Towns and national development

Abstract

A preliminary' criticism must "be made: there is too great a tendency to "view the town as an autonomous reality and to devise a solely urban strategy completely different from a rural strategy that is also autonomous; the town thus appears as an end in itself. This narrowness of outlook is found in "both action (the many policies for urban installations) and study (many conferences deal with the urban phenomenon only, sometimes only with a single facet, such as housing, of that phenomenon). In itself the town has no reality and must of necessity be put back into global perspective; study and action must concentrate neither on the town nor on the rural area but on the very content of the relationship between the two, seeing the nation as a whole. We are therefore going to attempt to put the urban phenomenon back in its place in the process of .economic development and in the nation as a whole.