24 
calls for the creation of new communities through the expansion of 
existing towns on the fringes of our metropolitan areas is based on 
the assumption that: 
Public funds may be integrated with actual or potential external economies to 
produce rapid growth in [existing towns] with a minimum of external diseconomics 
of congestion.?° 
As part of the program for expanding medium size cities, it has been 
suggested that formal channels of migration or commutation be 
developed through which workers living in depressed areas nearby 
could be guaranteed new employment opportunities. 
In the past city planners have tended to draw heavily on the 
British “garden city” concept (adopting the idea that greenbelts 
should be developed around the periphery of a new community in 
order to protect it from the future onslaught of suburban sprawl). 
This has led to the belief that new communities must be physically 
divorced from other settlements. As a result, many developers have 
limited their purchases to ‘‘unspoiled” farmlands or natural areas 
beyond the fringe of suburban development. For several reasons, this 
approach has been unnecessarily expensive and has placed restrictions 
on the residents for whom housing and jobs in the new community 
would be available. New communities conceived and constructed as 
extensions of existing settlements and as integral parts of already 
well-developed regions can make a significant contribution to meeting 
the needs of the disadvantaged. 
There are several reasons why it is more desirable to concentrate 
on the expansion of existing suburban communities (or the creation 
of expanded new communities) rather than on investments in en- 
tirely new, physically isolated new communities. The first reason has 
to do with the fact that land located at a distance from existing settle- 
ments is generally unimproved and unserviced by infrastructure. The 
argument is usually made that this vacant land is more suited for new 
community development because of its low costs; however, the ex- 
perience of all large-scale developers to date has shown that the 
initial purchase price of land is only a small percentage of the final 
sale price once the land has been fully improved or serviced for high 
density development. Thus, it can be argued (purely in economic 
terms) that land close to an existing settlement will be more easily 
serviced through the extension of surplus capacity of available infra- 
structure. Another economic argument supporting the closer location 
rests on the fact that land values and the demand for vacant land is 
generally higher close to existing developments. Thus, buying land at 
a closer location, it will be possible to market the housing or sale of 
developed land at a faster rate than would be possible at a more | 
remote location. This would help to eliminate many of the high front- 
end costs that currently plague private developers and reduce the 
time of exposure before a positive cash flow is achieved.” 
Another set of arguments for selecting new community sites that 
are extensions of existing settlements is based on the belief that new 
communities should be planned within a regional framework and_ 
must directly address themselves to the opportunities for uplifting 
the economy of lagging areas. By locating close to an existing area, 
20 Thid. 
41 See Frederic J. Osborn, Green Belt Cities (London: Evelyn, Adams, and MacKay), 1969. 
2 R. Bruce Ricks, “New Towns Development and the Theory of Location” in Land Economics, 
February 1970, pp. 5-12. 
