Melosi 1990 cities technical systems environment

Cities, Technical Systems and the Environment Author(s): Martin V. Melosi Source: Environmental History Review, Vol. 14, No. 1/2, 1989 Conference Papers, Part Two (Spring - Summer, 1990), pp. 45-64 Published by: Forest History Society and American Society for Environmental History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3984626 .

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Cities, Technical Systems and the Environment Martin V. Melosi University of Houston

The "IndustrialCity" and Technology The industrial city was the physical expression of America's 19th century economic revolution. It was a magnet for factoriesand a haven for immigrantsfrom abroad and migrantsfrom the countryside. It was the distributioncenter for a wide variety of goods and a hungry consumerof raw materials.This was a "new city," as Raymond A. Mohl has stated, "big, sprawling, crowded with newcomers, full of opportunity,and full of risk."' Becauseof the profoundconnectionbetween urbanizationand industrialization, urban historians have labeled the years between approximately 1840 and 1920 in the United States as the "era of the industrial city." To many, the period prior to the American IndustrialRevolution is, in turn, often referredto as the "eraof the preindustrial city." Only after 1920-in the so-called "metropolitanera"-does the industrial label fade into the background.2

This periodization owes considerably to the relationship between economicchange and urbangrowth-understood as central to the process of city building. It depends largely on the assumption that changes in economic activity-for example, from commercial to industrial-resulted in a requisite change in urban development.

Few scholars would deny this connection, albeit with the reservation that waves of economic change were not geographically uniform and that economic forces were part-certainly a very large part-of a more complex matrixof issues.3

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Yet the periodization of urban growth in the United States, especially to 1920,continues to reflectan overwhelming focus on economic forces shaping cities. If the industrial city was the tangible expression of the economic revolution of the 19th century, however, it was also the spatial expression of a complementary technological revolution which transformed the physical city in the process of recastingthe nation's economy.4 In his recent synthesis of Americanurbanhistory, EricH. Monkkonenstated that "inboth structureand form the modern Americancity was born in the 19th century, a century of dramatictransformationon practically every front."5 Beginning in the mid 19th century, an arrayof sophisticated technical systems blanketed American cities, irreparablyaltering city building practices and the delivery of services. As Joel A. Tarrand GabrielDupuy persuasively argued, "Although technology and cities have always been interdependent, only since the advent of industrialism in the 19th century have urban technologicalnetworks evolved."6 Technologicalinnovations in transportation,communications,energy, and environmental services (water, waste-water, garbage disposal)-originating in Europeand the United States-were stimuli to economic growth as well as to the physical transformationof the cities. Ironically, whereas industrializationremained local or regional for many years, these new technologicalinnovations were quickly diffused nationally. This suggests that while American cities did not uniformly benefit from the direct economic impact of the Industrial Revolution(or conversely suffer from its results in some Dickensian sense), they were physically modernized-in varying degrees-as a result of new technologies generated in the era.

The city of the industrial era, therefore, was also a technically networked city-a techno-industrialcity in some cases, a techno-commercialcity in others-growing upward and outward in ways never imagined and at a pace that was difficult to comprehend. The sophisticationof civil engineering and public health contributed to more elaborateand more effective water delivery and sanitation systems. Building technology and related infrastructuraldevelopment underwent extraordinarychanges as skyscrapersdotted the skyline and newly paved streets radiated outward from the centralbusiness district. Investmentin and implementationof electricalpower led to majorchanges in transportation,communications,and heating and lighting. Electric

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streetcarssoon replaced horses; telegraph and telephone lines crisscrossedthe skyline; arc lights and incandescentbulbs challenged gaslighting; central stations undercut home and industrial uses of wood and coal. The compact "walkingcity" of the preindustrialage was replaced by an upward rising, mechanized core city with expanding suburbs.

The technically networked city ushered in a remarkable period of modernization with a legacy extending well into the 20th century. Significantly, several of the technical innovations of the 19th century-the automobile, electricalpower networks, and the telephone-were instrumental in transformingtechno-industrial and techno-commercialcities into metropolises, that is, large, increasingly decentralized urban regions.

However, urbaninfrastructure-including its various technicalsystems-was not simply a static backdropfor economic transactions,social mingling, cultural events or political maneuvering, but an interactivepart of urban life.7 City building is primarilya process of city mutating, or as Hans Blumenfeld suggested, "Thecity is a historical process; its image at any given time is merely a cross-sectionthrougha continuous stream."8 Changes or modificationsin urbanstructures,technicalsystems, and various services, may reflect fluctuating aesthetic tastes, but are more often meant to serve practicalends. The demand for more and better housing results in altering existing buildings or changing currentland uses. Laying water mains or extending sewer lines improves neighborhood health conditions or even create new neighborhoods. Paving streets and building highways relieves congestion in a specified area or may simply reroute traffic.

In many cases, the outcomes of change may not always be predictable. Decisions made which alter the physical city may result in increase or decrease accessibilityfrom point to point; encourage the concentrationor deconcentrationof residential, commercialor manufacturingpropertyin a given location;expand or contractgreenspace for recreationaluse; and enhance or diminish the quality of service delivery. Modifications of the infrastructure and related services-barring natural disasters-while most often intentional, produce results that are often unintentional.

The ability to concentratepeople and factories in dense central cities also exacerbated pollution and health threats.

While city-wide sewer systems alleviated sanitation problems of the inner city, they often redirected waste to nearby rivers, lakes and bays, thus creating a new set of health and pollution hazards.

