Urban Studies (1987), 24, 597-603
© 1987 Urban Studies
The Vanishing City
Anthony Pascal
The world inclines toward uniformity. It undergoes
entropy, the tendency for different energy levels in a
system to equalize as, for example, when a kettle of
hot water warms a cold room while it itself cools.
Entropy, dis-ordering, inexorable in nature accord-
ing to the second law of thermodynamics, also
describes urban systems. Human interactions occur
across a system of interconnected places, extending
from the busiest point in the largest of cities to the
furthest spot in the most desolate of boondocks.
Technological change ramifies through societies,
altering economies and thereby diffusing the interac-
tions in space. What once had to happen in the city
can now take place anywhere.
Technology, then, shapes destiny. Public actions
do modify outcomes; social movements redirect
them temporarily. But ultimately, how we live,
where we live and near whom we live depend on the
underlying forces inherent in technological evolu-
tion and subsequent economic change. (See Norton
in this volume on the history of this idea).
Technology-based change breaks out most dramati-
cally in the cities of advanced industrial societies,
particularly those that maintain an active market
sector. But the collectivist economies and the
developing world are not immune.
To understand how the platonically ideal city
works requires examining the phenomena that shape
all cities in all times. The consequences for living
cities are to be gleaned in two sources: the historical
record and contemporary data on cities that already
exhibit the more advanced stages of urban entropy.
Thus the explanation for the rise of the industrial
Anthony Pascal is with the Rand Corporation, 1700 Main St., Santa Monica, California, 90406.
597
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[First received May 1987; in finalform, July 1987]
city lies in the conditions of the nineteenth century,
when such places first emerged. The course which
cities are now beginning to trace can be deduced
from the experience of communities in today's
nascent post-industrial societies.
Of course every city is unique. Geography and
circumstance combine to make each different from
some mythical mean. The intent here, nevertheless,
is to speculate about the future of this convenient
fiction, the average city. By examining trends and
tendencies, rules and regularities, we can more
clearly envision what is in store for all cities and
even glimpse the prospects for particular cities.
Industrial Age Cities: Creation
The major cities of Europe, Japan and North
America grew up to exploit economies of scale at
transportation endpoints - ports and railheads - in
a period when the cost of raw materials figured
prominently in the price of finished goods. For
convenience, large factories clustered around these
termini; they were places where public services also
could be supplied more cheaply. Before the tele-
phone, clustering facilitated communication between
firms. At the urban midpoint opportunities for face-
to-face contact were maximized. Centrality thus
facilitated negotiations, consultations, decisions.
When a labor force had to assemble on foot or by
means of intra-city rail lines, downtown became the
natural choice. The massive but condensed urban
core appeared, as Chicago, perhaps, best exemplifies.
Vast numbers streamed in from rural areas to
598 ANTHONY PASCAL
work the plants established in the growing cities. As
the Industrial Age draws to a close, most advanced
capitalist economies have populations that are 80
per cent or more urban. Some nations developed a
single dominant city, as in France or Austria, while
in most others a group of big cities arose to produce
a large share of the manufactures.
Third World countries continue to experience
enormous urban growth mainly because productiv-
ity, and therefore living standards, in their cities is
still so much higher than in their rural areas.
Deliberate policies which suppress farm prices to
benefit -and thereby pacify - urban populations
only exacerbate the situation. All of the twelve
metropolises popularly forecast to someday surpass
20 million in population are in developing nations:
Beijing, Bombay, Cairo, Calcutta, Dacca, Delhi,
Jakarta, Karachi, Lagos, Mexico City, Sao Paulo,
and Shanghai.
Industrial Age Cities; Maturation
In the industrial world, vigorous growth in the
larger cities has now virtually ended. Of all the
Americans residing in big cities, only 17 per cent live
in municipalities that are still growing. Whole
metropolitan areas in the US and Northern Europe
have in fact begun to shrink. Only the city which
boasts a distinguishing amenity - sunny skies, an
attractive seashore, nearness to recreation areas -is
likely to register expansion in the late twentieth
century. (However, Kirby and Lynch discuss some
interesting cases of decline in Sunbelt cities). The
turnaround has been drastic. What accounts for it?
