John Borchert’s “American Metropolitan Evolution”

John Borchert's 1967 classic "American Metropolitan Evolution" is the article that had the greatest influence on my conceptualization of urban geography. The article appeared during my first year as a graduate student and immediately became a kind of "text" in a very popular two-quarter sequence on "The Geography of American Cities" at the University of Minnesota. It presented a cogent organizational structure for the relative growth and decline of cities in the United States related to three technological/transportation innovations: the application of the steam engine to water and land transportation; the installation of steel rails, which, along with the widespread use of electric power, permitted more powerful railroad traffic; and the introduction of the internal-combustion engine to transportation and the shift to a service economy. Urban growth was thus divided into four epochs: the "Sail-Wagon Epoch," 1790-1830; the "Iron Horse Epoch," 1830-1870; the "Steel Rail Epoch," 1970-1920; and the "Auto-Air-Amenity Epoch," 1920-As each succeeding innovation took hold, new conditions for growth or decline emerged, the results of which could be observed in the relative increase or decrease in metropolitan population size. Borchert recognized that the periods neither were homogeneous nor had sharp boundaries. In fact, a "Canal Epoch" (1820-1840) affected some cities--notably in upstate New York--during the early "Iron Horse Epoch," and the "Electric Interurban Railway Epoch" (1900-1930) affected some during the "Steel Rail Epoch" and the early "Auto-Air-Amenity Epoch." These examples complicate any simple classification. Furthermore, many short-term effects at individual locations were constantly superimposed on the overall pattern, causing even more variability. Among the very interesting data summaries were Borchert's map and chart of the percentage of 1960 population accumulated in the various historical epochs (1967, 326, 329). For example, by the end of the "Sail-Wagon Epoch"--1830-the population of New York City was only 3 percent of what it had become by 1960. The New York metropolitan area grew by an additional 11 percent of the 1960 population in the "Iron Horse Epoch," by 44 percent in the "Steel Rail Epoch," and 42 percent in the "Auto-Air-Amenity Epoch." Albany-Schenectady-Troy has a very different profile: in each of the four epochs the metropolitan area accumulated an additional 25 percent of the total 1960 population. This profile is in sharp contrast with that of both Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Las Vegas: Each of these metropolitan areas had accumulated only 4 percent of its 1960 population before the auto-air-amenity period began in 1920. Because the different epochs are also characterized by buildings of various densities and architectural types, the street layouts, urban densities, and building ages and styles are very much a function of the epoch in which the greatest population growth occurred. "American Metropolitan Evolution" appeared at a time when geography itself was struggling over whether it was to evolve as "nomothetic"--a "spatial science" that sought general laws to describe objective phenomena--or as "idiographic"--place specific or contingent and subjective (Lukermann 1964,1965; Bunge 1966; Harvey 1969). In those days many geographers considered the Geographical Review to lean more toward historical/cultural/contingent geography than did journals such as Geographical Analysis, founded in 1969 as an outlet for more abstract, quantitative analyses. What John Borchert accomplished in his article was a model for the integration of the two approaches: a highly empirically based analysis with fundamental process principles that have stood the test of time. He analyzed the relative growth and decline of individual cities as related, at least partly, to changes in technology, particularly transportation technology. He also suggested the applicability of this force to the internal evolution of the metropolitan area. …