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Electricalpower reduced the individual's dependence on wood and coal, but often increased the use of polluting fuels at the centralized power plants. Electricallines above ground and in street rails posed a danger to humans and animals. Even suburbancommunities,often dependent on the central cities for their services, did not altogether escape the ubiquitous pollution and variety of health problems in the industrial era and beyond.

The use of various technologiesto remedy urbanproblems, therefore,are often immersed in profound contradictions. On the one hand, new technologies-such as the electric streetcaror the telegraph/telephone-have encouraged building density and concentrationof population and economic activity at the urban core.

On the other hand, these same technologies fostered outward residentialand commercialgrowth into the suburbs.In essence, new urban technologies were forces of cohesion and diffusion; their implementation was not automatic, coincidental nor inadvertent.A complex of decision makers-political leaders, technical experts, businessmen, civic groups, and others-played roles in making choices for the cities. Especially in the major cities of the industrial era, the determination to implement new technologies grew out of-as JonPetersonargued-"struggles to surmountthe limitations and failings of older urban arrangementsthat became apparentas a consequenceof big-city growth." These struggles helped to define the environmental agenda and priorities in the delivery of urban services, and led to the implementation of technical systems which "assured the viability and even the special vitality of the new urbanism."9 Decision makers, therefore, presented choices for surmounting the limitations and failures of older urbanarrangementsand often promoted new technologiesas a means to fulfill those choices. A key to understanding the transformationof the physical city-beyond the impacts of the technologies themselves-is determining whose choices prevailed or the degree to which compromises were reached.

Metropolitanism:The DeconcentrationTendency The modern Americancity that emerged out of the IndustrialRevolution was both recipient and disseminator of new technologies, benefactor and victim of their application. Out of the physical changes to the city born in the industrial era flowed a new form and structurefor urbanAmerica. And while the modern metropolis may not resemble the city of the late 19th century upon

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first glance, it has been strongly dependent on the momentum for change brought on by the development of several key technical systems in the industrial era.

There is no simple way to determine the moment when the modern metropolis-or the multi-centered,decentralized citybegan to typify urban growth in the United States. Scholars have proposed several periodization schemes. Several have relied on the term "post-industrialcity" to reflect the transformationof the urbaneconomyfromone dominatedby the productionof goods to one donmnatedby consumptionof goods and services. EricMonkkonen dates the latest era in American city growth from approximately 1930, arguing that "post-Depression"cities "made the innovations of the previous century [especially in providing services] permanent and somewhat invisible, by creatingbureaucraciesto accomplish the new services." In addition, "New federal government actions during the Depression helped dissipate intense local concernsabout cities."10

Thereare obvious merits to Monkkonen'sscheme and that of other scholarswho divide urbanperiods accordingto economic transformationsor changes in municipal functions. However, there is also great merit in utilizing spatial distinctions (with accompanying technological changes), especially in the case of metropolitanism. What is most strikingabout modern urbangrowth is its regionalization, not only the expansion of urban "territory"especially in the annexation-wild Sunbelt-but the trend toward population diffusion as well.

The deconcentrationtendencyaccompaniedby growth along the urban peripherybecame the prominentfeatureof American urbangrowth after 1920. In his book on suburbanization,Robert Fishman asserted that "By the 1920s an interrelatedtechnology of decentralization-of which the automobile was only one elementhad begun to operate, which inexorably loosened the ties that once bound the urbanfunctionsof society to tightly defined cores."11The blossomingof the modernmetropolis,of course,did not occuron January1, 1920,but the trend away from single core cities with dependent suburbswas clearlyunderway.

Technical systems-especially water and waste-water systems, streetcars,central station electrical power, and the telephone/telegraph-contributed to urban cohesion as well as urban growth. New or modified technical systems-especially the extension of water/wastewater systems and other environmental services, the automobile and the airplane, long-distance power

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distribution,and modem telecommunications-encouraged deconcentrationand the territorialexpansiveness of urban regions.

Beginning in the 1920s, but acceleratingafter World War II, changes in the metropolisblurredcity boundaries and undercut the conventional definitions of cities. The demarkationbetween core cities and suburbs was less clear as multi-centeredmetropolitan sprawl resultedin numerous"out-towns"and "no-towns."

Jurisdictionaldisputes intensified as the traditional city, county, state, and federal interests collided with regional entities and special districts. Urbandeconcentrationmade way for more rigorousdiffusion.

RobertFishmancontributedan intriguing refinementto our understandingof modem metropolitangrowth. In Bourgeois Utopias:The Rise and Fall of Suburbia,he contended that, especially since 1945, the suburb had "lost its traditionalmeaning and function as a satellite of the central city." It became part of the so-called "outercity" along the urban periphery which led to the creation of a new kind of decentralizedcity. He christened the new perimeter city the "technoburb"which eventually became part of a multi-centeredregion, the "techno-city." The real basis of this new urban form, Fishmanargued, "is the invisible web of advanced technology and telecommunicationsthat has been substituted for the face-to-face contact and physical movement of older cities."

He added that "Withits highways and advanced communications technology, the new perimetercity can generate urban diversity without urbanconcentration."12 Fishman has made an effective case for the emergence of a new urbanform in the late 20th century,and moves the discussion of the evolution of Americanurbanizationbeyond the limits of "the city versus the suburb"constructwhich has, until recently, made it extremely difficult to evaluate new patternsof urban growth and to distinguishmodernurbanformsfrom past models. His focus on the importanceof modem technology and spatial realignmentsmay not go far enough, however, and reinforcesthe need to examine more deeply the impact of technicalsystems on urban growth-not only in the metropolitanera but at least back into the 19th century. In other words, can the concept of "techno-city"be broadened to include what already has been described as the advent of technoindustrial and techno-commercialcities during the 1840-1920 period?