Growing and spreading affluence meant more
people could realise their preferences for low
density, suburban living. The development of motor
cars, trucks and superhighways allowed plants and
offices to leave congested urban centers. New
processes and new tastes reduced the importance of
bulky raw materials in goods production. Technol-
ogy began to favor land-intensive manufacturing,
expensive to establish in crowded cities. Television
brought entertainment and information to remote
points. In North America and Western Europe,
government fostered suburbanization by providing
easy credit for new house purchases. (Mills discusses
some of the less direct mechanisms whereby govern-
ment policies have induced suburban growth in the
United States).
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Very generally, the larger the city and the earlier
its growth takeoff, the more decisive was the onset of
stability. Cessation of growth, even decline, was also
correlated with obsolescent housing stock, speciali-
zation in volatile and slow growing industries
(particularly textiles, steel and autos), high wage
levels, high tax levels, and rugged climate. The
extent to which the cheapening of air conditioning
has increased the relative advantage of the warmer
regions in the US, France, Spain and Italy is not
sufficiently appreciated. Although cities retained
their primacy for activities still requiring frequent
face-to-face encounters - public administration,
corporate headquarters, high level business services,
research, the arts - the big cold, old, smokestack
cities found it increasingly hard to compete against
their own suburbs and against newer cities in distant
regions. Glasgow and Manchester decelerated earli-
est. Philadelphia and Wilmington, Paris and Rotter-
dam soon followed. No small part of the explana-
tion was the lower wage labor available in the less
developed parts of industrial nations or in develop-
ing countries. Prospects for continuing manufactur-
ing job losses to the Third World appear immense;
in those nations, one billion new workers, mostly
literate, will enter the labor force between now and
the year 2000. (Norton comments on the traditional
manufacturing-oriented city as an upgrader of the
underclass; we pay significant social costs when it no
longer performs that function).
Everywhere during the twentieth century, sub-
urban sprawl began to blur the boundaries that
formerly defined independent cities, leading to the
emergence of the megalopolis as on America's
Northeastern seaboard, the southern shores of the
Great Lakes, Southeast England, the Rhine Valley.
Governments reacted. For the most part the
interventions were too little and too late, where not
actually counterproductive. First suburbia was
nourished with government supports for infrastruc-
ture and with subsidies for housing. Now the state
attempted to keep city rents artificially low and tied
social benefits to urban locations. The result? The
affluent left town in the search for more desirable
physical and social environments as concentrations
of the urban poor intensified.
Many cities fell into a downward spiral. Social
conditions worsened. Tax rates rose. Public services
deteriorated. Under-maintenance of private prop-
erty became contagious. These trends hastened
 THE VANISHING CITY
the departure of even more firms and households.
(James and Clark discuss the effects of maturation
on minority-owned business firms).
Do households follow firms in the search for jobs
or do employers follow population to tap labor
supplies? The answer seems to depend on the time
frame examined. In the short run, relocations by
firms appear antecedent; in the longer perspective
businesses seem to relocate to areas favored by
people.
Post-Industrial Cities: Dissolution
As nations develop economically, a shrinking share
of the gross domestic product is accounted for by
manufacturing (Italy, 29 per cent; France, 25 per
cent; United States, 22 per cent). And as per capita
incomes rise, a growing proportion is devoted to the
purchase of services in all their manifold variety.
The high growth services include the finance, health,
and recreation industries, and the business inputs
produced by lawyers, accountants, designers, con-
sultants and advertising executives. Shifts in spend-
ing patterns reflect what people buy. Technology
largely dictates where the new commodities will be
produced.
The Technological Future
The era of the computer and the communication
satellite is inhospitable to the high density city.
Clerical and record keeping functions have already
begun to deurbanize. (See the paper by Moss in this
volume). The distant suburbs and small towns of the
US are dotted with highly computerized complexes
performing bookkeeping, billing and archival tasks
for banks and insurance companies. The newly
emerging technologies will soon begin to provide
excellent substitutes for face-to-face contact, the
chief remaining raison d'etre of the traditional city.
Technological advances in information storage,
retrieval and transmission -data, text, pictures and
voice through Integrated Service Distribution Net-
works or ISDN - will soon begin to revolutionize
administration and headquarters functions. The
falling costs of fiber optic transmission systems
make ISDN more practical for more places.
