No cities made their own land, and, assisted by freeways and canny relocation of factories, draw nearby towns into the urban enclave. Here is how crowded, constricted San Francisco is doing it. Here, also, is a prescription to insure long run land supplies in many urban areas.
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References
1.
Origins, mechanisms, and functions of tacit group behavior by land sellers are analyzed in Jack Lessinger's “Influences of Group Interests on Economic Decisions,”The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 19:3 (April, 1960), pp. 253–58. (Also reprinted by the Real Estate Research Program, Institute of Business and Economic Research, University of California, Berkeley.)
2.
Future Development of the San Francisco Bay Area, 1960–2020, prepared and published by the U. S. Department of Commerce, Business and Defense Services Administration, Office of Area Development for the U.S. Army Engineer District, San Francisco Corps of Engineers. (Washington: December 1959), p. 55, Table 22.
3.
U. S. Department of Commerce, see note 2, Table B-1. The specific assumptions underlying these estimates are given in Appendix B.
4.
We assume that the increase July 1, 1944 to July 1, 1959 is the same as January 1, 1945 to January 1, 1960. Population July 1944 was obtained from county auditor reports from San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Solans, Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Population as of July 1, 1959, was interpolated from 1960 Bureau of the Census reports as of April 11, 1960, and California Department of Finance estimates for July 1, 1956.
5.
The author wishes to thank the Gas Division of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company for providing the records from which the land use sample was drawn.
6.
According to SinclairJ. P., “Freeways in District IV,” in California Highways (March-April, 1960), p. 13, there were 300 miles of freeway built in the San Francisco Metropolitan Area during the period 1950–60. Only small mileages were built before 1950. DanielsJohnMr., District IV, California Division of Highways has informed the author in a recent telephone conversation that a very rough estimate as to the taking of land by freeways would be one acre for every 200 feet. He also believed that existing county and state roads taken into the freeway right of way may roughly balance off the additional space required for interchanges. Thus freeways took, in all, about 7,920 acres. But we estimate that only 75 percent of all the freeway mileage cuts across land suitable and available for urbanization.