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A Techno-EnvironmentalApproach to UrbanGrowth It is essential to draw upon the wealth of researchin the social sciences (including history) in evaluating the impact of technicalsystems on 19th and 20th century Americanurbangrowth.

For at least three decades geographers, sociologists, and economists have offered several theories to explain the nature of urban growth and the city-building process. More recently, historians have added essential empirical studies on the development of infrastructureand city services, and-along with political scientists-on the key decision makers involved in setting municipal priorities.

Although it is prematureto talk about a new unified theory of urban growth-a techno-environmentaltheory if you will, it would be valuable to explore more deeply the development and environmentalimplications of technicalsystems as forces for urban growth, especially by blending concepts of urbanecology, systems analysis, and decision-making theory.'3 This process might begin with two sets of hypotheses worthy of further consideration: (1) Technical systems shaped the American urban infrastructurein the 19th and 20th centuries and provide an effective way to understand the growth of the physical city, because they have an internal order which the citybuilding process as a whole lacked in the United States.

These technical systems were quickly diffused nationally, unlike industrialization which remained local or regional for many years.

(2) The implementationof new urbantechnologieswere not automatic, coincidental nor inadvertent,but intentional effortsby decision makers to confrontexisting problems faced by cities as they grew upward and outward in the 19th and 20th centuries. In several cases these new technologies accomplished their goal-sewers removed wastes from the central city and improved health, for example. However, unanticipatedconsequences-or multiple feedbacks-often resulted, i.e., downstream pollution ensued from sewage redirectedfrom the central city to outlying watercourses.

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The Nature of the Urban Environment The very existence of cities has produced majorimpacts on the naturalenvironment. As one geographernoted, "Urbanareas are majormodifiers of the earth's environment. Their existence can influence the course of basic physical processes, such as the hydraulic cycle."'4 Forexample, urbanizationremoves much of the filtering capacity of soil and rapidly channels precipitation into available watercourses-thus encouraging flooding. Urbanization also affects the atmosphere, not only with increased pollutants, but also by creating a "heat island," where temperaturesare greater than the surroundingarea. As Thomas R. Detwyler and Melvin G. Marcus noted, "...the city-population together with environment-is a relatively new kind of ecosystem on the face of the earth."'5 On the broadest level, therefore, the implementation of urbantechnologiesneeds to be understoodin termsof their physical impacts on the city and on urbanites themselves.

The theoretical origins of the ecological approach to study social and spatial organizationcan be traced to 19th century concepts and principlesconceived by ecologists. Some sociologists, social workers and philosophers at the time embraced ecological notions because they took exception with the romanticview of cities as "unnatural"or were unwilling to accept the extreme opposite view that cities functioned literally as organisms or persons. In 1916RobertE. Parkwrote a seminal paper entitled, "Thecity: suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the urban environment." Parkand his students at the University of Chicago, drawing on the principles of plant and animal ecology, defined the city as primarily a natural environment. This theory was criticized as simplistic, especially by those who claimed that socioculturalfactorswere the primarysources of change.

Nonetheless, the ecological approach came closer than any other to offering a systematic theory of urbanism.'6 In 1950, Amos Hawley's HumanEcology:A Theoryof CommunityStructureresurrected the ecological approach in the field of sociology which had become popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s,and had a mnajor impact on the development of both sociology and geography. The 1950s also saw the ecological approach reemerging in urban geography, especially through the formulation of location theory.'7 Accordingto geographersBrianJ. L. Berryand JohnD. Kasarda,"Thecentral problem of contemporaryecological inquiry

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is understanding how a population organizes itself in adapting to a constantly changing yet restrictingenvironment." The four "referencevariables"in addressing this problem are population, organization,environment,and technology. For the urban geographer, the key issue is "How and why perceptionsof the urban environment produce locational and other choices that reinforce (or change) the spatial processes that are responsible for maintaining (or changing) the urbanenvironment."18 For an examination of the impact of technical systems, the ecological approach has broad application as context as opposed to the more narrow-but central-role in determining locational choices and evaluating land uses. Takingaccountof the four variables stated above helps to establish an urban profile for cities in their various stages of growth. In this case, however, technology should be treated as the key variable in the urban environment insofar as it helps to explain changes in the form and structureof the physical city, as well as impacts on health and the quality of urban life.

Since the mid-1970s, "a requiem had been written for most of the overly ambitious large-scalemodels of urban development that were popular in the 1960s,"geographer LarryBournehas noted.19 And while over-archingmodels in urbanecology have tried to accomplish too much, efforts to define the city in natural terms asserts the value of thinking of cities as wholes, if not as intricatelydesigned organisms. One scholar noted, for instance, that "as the natural world is modified for human use, cities are a supreme form of modificationby humans or the forces they generate." Another noted that a city or a town is a "transformed combination of resources."20Both definitions speak directly to the central role of decision making in creating the physical city, rather than attributingurban development to some abstractecological, societal or mechanistic force.