Where it was once necessary to concentrate large
staffs of managers who could combine to generate
quick solutions for nonstandardized problems, tele-
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599
conferencing will soon provide an alternative.
Teleconferencing even has some advantages over
face-to-face meetings: participation need not be
sequential and can be anonymous, printout and
videotape records are available, subcommittees and
caucuses can be accommodated simultaneously.
People who grow up in an environment where such
things are possible will more easily adapt to and
more readily use the innovations. The broad
implication? A pension fund with a long time
horizon would be ill advised to invest in any fourth
tower at New York's World Trade Center.
The ease of face-to-face communication and the
concentration of specialized support services also
made the city an incubator for businesses. (See
James and Clark on this topic, in relation to
minority-owned businesses). The city acted as the
urban hatchery for new companies, many of which
subsequently departed for the suburbs or the
countryside. As the cost of disseminating knowledge
and information declines and as specialized inputs
are more easily assembled in remote locations,
incubation too can take place almost anywhere.
Truly revolutionary developments in the assembly
of another input, labor, appear in the offing. In
telecommuting, workers manipulate and analyze
data on individual computers at scattered sites and
transmit to central mainframes through modems.
And data manipulation and analysis describe what
an increasing share of the post-industrial labor force
does for a living. Managers who grow up with
computers in the classroom, and the family room,
will have less difficulty adjusting to the supervision
of workers in remote locations.
Although there will always remain functions that
require the physical congregation of people and
people who prefer tangible proximity to others,
substantial new flexibilities will enter the system.
Estimates for 1995 suggest that perhaps 15 per cent
of the US labor force will telecommute by then.
Development of the electronic briefcase and the
refinements of the cellular telephone promise even
more disengagement between workers and fixed,
centralized facilities. In the future then, many will be
able to work virtually anywhere. Given a preference
for low density residence in amenity-rich areas,
which a large fraction of the population expresses,
further depopulation of cities seems inevitable. (See
Landis for an empirical treatment of some of these
issues).
600 ANTHONY PASCAL
Consider some additional developments:
Suburban shopping malls led the first assault on
the city as a marketing center. Recently, mail order
has scored huge gains. It developed to serve the
multiple worker household with little time for
shopping and to exploit computerized mail
marketing and billing techniques. The addition of
robot-staffed warehouses and television catalogs -
perhaps holographically enhanced - may one day
transform shopping into a largely in-home activity.
Financial institutions are beginning to experiment
with home banking through cable television. Cus-
tomers can deposit, withdraw and shift funds among
accounts using personal consoles.
As radio and television reduced the need for
access to cities as a source of entertainment, the
spread of video cassette recorders implies even more
freedom of location. Still to come is two-way
television, in which viewers electronically select from
a vast library of recorded programs. Somewhat
further off is the development of truly interactive
programming.
Through such innovations, improved communi-
cation substitutes for proximity. Because the city
specializes in the advantages of proximity, its
attractiveness as a focus for human interactions will
continue to decrease. The proper late twentieth
century reply to Gertrude Stein's complaint about
Oakland, "There is no there there", is, "There is less
and less there anywhere, anymore. Increasingly,
there is everywhere".
The Recent Revival of Downtown
The processes described here are inexorable but not
orderly. Changes in relative factor prices, as dis-
cussed below, will slow the evolution. So will the
attachment of multiple-worker households to large
labor markets. And we have recently experienced a
boom in downtown office construction. Even Cleve-
land and St. Louis are adding new high rise office
space. What accounts for that seeming anomaly?
A number of factors, I think. The income tax laws
have favored investments in real estate. Suburban
and small town land prices have probably risen
relative to downtown big city land prices. The
delayed effects of urban renewal programs, as Mills
suggests, may have played some role. And, the
recent huge trade deficits have been financed in part
by foreigners who may feel more comfortable with
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their dollars invested in cities whose names they
know.
Most important, however, I would hazard, has
been the rapid growth in 'post-industrial' jobs
during the recent past. The rate of increase in high
level business service jobs has probably been greater
than the rate of decline in the proportion of those
jobs that require a central location. As we pass
through the transition to post-industrialism, and as
technology weakens the locational constraints on
business inputs, the mini-boom in the American
downtown is certain to quieten. (See Landis).
