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approximation, for instance, as a principal purpose of the Agricultural Act of 1970, the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1970, the Rural Development Act of 1972, and of several of the major legislative proposals now before Congress. On the Executive side, it appears in the 1970 and 1971 State of the Union messages, in the Report of the White House National Goals Research Staff (Toward Balanced Growth: Quality with Quantity, 1970), and in the Report on National growth transmitted by the President to Congress in 1972. It is also mentioned in untold numbers of writings ranging from daily newspapers to government publications and some recent court decisions.

Although the term "balanced growth" is thus broadly used and even codified into national legislation as a policy objective, no clear description of its meaning can be found. A review of its usage in numerous statements and publications reveals that diverse users imply by it quite different meanings: racial balance, a more even income distribution, avoidance of excessive concentrations of population, or of excessive dispersal, or of migration, or of population decline, or of ecological deterioration. Recurring themes associated with it are those of population distribution and of the preservation of the lifestyle of non-metropolitan America. These themes are strongest in formulations associated with the Department of Agriculture, which stressed the concept of "urban-rural balance" as early as 1967. Similar concepts are found in the 1972 Rural Development Act and the Administration and Congressional statements that accompanied its passage. In a statement rare in its explicitness, the President is quoted in the 1972 Report on National Growth: "the growth which this Nation will inevitably experience will be healthy growth only if it is balanced growth--and this means growth which is distributed among both urban and

rural areas."

In brief, then, there exists now neither a technical meaning nor an explication in law of the meaning of an objective of "balanced growth." A linguistic approach, trying to identify what people mean by the term when they use it, is only slightly more helpful, although it

See its publications Communities of Tomorrow (1967) and National Growth and its Distribution (1968.

does indicate some recurring concerns.

A review of European and socialist literature on this subject indicates that such a vague statement of purposes is by no means an American monopoly, although often other terms, such as "harmonized," "correct," "concerted," "organic," and the like, substitute for "balanced." One is led to the conclusion that either or both of the following are true: (a) there is no clear vision of the purposes of the policy, and therefore vague terms are used; and/or (b) the issues involved in such a policy are essentially distributional and so fundamentally wrapped in conflict as to who gets what that more explicit statements of meaning are avoided.

There are few exceptions to these generalizations. It is therefore worth noting a recent Swedish report, Balanced Regional Development, prepared by an Expert Group for Regional Studies appointed by the Ministry of the Interior to provide a basis for the formulation of future regional policy. This report, the product of five years of work, is one of the most clear and explicit available on this subject.

The report begins with an excellent empirical review of Swedish development tendencies and of the factors influencing regional development, organized by business and public sectors and by population. It devotes particular attention to the problems of large urban areas and of sparsely populated regions, together with an evaluation of alternative policies in terms of their consequences.

This applied research is linked with a particularly thoughtful discussion of the aims and means of regional policy. It cites the Swedish Riksdag's 1964 statement of the principal objectives of regional policy:

1. That the national capital and manpower resources become fully utilized and distributed in such a way that rapid economic progress is promoted;

2. That the growing prosperity is distributed in such a way that people in different parts of the country are offered satisfactory social and cultural services;

E.R.U. (Expert Group for Regional Studies), Balanced Regional Development, Statens Offetliga Utredninger 1970:3; an extensive English summary is available in mimeograph.

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3. That the structural changes and the economic expansion proceed under such forms and at such a rate that the security of the individuals is protected;

4. That the defense of the country is facilitated.

It compares these objectives with other statements of national objectives and concludes: "From this it seems clear that what regional policy is aimed at is essentially nothing but to realize in a geographic dimension what are generally regarded as the main objectives of the economic and social policy of the community. The above objectives of regional policy may, generally speaking, be characterized as spatial interpretations of the general objectives with the principal stress on rapid economic growth, full employment and a satisfactory distribution of income and prosperity."

The report does not offer an explicit definition of "regional balance," but it uses the empirical analysis together with the formulation of objectives to arrive at a serviceable identification of imbalances. These arise when there are mismatches of supply and demand of labor in different regions, or excessive capital requirements, or insufficient provision of services in sparsely populated areas, and so forth. In effect, imbalances are impediments to the stated objectives of economic growth, of equitable distribution of goods and services, and of providing for the well-being of those affected by shifts in the economic structure in the pursuit of these goals. By implication, then, balanced growth is the course of national development which avoids these imbalances.

The general approach of this Swedish report parallels in large measure the conclusions which will be offered later in this report, and therefore not much more detail will be offered here.

However, it is

worth noting that the orientation of the Swedish report may be termed that of economic geography, and that some of its faults and its virtues stem from this. Thus, it draws a very valuable distinction between the relatively short-term problems of dealing equitably with those affected by major economic shifts (such as the decline or relocation of an important industrial sector) and such long-run objectives as the improvement of production conditions in selected declining regions. But it does not fully deal with the possible conflict between the objective of

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rapid national growth and the objective of interregional equality, since the assumptions of economics imply that the former objective will lead to a full utilization of resources (including human resources), thus in the long run satisfying the latter objective. Finally, it does not deal with two national objectives which are important in contemporary American discussions of these issues: the objective of environmental integrity and the more diffuse objective of preserving or enhancing certain aspects of the quality of life.

Nonetheless, while this Swedish document does not answer all the questions, it does provide a benchmark for the present American effort, representing as sophisticated an approach as has been developed in a mixed economy.

The socialist countries would find no difficulty accepting the Swedish set of objectives, and have several times formulated comparable ones. However, their planning, which is generally far more comprehensive and detailed in its micro-economic elements, stresses other forms of "balance" (such as "material resources balances") which are not germane to this discussion.

III. ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO BALANCED GROWTH

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Most statements concerning "balanced growth" have stressed the demographic dimension exclusively, and in this respect they are unsatisfactory because they fail to relate clearly demographic circumstances or objectives to public purposes. Aside from these demographic approaches to balance, there have been few attempts to specify balance in terms of functional balances, defined in terms of the structure and dynamics of territorial aspects of our societies and in terms of some set of national objectives. The Swedish E.R.U. report is an instance of the latter approach.

Although demographic approaches to balance are unsatisfactory now and certain to remain so, they are used so commonly that a discussion of some of the variants of this approach is necessary. Later in this section there will be an introduction of the functional balances approach, to be developed further in later sections.

Demographic Approaches to Balanced Growth

The prevalance of the demographic approach is undoubtedly due to its apparent simplicity. Lack of balance is claimed when some places grow more slowly than the national average, or when population appears to be overly concentrated, or when population declines in certain districts. Not only are such statements flawed because their apparent clarity is deceptive, as will be illustrated below, but because they refer to things as they are rather than as things as we would have them. In other words, these statements are descriptions of conditions which have no necessary implications for action. For action requires purposes.

The most naive form of the demographic approach points to a region or district that lags with respect to national averages, implying that this means that we should bring it up to national norms. This is obvious nonsense in its literal form, for if such a policy were adopted and were effective, the national distribution of population would be frozen as of that time. Would we want forever the national distribution of population of 1970? or of 1910? or of 1790? Clearly