Centralplace theory is less useful perse as an organizing principle, largely because it is more applicable for understanding intra-urbanas opposed to inter-urbansystems.2' However, insofar as central place theory, in particular,and location theory, in general, helps to distinguish between development at the core as opposed to the periphery of cities, it does offer guidance for understandingurbangrowth.

An importantquestion to keep in mind is the degree to which the intensity of land use-especially for technical systemsdeclines with distance from the urban core or is more uniformin all

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directions.22 In several Thunen-type models, the center is treated as the economic focus of production and marketingactivity. Should it be assumed that technical systems find their primary focus-and utility-at the urban core and dissipate as the city moves outward into the hinterland? This, of course, is dependent on the system itself, modifications of the system, and/or the technical sophistication of the system. For example, the low-voltage direct current(DC) centralstation power system which Thomas Edison implemented in the 1880scould only serve the dense innercity (in this case lower Manhattan). With the development of the highvoltage alternatingcurrent(AC) system, electricalpower could be efficiently transmitted over greater distances.

A related question is the degree to which technical systems influence urban growth and enhance the organizationalfunctions of the central city. Theories of ecological expansion and segmental growth help to focus on the relationshipbetween technology and the organization of cities. RoderickD. McKenzie introduced the theory of ecological expansion in 1933, which was further developed by his student, Amos Hawley. The theory was meant to explain the relationship between population size and urban organizational structure.

According to the theory, population growth along the periphery of an urban area will be matched with an increase in organizational functions at the core to insure stability in the expanded system. This patternof growth produces a core city and a series of dependent suburbs. Technology,especially in the form of modern transportation,becomes a key variable in this theory because it reduces "the friction of space," which allows the core to retain control over its periphery.

By contrast, the theory of segmental growth posits that the numberof segmentalunits in an area increasesas a functionof population distribution, given that the friction of space is high, that is, no efficient means of transportation(or communicationsfor that matter) exists. In this case, growth occurs primarily through increasesin population density, not expansion. The growth of preindustrialcities is viewed as segmental growth, for example; the growth of the techno-industrialor techno-commercialcities seems to fit the pattern of ecological expansion. (However, the development of multi-centered,low density metropolises bring into question the ability of the central city-or core city-to maintain its centripetal power over the periphery.)23

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The theories of ecological expansion and segmental growth give technology-especially transportation-a central role in the organization and growth of cities. The work of Sam Bass Warner and other scholars have provided substantial historical evidence about the impact of technology on urban growth.24 However, it will be useful to determine to what degree transportation-and other technical systems-played an important role in the organizational functions of cities. If the theories are valid, an additional question is: To what degree did urbandecision makersunderstandthe organizational functions attributed to technical systems?25 Systems Analysis as a Tool In 1964, Brian J. L. Berry published an influential article entitled, "Cities as Systems within Systems of Cities."26Among other things, he argued that "cities are systems susceptible of the same kinds of analysis as other systems and characterizedby the same generalizations, constructs,and models."27 "Itis clear,"he added, "that cities may be considered as systems-entities comprising interacting,interdependentparts. They may be studied at a variety of levels, structural,functional, and dynamic, and they may be partitioned into a variety of subsystems."28 As a way of applying an ecological approach to cities, the idea of a city as a system within a system of cities offered a powerful research approach, especially for model building. But the overarching systems models which became popular in the 1960s,Bournenoted above, were criticized in the 1970sas "too formal and restrictive."29Bourne also stated that applying a systems approach to urban spatial structuremight focus attentionon the interrelationships which are most easily measured-or those which offer simplistic analogies-and fit "most conveniently" into the systems framework.30Since cities are strongly influenced by a range of external forces, therefore,it is best to think of them as "open systems" which departs from the kind of thinking that would make them insular or self-contained.3' With some modification and rethinking, the systems approach to cities pioneered by scholars like Berry has had a rebirthin the 1980s and has some obvious potential as a way of viewing the urbanizationprocess. It is well to keep in mind Seymour Mandelbaum'scaveat: "Systems thinking is formally holistic but it need not be catholic."32Being so bold as to modify some of Mandelbaum'sthinking, I would add that cities may be

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regardedin the most generous terms as open-systems,but within cities there are systems which can usefully be designated as "city" or "urban"and offer insights about city building, growth and the urbanenvironmentin general.33 Urban technical systems differ from technical networks insofar as networks may simply represent the linking of a single technology. For example, a telegraph network may consist of sending and receivingequipment,transmissionlines, and a power source. A communicationsystem, on the other hand, can incorporate the telegraph network, but may also include telephones, mail couriersand other conveyancesof messages. A transportation system in the late 19th century, as another example, would include streetcars,railroads, horse-drawn carriages, as well as roadbeds, track, stables, parking facilities. Whereas a late 20th century transportationsystem incorporatesautomobiles, trucks, superhighways, airplanes, airports and more. Part of a system might also include what Mumfordreferredto as the "underground city"-the water main and the sewer, the gas main and the electric main, the undergroundrailroad. Or a system might take on the role of Mumford's "invisiblecity"-such as the electric grid which not only links places, but serves and furthers several different processes.34 In the case of every technical system, essential components need not be material,but administrativeentities mustering the technology-such as utilities, tractioncompanies, and municipal governments; technical expertise;financial backing;and even the consumers who utilize the service. "[Slystemsinvolve far more than the so-called hardware, devices, machines and processes, and the transportation,communication,and informationnetworks that interconnectthem,"ThomasP. Hughes argued. "Suchsystems consist also of people and organizations."35Thus while technology is critical to city building, it is the human input into the systems that is crucialto urbandevelopment. As such, the systems-no matterhow large or consolidated they are-do not become autonomous, but exist within limits imposed by the available technology, the hand of their operators,and the use put to them by their users.