Even the emergence of the 'world cities', as
envisaged by Moss in this volume, seems to me a
short range phenomenon. Granted, the information
revolution has enormously extended the geographi-
cal span of control, making possible the manage-
ment of far-flung enterprises from single centers.
But, over time, fewer and fewer people will need to
huddle to perform that management function. The
reductio ad absurdum of course finds us with a
single manager in each headquarters. Wither down-
town Manhattan then?
Changes in Relative Prices
The effects of the alterations in technology and
consumer preferences will ultimately play them-
selves out in changing relative prices for particular
economic goods and services. The shifting market
valuations of these goods will affect the size, shape
and nature of tomorrow's cities. Among the most
relevant are prices of labor, capital, transportation,
communication and, of course, land, in various
locations.
For the industrial countries, long term increases
in the relative price of labor - the real wage -
seems assured, despite occasional recessions of
greater or lesser duration. The proliferation of
robots, machines that produce machines, will assure
that capital continues to accumulate, and to
cheapen, raising worker productivity. Birth rates
will keep falling or, at best, will remain constant,
restricting labor supply. (The throngs of newly
arrived Latin and Asian workers entering the US
labor market have not been nearly large enough to
produce a general wage decline). Given even modest
success in macroeconomic policy, competition for
newly scarce labor will force employers to pursue
workers into small towns and rural areas.
 THE VANISHING CITY
However, it should be noted that large labor
markets offer some definite attractions to the
multiple-earner household, particularly when those
workers are managers or professionals. Residence in
or near a big city with its rich employment
opportunities, reduces the likelihood that the house-
hold will have to move when one member changes
jobs. Thompson comments on this point.
Technological developments in propulsion and
guidance systems and lightweight materials will help
sustain the sharp downward course of ground
transport costs that began 150 years ago. Cars that
average eighty miles per gallon could appear soon.
Although the US automobile market may be
approaching saturation at one car for every two
persons, the West European automobile stock could
expand by 50 per cent before reaching that ratio,
triggering additional suburbanization there. As air
transportation costs fall in real terms, remote areas
gain in attractiveness because ties to family and
friends can then be more easily and more cheaply
maintained. Similar to the case of communications,
the trend in transport cost favors deconcentration
away from cities.
In market economies land prices respond to
changes in demand. If events do indeed unfold as
envisioned here, land prices in the city core should
begin to fall as demand for the center-most locations
diminishes. Even sharper relative declines may be
expected in the band surrounding the core - that is,
within the conventional city limits but outside the
center - particularly in older communities where
obsolescence, congestion, and deterioration in this
band are not offset by any lingering economic
advantages of centrality. Anyone familiar with
Buffalo and Liverpool will recognize this phenome-
non. Suburbs however will likely experience land
price changes that vary with age: older, generally
close-in suburbs may suffer a fate similar to that of
the city band, while newer, more distant suburbs
undergo rapid land price appreciation. Prices will
escalate fastest in small towns, particularly those
located on the metropolitan fringes or in areas
favored by climate and other amenities. Rural areas
will most likely sustain steady increase in land prices
as technology spreads the benefits once reserved to
urban locations over an ever-widening territory.
Clearly, the very fact of relative change in the
price of land at various locations provokes compen-
sating reactions. As values at point A rise relative to
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601
values at point B, B becomes attractive for addi-
tional activities. The densities which would have
been attained at A, measured against B, never quite
eventuate. (Such compensating adjustments may
explain some of the 'long-wave' phenomena per-
ceived by Booth).
Thus even though manufacturing will decline in
importance as a consumer of space and employer of
workers, falling central land prices may re-establish
the relative advantages of big cities in the competition
for some kinds of manufacturing. The flexibility
inherent in robotization means fewer machine tools
and thus lower space requirements for the average
factory. Integrated circuitry leads to miniaturization
of machinery, again reducing the need for space. As
land in the city becomes more affordable, develop-
ment of smaller scale, customized production facili-
ties could well begin. But such offsetting adjustments
in land values are likely to constitute mere variations
on tomorrow's dominant theme: decentralization.
