context, economists can hardly be accused, at least since Malthus wrote
one hundred and fifty years ago, of unquestioningly accepting an
increase in total population as economic progress. And so, while much
urban-regional development literature is unabashedly and indis-
criminately expansionist, we view urban growth here, especially to
the degree that it is controllable, as more a strategy than a goal--more
a means than an end.

The fundamental normative assumption here is that the local growth
rate is a lever through which desirable changes in the level, distribu-
tion, and stability of income may be achieved. Much of what we label
urban problems are, in fact, undesirable rates of local growth. To
grow too slowly is to invite chronic unemployment and poverty, the
symptoms of which are slums, blight, and crime. To grow too fast is to
invite the capital shortages that lead to the irritating delays and ex-
pensive congestion that can be just as damaging to the quality of
urban life in the short run, as exemplified in traffic jams, and in the
long run, in crowded schools on half-day sessions. Thus the opening
chapter on urban growth is more than an introduction to urban
growth analysis; it has the more ambitious objective of contributing
to an understanding of the nature of the principal instrument--the
key "controllable variable"--in the hands of local government. For
only by understanding the local growth process can local government
hope to be even partially master of its own destiny.

The level, distribution, and stability of local income are analyzed
in the spatial context of the local labor market and in the analytical
framework of the "export base theory," which relates the income
characteristics of the local economy to the income characteristics of
those local industries that sell outside the local labor market. Simply
said, high-wage export industries produce a high-income town and
stable exports create a stable local economy. Some evidence is offered,
moreover, that specialization in manufacturing lessens the degree of
income inequality, due in part to a relatively narrow range of skills
in mass production work and in part to the egalitarian influence of
trade unions. In sum, the local economy is seen as the lengthened
shadow of its export industries. The power of the exogenous forces
with which the local economy must contend is stressed.

Although the demand for local exports is also emphasized in the
growth chapter--the current rate of growth of an urban area is ex-
plained more by the growth rate of its export sector than any other
single factor--even greater emphasis is placed on the supply side of
growth, the local economy's comparative advantage in land, labor,

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