Regional and urban studies

Regional and urban planning is a comparatively new and rapidly expanding field for economists and other social scientists. It is no longer solely a matter of physical planning but rather a subject of multi discipline concern. While this new approach to planning is gradually recognizing that the social scientist has a contribution to make, the nature of the contribution is not clearly formulated. Col laboration among the disciplines is in its early stages; each still learning to understand the other: the object of this symposium is to assist this learning.

The theme of this book is the contribution of the social scientist to the analysis of planning problems. The editors trace the evolution of planning thought, in both physical planning and social science, resulting in the present tentative steps towards collaboration. Within this perspective the authors of the following studies describe their approach to specific planning problems concerned with industry, employment projection, the labour market, popu lation projection, housing and transport. The uses and limitations of techniques such as the regional multiplier and regional input-output analysis are discussed, as is also the methodology of the new approach to planning. The concluding chapter is a case study of urban renewal. The authors have tried to explain their analyses and techniques in terms which can be understood by the non-specialist.

The contributors are all members or former members of the Departments of Political Economy and Social and Economic Research of Glasgow University. Most of them have worked with physical planners in preparing regional and urban plans. Their chapters are, therefore, based on practical experience.

In addition to participating in these recent planning surveys, Sarah C. Orr, Senior Lecturer in Political Economy, Glasgow, was a member of the staff which prepared one of the earliest regional 'plans, that for the Clyde Valley Region, in 1946. J. B. Cullingworth is now Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, Birmingham, and author of Town and Country Planning In England and Wales and Housing and Local Government.