Why the Pill and OPEC failed to Bring About An
Urban Renaissance
As the typical household of the baby boom era -
Mom, Dad, three kids and a dog - began to lose its
primacy, many thought the attractions of the suburbs
would fade while those of the city would beckon once
again. The development of new birth control
methods had helped drive fertility rates to historic
lows. New life-extending medical techniques in-
creased the numbers of elderly. Spreading education
and the development of industrial processes that
favor physical and mental agility over brute strength
vastly expanded women's labor force opportunities.
Paid employment for women is at the same time a
cause and a consequence of low birth rates. And
women's enhanced earning potential results in
postponement of marriage, financial autonomy, and
the increased possibility of independent living even
when children are present. Population composition,
the makeup of the average household, registered a
radical shift.
For all these reasons - more elderly and more
young adults living on their own, fewer children,
more women at work - the average household is
smaller than it has ever been. Other things equal,
smaller households ought to lead to denser residential
patterns, more households per unit of land. Thus the
average size of residential parcels in the US reached
602 ANTHONY PASCAL
its peak in 1979 and has been declining since.
Households without children should also evince less
interest in the suburban lifestyle while the conve-
nience of city living should attract both multiple-
earner and elderly households. From the standpoint
of demographics, in other words, the return to the
city seemed assured.
Yet the back-to-the-city movement has so far
been negligible. 'Gentrification' (the middle class
occupation and renewal of deteriorated neighbor-
hoods) occurs only patchily and only in some cities;
it brings few suburbanites to town. The explanation
is partly economic and partly social. Jobs for both
men and women, as we have seen, have rapidly
decentralized. For many tastes, the shopping and
entertainment possibilities out of town are now
highly competitive with those in town. Developers
built the suburban apartment and row houses that
the smaller, working households seemed to want.
Critically important too are the perceptions of
crime, congestion and pollution the city tends to
evoke. Whether these perceptions reflect reality or
paranoia, they are powerful. And rising incomes
give people the wherewithal to act on the basis of
their perceptions.
Next, urban revivalists looked to OPEC for
salvation. The fierce oil price runups of the 1970s
would make commuting prohibitively expensive.
The escalating cost of home heating would make
obsolete the single-family detached house. But the
unprecedented increases in energy costs had little
effect on where people chose to live. Large surges in
gasoline and heating oil prices have only negligible
repercussions on the typical suburbanite's budget
and so do not induce such households to move
cityward, to be closer to work or to secure more
heat-efficient quarters.
To further frustrate the revivalists, energy prices
began to fall as new petroleum sources were
developed and as price-invoked reductions in de-
mand occurred. Already US gasoline prices, in real
terms, are only slightly higher than they were in
1970. (About 30 cents a gallon then versus about 35
cents a gallon now in 1967 pennies).
The Shape of the Future
To summarize, the entropy paradigm suggests that
with the passage of time comes spatial regularity; the
urban system converges on, even if it never quite
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attains, complete areal uniformity. (The empirical
data presented in Landis, for example, generally
indicate faster growth in smaller than larger urban
economies, controlling for the economic function of
the economy).
Translated into the concrete, we will begin to
perceive that:
- one place looks pretty much like any other
- established cities have ceased growing
- the typical city household more and more
resembles the typical suburban, small town and
rural household
- the centers of most cities attenuate while outly-
ing areas become more densely settled and take
over functions once performed only downtown
- small towns in agreeable regions grow into new,
low-density metropolises.
Will all the world grow to be like Los Angeles
then? The true prospects are, for certain tastes, even
worse: Anaheim in its undifferentiated Orange
County milieu. Lincoln Steffens, had he visited
Southern California today instead of the Soviet
Union in the 1920s, might have said, 'I have seen the
future and it bores!' No doubt we lose something as
the concentrated vitality of the conventional big city
evanesces. The pace of entropy however can be
modified and so can some of the consequences.
Policy Responses
Can cities escape the fate sketched here? Can they
rearrange their futures? Some may decide not to try.
They will accept a gradual entropic dissolution,
seeking only to make the process of change graceful,
or at least gentle. Hegel to the contrary notwith-
standing, decline need not be ugly. Others may
decide to resist the likelihoods implied by technol-
ogy, demographics and economics in the attempt to
achieve a different destiny. That attempt is far from
pointless. Even if the intervention fails to resurrect
the city as it once was, or to make it what some
would like it to be, well conceived public actions can
reduce the trauma of transformation.
