LUTHER GULICK 117 



Twenty years from now, demographers will prove this with statistics. 

 But for the present we may take it on faith. 



There is reason to beheve also that this new pattern of settlement 

 is still in the early stages of its evolution and that we will see not a 

 diminution of this trend but its acceleration. A recent survey in 

 Providence, Rhode Island, for example, showed that 40 per cent of 

 the present city residents hope and think they might move to the 

 suburbs in due course.^ 



The urbanization movement might, it is true, be retarded by in- 

 creasing rigidities in suburban building costs, more rigorous public 

 controls, or a deep national depression. But even with these, the 

 desires and pressures toward dispersion are so strong, pervasive, and 

 general, that we must assume that the new pattern of vast belts of 

 urbanization is here to stay, and that we will see more and more of 

 our people in these great urban complexes over the next generation. 



With urbanization a growing and permanent factor; with more 

 than half of our population already in the metropolitan areas, and 

 more to come; we are brought face to face with the questions: "How 

 does this urbanism affect natural resources?" and "What can we do 

 about it?" 



I shall now try to deal with these two questions in order. 



/. The Relation of Urbanization to Resources 



It is my thesis that urbanization in and of itself, as a pattern of 

 life, increases the dependence of our culture on the natural resources, 

 and that urbanization furthermore makes for a revised scale of con- 

 servation priorities. 



With the facts now at hand I can illustrate only the first part of 

 this thesis; but I think that we can demonstrate the second, which 

 may, after all, turn out to be the more important of these two con- 

 cepts. 



It is not easy to separate the urbanized demands of men and dis- 



^ Robert W. Pratt, Attitudes and Practices of Residents of Greater Providence 

 Concerning Downtown Providence (Providence, R.I.: Greater Providence 

 Chamber of Commerce, 1956). 



