern means of communications, verbal, visual, literal, as well as physical, have greatly eroded true rural society so that even the indigenous and rurally-employed population of the urban fringe is rapidly becoming urban-oriented. This set of prob- lems is the only one of the six which shows any signs of abating.

While much of the literature is concerned with problems of the fringe, a surprising amount, especially of the earlier material, is more marginal and to a degree more trivial. For example, a great deal of anxiety seems to have arisen over the meanings given to the words which denote the features of the fringe. Though many of the written accounts and descrip- tions of fringe areas are based upon North American experience, there is a fair scattering of commentaries from Europe and Australia particularly. The con- fusion in terminology which results from these vari- ous case studies is considerable, and is compounded by the span in time over which the studies were undertaken, the great range in size of the urban centres under investigation, the variations in the degree of control exercised over the fringe area, and the differing aims and contexts of the several pieces of research. This diversity of terminology applies not only to the rural-urban fringe itself, but is character- istic also of many related terms and concepts. Kurtz and Eicher (1958) have illustrated the difficulties in their widely-quoted paper which attempts to differ- entiate between 'fringe' and 'suburb'. Another American, in an extensive survey of the fringe areas of cities, identifies 'fringe', 'suburbs', 'pseudo- suburbs', 'satellites' and 'pseudo-satellites', while many more writers grapple with the complexities of defining different types of 'satellite' and 'suburb', and of distinguishing between these and other fringe development. A decent linguistic veil may be drawn over the barbarisms, 'rurbanization' and 'slurb' (slopped-over suburb).

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The edge of the city 135

Pryor (1968) faced another aspect of this problem when he attempted to resolve the various proposed areal differentiations of the fringe. For example, dif- ferent researchers had distinguished the 'urban fringe', from the 'rural fringe', the 'limited fringe' from the 'extended fringe', the 'suburban fringe zone' from an 'outlying adjacent zone', an 'inner' from an 'outer' fringe area, a 'rural non-farm' from a 'rural farm' sub- division, while one author had differentiated a 'true fringe', a 'partial fringe' and 'adjacent rural town- ships'. Pryor's solution is to subdivide the rural-urban fringe into an 'urban fringe' and a 'rural fringe' on the basis of its land-use composition. The urban fringe exhibits a density of occupied dwellings higher than the median density of the total rural-urban fringe- a higher proportion of residential, commercial, indus- trial and vacant land, as distinct from farmland-and a higher rate of increase in population density, land- use conversion and commuting. By contrast, the rural fringe exhibits a density of occupied dwellings below the median of the total rural-urban fringe-a high proportion of farm as distinct from non-farm and vacant land-and a lower rate of increase in popu- lation density, land-use conversion and commuting. The solution is hardly profound, though it may satisfy those who like their landscape tidy.

I began my consideration of the problem-oriented approach by commenting that the many workers in this field were as constrained by their research tradition as the urban morphologists. I offer one final piece of evidence in support. Of the 12 sample names contained in Whitehand's schematic genealogy of urban morphology (Whitehand, 1988), not a single one appears in the bibliography of Bryant et al. (1982).

THE PRACTICAL PLANNING APPROACH

The third group to work upon the rural-urban fringe was composed of those concerned with developing planning solutions to its problems. Like the urban morphologists and the problem-oriented writers, they identified the particular characteristics of the fringe--a mixture of land uses, some extensive, some incompatible with agriculture and open space. Their perception of the problems generated was also very similar, but of course without references to, or seemingly knowledge of, the work of those other groups.

Since the changing nature of land-use was at the root of many of the problems, it followed that a great

deal of attention should be paid in practice to the controls which could be exercised over land-use development in urban fringe zones. In many countries the urban and regional planning which this implied is a relatively recent innovation. For example, in North America, where much of the problem-oriented work upon the rural-urban fringe was undertaken, the move to organize extra-metropolitan growth on a large scale has come only in the last few decades. In Europe generally, where the pressure of people upon land is so much greater, there has been a longer tradition of urban planning in which fringe areas have received their fair proportion of attention. In general terms there have been two favoured strategies for city-region development. The first, following the plan pioneered in Denmark in 1948-the famous Copenhagen finger plan-relies on accommodating expansion within urban corridors (these are the fingers) aligned along radial transportation routes which are intended to ensure high accessibility to the metropolitan centre. Between the radial lines of development, green wedges of farmland and rec- reation space secure the interstices. The model was widely adopted, becoming particularly popular in the 1960s and applied to such cities as Paris, Washington D.C., and even London (though the latter plan did not survive long) (Hall, 1967).