Admittedly, there is little that impresses in the
record of policy interventions intended to counter-
act unwanted outcomes. Planners, no matter the
school and no matter the culture, too often fight
yesterday's urban problem, thereby exacerbating
tomorrow's. Slum clearance, demonstrably, worsens
overall housing conditions for the poor. Construc-
 THE VANISHING CITY
tion of public housing results in new ghettoes. Rent
control leads to the deterioration and the abandon-
ment of rental housing. Attempts to stimulate city
economies through public employment run up
against the local finance crisis. Freeway construction
induces urban sprawl. New subway systems require
enormous subsidies. Industrial decentralization poli-
cies reinforce the stagnation of once dominant cities.
(Mills advocates more attention to 'non-urban'
policies - in such arenas as inter-governmental
finance, local autonomy, taxation, government pro-
curement, and welfare - that affect, often inadver-
tently, the fate of cities).
More modesty in ambition however may lead to
more success in accomplishment. Cities, for exam-
ple, need to govern themselves less extravagantly so
as to control local taxes and reduce tax flight.
(Thompson discusses the role of taxes, and public
services, as determinants of industrial location).
Modern management methods and new forms of
finance - such as charging residents directly for the
services they are using - show much promise. So do
the possibilities for privatization of certain govern-
ment functions and the encouragement of volunteer-
ism and self-help efforts for solving local problems.
City governments can become more responsive to
their citizens. Many have experimented with the
mini-city hall to make government accessible to the
neighborhood. As the new polycentered metropolis
emerges, the need to decentralize decisionmaking will
intensify. Lying beyond physical decentralization is
the technological facilitation of citizen access and
participation by means of two-way cable television.
Enhanced responsiveness will help a city retain its
base of households and business enterprises.
Already cities have begun to tailor their service to
new clienteles. Examples include day care for
children of working mothers, individualized trans-
portation (as with jitneys) for the elderly, better off-
peak service for part- and flex-time workers on mass
transit systems, police and fire protection keyed to
the needs of the infirm, daytime police surveillance of
neighborhoods in which most people are away at
work, tax and assessment deferals for elderly
homeowners and a readiness to adapt building code
and utility hookup standards to accommodate more
of the new, small households in the existing housing
stock. And the cities that continue to grow must work
to preserve the environmental superiority that helped
them take off originally, as Kirby and Lynch point
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603
out. Finally, as argued by Thompson, cities can more
systematically exploit their comparative advantages
as employment centers by paying more attention to
the functions they could perform and less to the
industries that have traditionally sustained them.
Policy makers must understand that cities that
become little more than reservations for the poor
and powerless will decline fastest. The typical
household, like it or not, seeks a socially homogene-
ous residential environment with a class standing
somewhat above its own. (The exceptions to this
rule are the gentrifiers but they are small in number
and affect few neighborhoods). In the urban game
we might call 'chasing one's "betters"' the end result
is continuous out-migration from the places where
the poor congregate.
Moreover, concentrations of severely disadvan-
taged people engender ever higher levels of disorder
on the streets and in the schools. More flight ensues.
Neighborhood after neighborhood, and eventually
the entire city, may tip. Communities that want to
remain healthy will thus reject policies that concen-
trate the poor in circumscribed places as occurs
when they build high-rise public housing projects or
when they tie public assistance or housing subsidies
to particular residences, Such policies also diminish
the mobility of the poor, the importance of which is
argued by Hughes and by Landis.
What's to be done then? Should City Hall go fight
entropy? Well yes, but not too hard. Mayors,
council members, economic development specialists,
and real estate promoters have, over the past quarter
century, fretted continually about the size and
importance of their own cities. For most of this
period, federal program kibbitzers have commiser-
ated, sometimes actually contributing a few dollars
to forestall decline. Changing technology, shifting
demographics and evolving consumer preferences
have combined to defeat most of their efforts. Which
city waxes, and which wanes, has more to do with
these underlying forces than with government
interventions.
Academic observers tend to concern themselves
with the system of cities and worry about its
viability. They should stop worrying. A system will
survive even if it differs from the system we know. A
much flatter plain with many more, but squatter,
nodes appears to be our future. The approach to
entropy is inevitable, however inconstant, in this
observer's view.