Studying technical systems, nonetheless, offers a useful way to explore the physical evolution of cities and the environmentalimpactof technology on urbangrowth from a historical vantage point. Attention paid to the change in technical systems over time may provide importantinsights into the

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physical transformationof cities, especially since the emergence of techno-industrialand techno-commercialcities in the 19th century.

However, many questions need to be addressed in utilizing such an approach. Urban technicalsystems are not well understood, or even well defined as to their form and function, in the existing literature. The salient issues are: (1) To what degree did the application of new technologies lead to the development of technical systems? Did technicalsystems bring about normativeperiods of technology, that is, the success of a technology being determined by its adaptation to the needs of the whole citizenry?

(2) How did the development of systems influence the form and function of the infrastructurefrom the initial phase of constructionto more recenttimes?

(3) Did all technical systems exhibit centralizing tendencies in concentratingcity populations?decentralizing tendencies?

(4) Did the breakdown of centralized technical systems make cities vulnerable to public health or environmental crises? Could there be economic, social, or political repercussions?

(5) What were the possible environmental impacts of these systems? Did the impacts change over time as the systems evolved?

(6) Was the establishment of new technical systems the result of random,piecemealactionsor the consequenceof more careful planning? And who made the decisions?

(7) Within a given timeframe, did a particular technical system (or group of systems) play a dominant role in influencing growth? affecting environmentalconditions in the cities?

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(8) To what degree were technical systems transferredfrom one city to the other? to what end? strictly utilitarian? comrnmercial?36 Decision Making and TechnicalSystems As has been stated in several places above, it was not the technical imperatives alone that governed the impact of these systems on the urbanenvironment. Decision making of key interest groups, who wielded political power, devised fiscal policy, made business decisions, and applied social pressure were catalysts for change in the 19th and 20th century cities.

A fundamentalbasis for defining the environmentalagenda of the city was built upon the common need for transportation, communications,energy and environmentalservices. To many, the infrastructure,various technical systems, and environmental services representedpublicgoodsand thus required municipal-and later state and federal-commitments to increased public spending.

An importantissue to consider is the degree to which the recognitionof urbantechnologiesas public goods was simply a pragmaticconcernor linked to some broaderenvironmental consciousness. If the latter,then modern environmentalismis more fundamentally city-based than we have come to believeparticularlyin the case of pollution abatement and several quality-of-life issues.

To those in the "growthbusiness"-utility companies, traction companies, realtors-investment in the physical city emphasized privategain. One of the strongest statements of this view can be found in the work of David Harvey. "[U]rbanismand the circuit of speculative capital," he argued, "are intimately related to each other."37According to Harvey's Marxianmodel, capitalists overinvest in labor-saving manufacturingtechnology, but underinvestin urbaninfrastructure.Thus there is excess capital accumulation in the former, and capital shortages in the latter-at least relative to their own and the public's need. Harvey further argued that market forces will cause capitalists to, in turn, overinvest in urbaninfrastructure,and the overinvestment ties capitalists to outmoded technologies.m Christine Rosen has clearly observed that what the Marxistanalysis has in common with classical economic analysis is "the underlying assumption that market factors ultimately determine the patterns and problems of infrastructural development in American cities."39

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Accounting for both public and privateinputs into the urban decision making process, Alan Anderson argued that the provision of urban services "switchedback and forth between the public and private sectors as technology and marketschanged."40A clear pattern of such oscillation is difficult to establish, however.

Suffice it to say that public and private ends are not always mutually exclusive, and the decision making environmentwas never as bi-polar as Anderson or Harvey may suggest. Nonetheless, the development and maintenance of a well-functioning physical city was going to be determinedby public and privateinputssometimes in concert,and sometimes in competition-not by a singular elite nor by the autonomy of technologicalforces.

It is useful, therefore,to focus on decision making as a collective act, rather than to simply pit government against business, or bosses against reformers. Recent historicalscholarship in focusing on political power offers several useful guidelines for examining decision making with respect to urbantechnicalsystems.

TerrenceMcDonald has been an outspoken criticof the "functionalist"analysis of cities which makes the assumption that social institutions such as urban government and urbanpolitical regimes "persistand develop because they fulfill certain functions, either for urban society as a whole or for diverse subgroups of that society... Therefore,they provide no clues about which variables are more and which are less important to their arguments."41 McDonald is not attacking functionalism perse. "Theproblem with a functionalist framework,"he concluded, "is not that it is necessarily wrong, but that its assumptions (e.g., that functions are fulfilled) are frequently unexamined, and that its framework (i.e., that some variables influence some other variables) is unclear."42 McDonald's criticism is a valuable cautionarynote for the study of the impact of technical systems. It is not enough to identify the decision makers and their primary interests, however.

It is necessary to determine how they wielded power and to what end, and to avoid viewing local government "asa process that was automatic, rather conflict-free, and perhaps even wholly beneficent."43This requires holding the ecological approach to cities in check, that is, avoiding an organic interpretationof city growth and development, and viewing the implementationof technical systems as derivative of the decision-makingprocess. In doing so it is important to determine the intent of the decision makers and the degree to which their intent was manifest in the resulting systems-or if they thought in terms of systems at all.

