Nucleated Suburbanisation in a Competitive Market Economy

Some aspects of the feasibility of encouraging nucleated suburbanization without resorting to legislative control are discussed. Three alternative ways have been proposed to encourage voluntary nucleated suburbanization: (1) by providing direct subsidies to current land users in green areas (as opposed to development areas) sufficient to help them avoid being displaced by potential Ur users, (2) by making Ur development in green areas unattractive by designing regional servicing schemes, such as limited access roads, which discriminate in favor of the nucleated development areas, & (3) by creating viable new suburban centers sufficiently far from other areas in the metropolitan region to ensure the opening up on intervening green areas. Economic issues related to the third alternative are explored. A method of systematic evaluation for the alternatives is provided by a spatial equilibrium framework, which is then used to generate interesting marginal conditions governing the viability of alternative nonlegislative approaches. An assessment of the viability of this approach is then presented. Two models are described: (A) the job decentralization model, in which the marginal cost of job commuting exceeds the maginal cost of travel to the central city for acquisition of goods & services, & (B) the suburban amenity provision model, in which the marginal cost of job commuting is between the marginal costs of travel to the suburban amenity as measured from city & suburban centers, respectively. These are the conditions under which nucleated suburbanization is possible. 7 Figures. G. Simpson.