The second strategy, the traditional British plan- ning approach, preferred to contain the growth of large cities by means of restrictive green belts, mean- while accommodating residential, commercial and other overspill, forced to leap-frog the green belt, in planned settlement nodes arranged more or less cir- cumferentially beyond. It is a strategy with ante- cedents stretching back into the nineteenth century and is closely allied to the Garden City philosophy. But its first practical formulation on a regional scale results from the work of Unwin in 1933-note the date (Greater London Regional Planning Committee, 1933). His plan for the Greater London region pro- vided for a discontinuous park belt-he called it a green girdle'-with town and village expansions set deep in the surrounding countryside to receive popu- lation displaced from the conurbation. The plan in essence was accepted by Abercrombie and, without much further justification, became the basis for his green-belt and new-town proposals of 1944 (Abercrombie, 1945). In the post-war period, this approach received statutory blessing and has been one of the bases of our physical planning since.

The green belts, now disposed about many of our major cities, are broad continuous swathes of land,

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approximating to the rural-urban fringe zone, in which there is a strong presumption against urban development and within which open countryside is maintained so that recreational and other open space deficiencies of the urban areas can be met. Since the green belt, in effect, fossilizes the existing rural-urban fringe land-use pattern, it is not as green as sometimes appears on planning maps, and indeed, a certain amount of development of special types and in cer- tain circumstances has always taken place.

It is a sign of advancing years to be able to recall the heady days of the great green belt debate of the 1950s. For the green belt quickly became acceptable- almost all things to almost all men. To the urban dweller it was a potential (though often never fully realized) source of recreation land and rural solace, to the farmer it gave security against urban encroach- ment, to the fortunate resident it was a means of maintaining and enhancing property values, to the district planning officer it provided an element of certainty in a world where so many decisions were challenged, to the politician it was a tangible achieve- ment marketable at elections, and even to the wicked developer it gave a hint of opportunity, or else why should it be so common to find land fringing green- belt villages owned by builders and temporarily devoted to 'horsiculture'. In short, the green belt became a British institution, and a source of wonder and publication for the visiting academic tourist. When Peter Walker, then Environment Secretary, instituted a wide-ranging review of the environmen- tal quality of green-belt land in 1970, the study was never published or properly completed, so sensitive were the issues considered to be. More recently, the present government, presumably animated by the logic of the free-market system and by its own suc- cess at successive general elections, has attempted on a number of occasions to unbuckle, if only slightly, long-standing green-belt policy. It has consistently been forced to retreat, largely in the face of opposition from its own supporters in the shires. Politicians plainly need to tread on green-belt land rather as one would in the Sistine Chapel.

It has been argued at some length elsewhere that green belts have clearly achieved their more limited aims. They have given a cleaner edge to town and country by interrupting the rural-urban fringe pro- cesses, they have prevented major expanding cities (such as Birmingham and Coventry) from coalescing, they have encouraged the development of land for recreation and allowed the improvement of visually attractive areas by sheltering conforming activities

from the powerful competition of urban, commercial, industrial, transport and public service uses, and where such encouragement has not been fruitful, green belts have at least maintained open land in the rural-urban fringe pending the appearance of some more effective mechanism.

But it is also an arguable, though not always popu- lar, proposition that, viewed more broadly, green belts at both local and regional scale have caused as many difficulties as they have solved. The first has arisen from the fact that a green belt is a technique, not of itself a policy (as it is sometimes regarded). It is one of a number of techniques which together implement urban policy, and its success must depend to a considerable degree upon the effectiveness of the other elements. For example, a green belt cannot be fully successful without proper control over the location of city employment. It must also be closely related to population overspill, new town and town expansion programmes. Failing in any of these com- plementary aspects throws undue stress upon green belts; and there is no doubt that there have been failings in both those respects since the Second World War. Green belts have therefore, from time to time, operated in the absence of firm control over economic expansion within the city and an adequate policy for the redistribution of city population without.

The second deficiency arises from the often hazy and sometimes changing roles that green belts have been required to play as planning tools. Since at vari- ous times they have been expected to stop city growth or merging, preserve city character, promote agriculture, stimulate recreation and protect amenity, or a number of combinations of these aims, they can- not be judged too harshly for not always fulfilling such diverse objectives. Boundaries which might be right for one task cannot be wholly satisfactory for another. The inconsistencies which arise are admir- ably revealed when boundary modifications are being considered.

The third set of problems is generated by the inac- curate ideas originally held about the dynamism of city growth and population movement. For example, Abercrombie had believed, on the best evidence available at the time, that his plan for London in 1944 provided a more or less permanent solution to the problems of south-east England. The population censuses of 1951 and certainly of 1961 showed how wrong this idea was, and how strong was the attrac- tion of London for both economic enterprise and people. Major extensions to London's green belt in the late 1950s were drawn tightly around existing

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The edge of the city 137

urban areas and left insufficient space for the conse- quent outward movement of businesses and popu- lation. A potential land scarcity on a regional scale resulted. The articulation of growth was severely restricted and three major, but different, regional plans were published between 1964 and 1970, all attempting to meet the difficulties created.