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The work of David Hammackand ChristineRosen can be particularlyuseful in studying decision making with respect to technical systems. Hammack's argument that political power in turn-of-the-centuryNew Yorkwas concentrated"notin one or two but in several distinct economic, social, and political elites" helps to avoid a simplistic interpretationof public versus private interests. "Intheir efforts to influence decisions," Hammack added, "these elites engaged in a shifting complex of alliances, bargained with one another,and sometimes made importantconcessions to secure the support of other elites and of wider publics."44 Rosen's discussion of "frictions"in both the supply and demand sides of infrastructuraldevelopment-has good applicability to the questions surrounding technical systems. In her book, The Limits of Power:GreatFires and the Processof City Growthin America,45she uses the cities of Chicago, Baltimore, and Boston-after their great fires-as laboratories for examining the city building (or rebuilding)process. On the demand side of infrastructuredevelopment, Rosen noted, marketmechanisms collapsed because individuals were unwilling to pay for infrastructuresvoluntarily, especially infrastructuresthat others would use without paying for them. On the supply side, the market collapsed because producers-who normally held a monopoly over infrastructuraldevelopment-could ignore the demands of its captive market. Little wonder that service was most readily provided to well-to-do neighborhoods and business areas where the rewards were greatest.

Key questions worth pursuing about the role of decisions makers in relation to the development and impact of urban technical systems include: (1) Who were the primary decision makers? politicians? bureaucrats?business leaders? engineers?civic leaders?

Was there a technological decision-making body?

(2) What motivated decision making and who participated in the decisions to implement key technologies? Did complex interest-grouppolitics sometime ignore the technology in favor of some short-termgain?

(3) To what degree was the implementationof new urban technologies perceived as the institution of a "system"?

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(4) To what degree did public versus private interests influence decision making?

(5) How did advocates of new urbantechnology-be it a manufactureror a municipal engineer-act as a "carrier"of that technology or some technicalknowledge from city to city?

(6) Were environmental strategies consistent from city to city? What variables helped to define those strategies?

The use of technicalsystems as a way of studying the urban environment is as much an intellectualexercise as a tangible researchstrategy. Thinkingin terms of urbansystems, consequently, raises as many questions as it answers. But in raisingquestions about the urban experience, the study of technicalsystems provides a valuable tool for understanding the profound physical transformationof American cities in the 19th and 20th centuries, the degree to which those changes influenced patterns of growth, and how net outcomes of those technicalsystems affected the lives of the people themselves.

The author wishes to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Energy Laboratory, University of Houston, for their generous financial support.

1Raymond A. Mohl, The New City: Urban America in the Industrial Age, 1960-1920 (Arlington Heights, IL, 1985), p. 2.

2However, it is not uncommon to encounter the term "post-industrial" city in describing the most recent period of urban development. For a discussion of the conventional periodization of American urban history, see Sam Bass Warner, The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City (New York, 1972). For a slight variation on this periodization, see David R Goldfield and Blaine A. Brownell, Urban America: From Downtown to No Town (Boston, 1979).

3For example, Philip M. Hauser suggested that "the emergence and development of the city was necessarily a function of four factors: (1) the size of the total population; (2) the control of natural environment; (3) technological development; and (4) developments in social organization." See Hauser, "Urbanization: An Overview," in Philip M. Hauser and Leo F. Schnore, eds., The Study of Urbanization (New York, 1965), P. 1.

4Technology as a key variable in the growth and development of cities is not a new idea, of course. The work of Lewis Mumford, especially, promoted in grand terms the centrality of technology to the evolution of cities. Inspired by the work of Scottish city planner Patrick Geddes, Mumford divided industrial civilization into three "over-lapping and interpenetrating" phaseseotechnic, paleotechnic, and neotechnic-which incorporated a parallel evolution of cities as well.

See Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York, 1934) and The City in History (New York, 1961); Geddes, Cities in Evolution (New York, 1968). See also Gideon Sjoberg, 'Theory and Research in Urban Sociology," in Hauser and Schnore, eds., The Study of Urbanization, pp. 17071.

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5Eric H. Monkkonen,AmericaBecomeUrban: The Development of U.S. Cities & Towns,17801980(Berkeley,1988),p. 4.

6Joel A. Tarr and GabrielDupuy, Technologyand the Rise of the NetworkedCity in Europeand America(Philadelphia,1988),pp. xiii. See also Josef W. Konvitz, TheUrbanMilennium: The City-BuildingProcessfromthe EarlyMiddleAges to the Present(Carbondale,IL, 1985). Philip Hauserstated more than25 years ago that 'There is much about the urbanplant thatwe do not yet understand.' Hauser, "Urbanization:An Overview,"in Hauserand Schnore,ed., TheStudy of Urbanization, pp. 16-17. Fortunately,scholarshipon the city and technologyhas blossomedin the last decade or so, as noted especiallyin two issues of the Journalof UrbanHistory-volume 5 (May,1979),edited by JoelA. Tarrarkivolume 14 (November,1987),edited by Tarrand MarkH. Rose-devoted exclusivelyto the topic, and in Joel A. TarrandJosefW. Konvitz,"Patternsin the in HowardGillette,Jr.and ZaneL. Miller,eds., Developmentof the UrbanInfrastructure," AmericanUrbanism:A Historiographical Review(New York,1987),pp. 195-226. Also, since 1987 TempleUniversityPresshas publisheda monographseriesentitled'Technologyand Urban Growth."

