1 22 The City's Challenge in Resource Use 



tial and rises directly with urbanization. The larger the city complex, 

 the higher the average income.^ 



Since savings ratios are actually higher in the rural regions for 

 comparable income levels, rising with each level,'^ it would appear 

 that metropolitan populations spend many more consumer dollars 

 than the comparable nonmetropolitan populations. This is borne out 

 by such cost-of-living computations, market analyses, and other con- 

 sumer statistics as we have.^ 



How many of these added dollars earned and spent go into the 

 consumption of national resources? We do not know on a compre- 

 hensive basis, and the ratios vary from one commodity or service to 

 another. But where the personal income and expenditure is 50 per 

 cent or 90 per cent higher, the drain on resources cannot be far be- 

 hind, even though part of the higher costs go — especially for the 

 upper income groups — into quality workmanship and services rather 

 than into added raw materials, food and energy resources. With every 

 possible allowance, however, for these divergencies, the fact remains 

 that people who live in an urbanized pattern make a greater drain 

 on resources than the same number of people hving in a rural pat- 

 tern. This is, no doubt, one of the reasons for the current nation- 

 wide climb in per capita consumption. It is, in part, directly related 

 to urbanization. 



In making these comparisons we need also to remember that there 

 are some economies of scale which emerge when men live in con- 

 gested regions. There is, for example, far less paved highway per 

 family in New York City than there is in Greensboro, Vermont, and 

 the amount of electric wiring and of lead, iron, copper, and ceramic 

 piping and conduits in a rural or suburban area per capita will 



^ Otis D. Duncan and Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Social Characteristics of Urban 

 and Rural Communities, 1950 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1956), Chap. 

 9; Herman P. Miller, Income of the American People (New York: John Wiley 

 & Sons, 1955), Chap. 4; Nathan Koffsky, "Farm and Urban Purchasing Power" 

 in National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 

 XI, 1949. 



■^ Dorothy S. Brady and Rose D. Friedman, "Savings and the Income Dis- 

 tribution," in National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and 

 Wealth, Vol. X, 1947. 



8 D. J. Bogue, The Structure of the Metropolitan Community (Ann Arbor: 

 University of Michigan, 1949). 



