Deconcentration without a ‘Clean Break’

This report reviews recent papers which argue that urbanization trends in the US show a reversal of past patterns. The review suggests that a reversal is not obvious and may simply appear as a result of a statistical artifact: urbanization which has spilled over metropolitan boundaries may simply be more of the same outward growth but would show up as a metropolitan-to-nonmetropolitan growth shift. A new data file for eighteen other developed countries is examined. These data are suitable for computations of various versions of the Hoover index of population concentration. Such calculations suggest that the eighteen countries examined are experiencing more traditional urban outward expansion. This adds to scepticism of the reversal or ‘clean break’ hypothesis.