21 
(2) Sources of reinforcement.—To qualify as a potential growth point the com- 
munity or area should possess additional sources of strength. Superior means of 
communication, a major highway passing through the area, an intersection of 
interstate highways and toll roads, financial institutions, recreational and cul- 
tural attractions, a good publie school system, freight terminals, available land 
for industrial parks, and many other factors provide reinforcement to the growth 
point. The traditional locational considerations, such as availability of raw ma- 
terials, nearness to markets, access to skilled labor, and agglomerative advan- 
tages due to urbanization, are also relevant and will provide some communities 
with a higher than average potential for growth. 
(3) Possibilities of a breakthrough.—There should be some potential in the area 
for a major breakthrough into rapid regional growth. Expansion in the volume 
of total opportunities must occur if steady growth is to be maintained. Aggressive 
leadership in the area may be the crucial variable here. Each growth point must 
be strategically located to consolidate the existing position of the community 
and to attain maximum returns from the developmental effort, in order to spread 
the stimulus into the surrounding regions. The selection of a relatively more 
progressive and better developed area, with a greater degree of stability and 
immediate possibilities for expansion, is rather important. Progress at the growth 
point may inspire confidence within the region and motivate surrounding areas 
to duplicate the development. The existence of local initiative on the part of 
responsible leaders in business, professional, and community circles seems to be 
a critical factor in the successful implementation of programs of development. 
In theory, a regional economic growth point should serve a dual purpose. It 
should create the infrastructure for consolidating existing advantages and stabil- 
izing the base from which the plan for sustained development; also, it should be 
integrated with smaller cities in the region to activate them to launch their own 
plans for development, if possible. 
The concept of a growth center or a growth point is related to a 
notion, though difficult to define, of an optimum size production and 
population center at which maximum advantage is gamed from scale 
and external economies without incurring serious diseconomies of 
agelomeration.” Growth points have a critical minimum size which 
permits scale economies and promotes development over the growth 
area as a whole, and an optimum size beyond which net diseconomies 
occur. 
New communities as growth points argue for centralizing economic 
resources at certain key locations rather than spreading them thinly 
over a whole region. 
This case rests upon spatial differentiation in resources, a given 
uneven distribution of population and markets that can only be 
changed in the long run, indivisibilities in production plants and in 
public investment projects, scale economies in manufacturing, 
“central services,’ and public utilities and upon external econo- 
mies of interindustry linkages. But the growth point concept, 
particularly its justification as a policy tool, also involves the 
hypothesis that centers of agglomeration have zones of indifference 
around them and that income will be maximized in the growth 
areas as a whole by concentrating development at the growth 
point. This is the argument used to justify disproportionate 
allocations of public investment for infrastructure purposes at 
the growth point itself. 
The existence of a growth point or a new community must 
involve a certain degree of structured imbalance over the region 
as a whole. If a new community means, among other things, a 
new industrial complex, then this complex will be heavily con- 
centrated in or around the growth point itself. The growth point 
philosophy is that such areas are bound to stagnate in any event, 
18 Harry Richardson, Regional Economics (New York: Praeger Press), p. 423. 