A fourth difficulty in green belt control is caused by their extensive distribution. The simple point here is that the more the restriction placed upon develop- ment, the more difficult it becomes to maintain that restriction: the more selective a device, the easier it is to hold. Some notion of the order of difficulty in maintaining green belts may be obtained from the fact that green belts cover 11 per cent of the land surface of England. Another 12 per cent is taken by existing urban development, 9 per cent by National Parks and about the same is occupied by Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (some of these overlap with green belts). When yet other restrictive areas are accounted, only about half the land remains available for development.

Lastly, green belts have been less than satisfactory in the sense that they have been used as weapons in other battles. Some rural local authorities, both in the period before the local government reorganization and since, employed green belts to seal off the growth of neighbouring cities not, it was suspected, for plan- ning ends, but to conserve the tax base gained from overspill. Such a green belt would force new growth well into county territory where, unlike peripheral growth at the city fringe, it would be safe from boundary adjustment as the urban area grew. Another battle in which green belts have proved important strategic weapons is in that between the Haves and Have Less. A green belt around a desirable suburban village has yielded a very efficient way of preserving property values by excluding new (and possibly lower value) development, and incidentally, of protecting the Tory shires from Labour voters.

In the minds of many, and certainly in the popular press, green belts and urban encroachment are closely associated. But the plain fact is that the real problem of green belts is not the relatively minor 'nibbling' by urban-based land-uses-the local authority planners have generally done their work well-but that city- region policies were devised without knowledge of the historical significance of the fringe-belt studies of the urban morphologists, and without an understand- ing of the dynamic processes at work in the fringe that might have been derived from the largely American work I have described. Of course, the out-

lines of the British city-region strategy were estab- lished in 1933, before either Louis or Smith had written their accounts. But little attention was paid as time went by to the growing volume of work in those different fields. I look back with some dismay at my book on London's green belt published as late as 1970 (Thomas, 1970). It is only in the second half of the last chapter that I acknowledge the existence of the American writers, while the work of Whitehand is dismissed in two lines. The half chapter was, I must admit, an afterthought, significant of a gradually dawning understanding of the importance of those other studies.

The conclusion is not that no planning should be undertaken before we have full appreciation of pro- cesses, historical or present-a partial answer on time is better than a full answer too late. Rather it should be concluded that we should be tolerant of less than perfect planning policies based upon partial knowl- edge and insufficient data, but that we should also be responsive to the corollary, the idea that such policies ought to be sufficiently flexible to adjust to new understandings and changing circumstances.

And so I return to the enigma of my introduction- which I admit I have described rather than resolved. I am certain that I have correctly identified a failure of researchers in my own and closely-related fields to integrate their work to mutually beneficial ends. I suspect that many in my audience could tell similar tales in their own branches of the discipline. The problem is not one of language, distance or time. It seems to lie in the lack of appreciation of the import- ance of cognate, but different, research traditions. Why we should so readily adopt ideas from other disciplines-physics, biological science, economics, psychology-and ignore those from the next room, I cannot say. I hope, to return to Kipling, that I shall not have to wait to stand at God's great judgement seat to find the answer.

REFERENCES

ABERCROMBIE, P. (1945) Greater London Plan 1944 (HMSO, London)

BRYANT, C. R., RUSSWURM, L. H. and MCLELLAN, A. G. (1982) The city's countryside (Longman, London)

CARTER, H. (1984) Review of WHITEHAND (1981) in Prog. in Hum. Geogr. 8: 145-7

CONZEN, M. R. G. (1960) Alnwick, Northumberland: a study in town plan analysis (Inst. Brit. Geogr. Spec. Pubs. No. 27, Academic Press, London)

GREATER LONDON REGIONAL PLANNING COM- MITTEE (1933) Second report (London)

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138 DAVID THOMAS

HALL, P. (1967) 'Planning for urban growth: metropolitan area plans and their implications for south-east England', Reg. Stud. 1: 101-34

KURTZ, H. A. and EICHER, J. B. (1958) 'Fringe and suburbs: a confusion of concepts', Social Forces 37: 32-7

LOUIS, H. (1936) 'Die geographische Gliederung von Gross-Berlin' in LOUIS, H. and PANZER, W. (eds) Landerkundliche Forschung: Krebs-festschrift (Engelhorn, Stuttgart) pp. 146-71

PAHL, R. E. (1965) Urbs in rure: the metropolitan fringe in Hertfordshire (London School of Economics and Political Science, London)

PARK, R. E., BURGESS, E. W. and MCKENSIE, R. D. (1925) The city (University of Chicago Press, Chicago)

PRYOR, R. J. (1968) 'Defining the rural-urban fringe', Social Forces 47: 202-15

THOMAS, D. (1970) London's green belt (Faber, London) THOMAS, D. (1980) 'The cutting edge of the city',

Trivium, 15: 111-20 WHITEHAND, J. W. R. (1981) 'Conzenian ideas: extension

and development' in WHITEHAND, J. W. R. (ed.) The urban landscape: historical development and management: papers by M. R. G. Conzen (Inst. Brit. Geogr. Spec. Pubs. No. 13, Academic Press, London) pp. 125-52

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