STUDIES OF HIGHWAY DEVELOPMENT AND GEOGRAPHIC CHANGE.

William L. Garrison, Brian J. L. Berry, DuaneF. Marble, John D. Nystuen, and RichardL. Morrill '55. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1959. 291 pp. #7.50.

Now that the basic decisions have been made by the Federal government, in conjunction with the several states, on the Interstate Defense Highway System, it is apparently time to get down to some basic research in order to see what we are going to do in freezing our present pattern of urban areas, disrupting them at the fringes and tearing up the broad and fair countryside. This massive highway program, egged on by the automotive et al. industries' shrewd institutional advertising and the well-publicized American "romance with the auto," will cost in the neighborhood of $40,000,000,000 with a very considerable percentage to be expended within urban areas.

A cynic might remark that it would have been wiser, perhaps, to do our basic research in advance - prior to policy and administrative decisions - even in this most affluent of societies. An even more confirmed cynic might inquire as to what could be done with the railroads with this astronomical sum as an alternate and complementary solution to the problem of moving goods and people.

Be that as it may, this highly professional publication - to which Dartmouth's Richard L. Morrill '55 contributed Section V, "Highways and Services: The Case of Physician Care" — is a sign of the sort of research needed to make reasonable highway policy decisions. The result of collaboration between the University of Washington, the Washington State Highway Commission, and the Bureau of Public Roads of the Department of Commerce, and modestly described as "definitional, argumentative and exploratory," this work is part one of a two-volume series on highway impact. The second volume, which is forthcoming, will be entitled Studies of the Central Business District andUrban Freeway Development. Both volumes are based on concurrent but autonomous research activities by individual authors who intend eventually to publish full accounts of their endeavors.

Hardly a tome for bedside reading by the amateur (for example, "A simple objective for the regional planner would be to minimize ∑ijpijKij" and for the highway planner would be "to minimize this publication will make a useful summary for the professional of various aspects of highway planning theory - especially from a spatial (geographic) point of view. With sections on highways and retail business, highways and urban residential land use, and highways and services, with a handy bibliography, volume one indicates some inadequacies in our present knowledge and some inadequacies in our methods for obtaining new knowledge.

Morrill's study of physician's service in relation to highway development makes the following tentative conclusions of general interest - both doctors and patients will do better under a large highway program. The former should receive larger income and the latter get better service (possibly at slightly increased costs) - although there is some indication that rural-small town facilities will decline relative to the large urban center.

In short, this is a preliminary publication by professionals tor professionals in an important field - a segment of the broad transportation problem that the American people and their governments have not yet faced squarely.