7JoelA. Tarrhas noted thatthe infrastructureprovides the vital technological"sinews"of a city: roads and bridges,water and waste-waterlines, disposal facilities,power systems, communicationsnetworks,and buildings. And ChristineMeisnerRosenhas added to that definitionby arguingthatinfrastructuredevelopmentsharedthe qualitiesof "capital intensiveness,land extensiveness,and monopolisticproduction.' See Tarrand Dupuy, Technologyand the Rise of the NetworkedCity in Europeand America,p. xiii; Rosen, "Infrastructural Improvementin NineteenthCenturyCities: A ConceptualFrameworkand Cases,"Journalof UrbanHistory12 (May, 1986):222-23. The word "infrastructure,'according to JosefKonvitz,probablyappearedin printfor the first time in 1875,in French. Its meaningwas morenarrowly"thefoundationof a buildingor engineeringwork,' but over time acquired additionalmeanings "referringto the permanentground installationsof a mobile operationfor armiesor airplanes,and to the basicframeworkof social and economicorganizationsand systems.' He added that"'Unlikepublicworks,whichit subsumes,the term 'infrastructure' is at once a descriptionof physicalassets and of theireconomic,social,and politicalrole." See Konvitz, The UrbanMillennium,p. 131.

8HansBlumenfeld,"Continuityand Changein UrbanForm,"in LarryS. Bourne,ed., Internal Structureof the City: Readingson UrbanForm,Growth,and Policy(New York,1982),p. 51. See also Kevin Lynch, TheImageof the City (Cambridge,Mass., 1960);Lynch, A TheoryofGoodCity Form(Cambridge,Mass., 1981).

9JonPeterson,"Environmentand Technologyin the GreatCity Eraof AmericanHistory,"Journal of UrbanHistory8 (May, 1982): 344. l0Monkkonen, AmericaBecomesUrban,pp. 5-6. See also "City,' InternationalEncyclopedia of the SocialSciencesv. 2 (1968),pp. 457-58,466.

11RobertFishman, BourgeoisUtopias:TheRiseand Fallof Suburbia(New York, 1987),p. 16.

12Fishman,BourgeoisUtopias,pp. 16-17, 182-207.

13Fromthe vantagepoint of the historian,this also inplies drawingupon the fields of urbanand environmentalhistoryand the historyof technology.

Johnston,TheAmericanUrbanSystem,pp. 304-05.

15Detwylerand Marcus,eds., Urbanization and Environment, p. 10. See also Johnston,7he AmericanUrbanSystem,p. 305;Ian Douglas,The UrbanEnvironment (London,1983);BrianJ. L. Berry, UrbanEnvironmental Management:Planningfor PollutionControl(Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1974).

16SeePaul Wheatley, TheConceptof Urbanism,"in PeterJ.Ucko,RuthTnngham,and G.W. Dimbleby,eds., Man,Settlementand Urbanism(Cambridge,MA, 1972),pp. 606-07;Gideon Sjoberg,'The Modern City,' in International Encyclopedia of the SocialSciencesv. 2 (1968),pp.

455-56.

17BrianJ. L. Berryand John D. Kasarda,Contemporary UrbanEcology(New York,1977),pp.

3012.

18Ibid.,pp. 12 16.

19Bourne,ed., InternalStructureof theCity,p. 12. See also RichardJ. Chorleyand Peter Haggett, eds., Modelsin Geography (London,1967);BrianJ. L. Berryand FrankE. Horton, Perspectiveson UrbanSystems(Englewood Cuffs, NJ, 1970),p. 14.

Geographic

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2OSpencerW. Havlick, TheUrbanOrganism(New York,1974),p. 12. See also Johnston,The AmericanUrbanSystem,pp. 304-05;Detwyler and Marcus,eds., Urbanizationand Environment,

pi10.

Centralplace theory "outlinesthe logic of systems of centralplaces,focusingparticularlyupon the numbers,sizes, activities,and spatialdistributionof such places and theirassociatedregions."

See "CentralPlace,"InternationalEncyclopedia of the SocialSciencesv. 2 (New York,1968),p.

365-70. See also Keith 0. Beavon, CentralPlaceTheory:A Reinterpretation (London,1977),pp.

2, 139-42;Harold Carter,TheStudyof RubanGeography (London,1981;rev. ed.), pp. 60-74,138; RaymondL. Fales and Leon N. Moses, 'Land-UseTheoryand the SpatialStructureof the Nineteenth-CenturyCity," Papersof the RegionalScienceAssociation28 (1972): 49, 51, 53; Brian J. L. Berry,"InternalStructureof the City,"in Kent P. Schwirian,Comparative UrbanStructures: Studiesin the Ecologyof Cities(Lexington,MA, 1974),p. 227.

22SeeTarrand Konvitz,"Tatternsin the Developmentof the UrbanInfrastructure," pp. 203-06.

23Fora discussionof the theoriesof ecologicalexpansionand segmentalgrowth,see JohnD. Kasarda,'The Theoryof EcologicalExpansion: An EmpiricalTest,' SocialForces51 (December, 1972): 165-75;Stephen D. Webb, "SegmentalUrbanGrowth: Some Cross-NationalEvidence," Sociologyand SocialResearch58 (uly, 1974): 387-91. See also Johnston,TheAmericanUrban System,pp. 327, 332;MarkLaGory,"TwentiethCenturyUrbanGrowth: An Ecological Approach,"Sociological Focus12 (August, 1979): 187;Amos H. Hawley, HumanEcology:A Theoryof CommunityStructure(New York,1950),pp. 402-03;JamesL. Spatesand JohnJ. Macionis,TheSociologyofCities(Belmont,CA, 1987),pp. 160-61;Hall H. Winsborough,"City Growth and Cty Structure,"Journalof RegionalScience4 (1962): 48; Alan WalterSteiss, Urban SystemsDynamics(Lexington,MA, 1974),221;RichardA. Walker,"TheTransformationof Urban Structurein the NineteenthCenturyand the Beginningsof Suburbanization," in KevinR. Cox, ed., Urbanization and Conflictin MarketSocieties(Chicago, 1978),p. 167;D. I. Scargill,The Formof Cities(New York,1979),p. 12.

24Sam Bass Warner,StreetcarSuburbs:TheProcessof Growthin Boston,1870-1900(New York, 1962).

2Ln a recentlecture,DonaldWorsterbroughtto my attentionthe significantshift in thinking away from an ecology of orderto an ecology of chaos-or randomness. Previousnotions of the ecosystemstress the importanceof naturemoving towardorderand harmony. In the newly emergingscience of chaos,changegoes on forever,never reachinga point of stability,i.e., nature is unpredictable,not rationaL Whileit is prematureto know how extensivelythe emergingscienceof chaoswill influencesocial theory,it is likely to modify or even furtherunderminethe ecologicalapproachto the city. Froma more optinistic vantagepoint, however,it should offersome creative intellectualopportunitiesto rethinkthe processof urbanization-or at least to furtherstir the pot.

It is not too early to begin thinkingabouta theoryof randomnessfor the processof urbangrowth.

Donald Worster'sNature'sEconomy:A Historyof EcologicalIdeas(New York,1977)is a good departurepoint for understandinghow ecology cameto be a majorinfluenceon our perceptionof naturein modern times. For an overview of the science of chaos,see JamesCleick,Chaos: Makinga New Science(New York, 1987).

26BrianJ. L. Berry,"Citiesas Systems within Systems of Cities,"RegionalScienceAssociation Papers13 (1964): 147-163.Fora generaldiscussionof systems analysis,see AnatolRapoport, "GeneralSystems Theory,"InternationalEncyclopedia of the SocialSciencesv. 15 (1968),pp. 45258.

271bid.,p. 158.

28lbid.,pp. 160-61.

29Bourne,ed., InternalStructureof the City,p. 29.

30(bid.,pp. 29-35. Fora discussionof citiesas "livingsystems"-in a socialcontextespeciallysee Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots:A Cross-Cultural Theoryof UrbanSocial Movements(London,1983),p. xv.

31See Detwyler and Marcus,eds., Urbanizationand Environment, pp. 11-13;Douglas, The UrbanEnvironment, pp. 5, 7, 15. See also JackW. Lapatra,Applyingthe SystemsApproachto UrbanDevelopment (Stroudsburg,PA, 1973),p. 3.

32SeymourJ. Mandelbaum,'ThinkingAbout Citiesas Systems: Reflectionson the Historyof an Idea,"Journalof UrbanHistory11 (February,1985): 142.

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33Mandelbaum's own quote is "The nominalist character of the systems approach justifies (some may say, exacerbates) the ambiguity at the core of urban historiography. Cities are not systems; some systems are usefully designated as city or urban. There is no semantic rule dearly specifying which systems fit within the capacious urban rubric."

34Mumford, The City in History, pp. 478-80, 563-67.

35Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970 (New York, 1989), p. 3. See also Hughes, 'The Evolution of Large Technological Systems," in Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, MA, 1987), p. 51; Bernward Joerges, 'Large Technical Systems: Concepts and Issues," in Renate Mayntz and Thomas P. Hughes, eds., ne Development of Large Technical Systems (Boulder, CO, 1988), pp. 9-36.

36For a discussion of public sector technology transfer, see Martin V. Melosi, 'Technology Diffusion and Refuse Disposal: The Case of the British Destructor," in Tarr and Dupuy, eds., Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America, pp. 207-26. An additional important query about the impact of technical systems is raised in Gabriel Dupuy's "Les Reseaux Techniques Sont-ils Des Reseaux Territoriaux?" L'Espace Geographiqueno. 3 (1987): 175-184, in which he raised the question, Are infrastructure networks territorial networks?

37David Harvey, Social Justice and the city (Baltimore, 1973), p. 313.

38See Harvey, Social Justice and the City and The Urbanization of Capital: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization (Baltimore, 1985). See also K. William Kapp, The Social Costs of Private Enterprise (Cambridge, MA, 1950).

39Rosen, "Infrastructural Improvement in Nineteenth-Century Cities," pp. 217-18.

40Alan D. Anderson, The Origin and Resolution of the Urban Crisis: Baltimore, 1890-1930 (Baltimore, 1977), p. 2.

41Terrence J. McDonald, The Parameters of Urban Fiscal Policy: Socioeconomic Change and Political Culture in San Francisco, 1860-1906 (Berkeley, 1986), pp. 2-3 42Ibid., p. 3 43Ibid., pp. 12-13. See also Monkkonen, America Becomes Urban, pp. 3. See also pp. 158-81, in which he discusses the decision-making process with respect to the promotion of the automobile as a primary urban transportation form.

44See David C. Hammack, Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1982).

45Cambridge, MA, 1986. For a good perspective on decision making and service delivery, see Harold L. Platt, City Building in the New South: The Growth of Public Services in Houston, Texas, 1830-1915 (Philadelphia, 1983).

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