3 Economic dimensions and socio-cultural patterns
Afriend suggested that a book on urban regions would focus overwhelmingly
on economics. But that would unfairly place the ills, delights, and challenges of
the worldin one corner, whereas a range of human dimensions are central to
understanding and solutions. Dividing the human condition into three overlap-
ping categories -- economics, social patterns, and culture -- is convenient, though
admittedly a simplification. Culture is used in its core sense of fundamental aes-
thetic, intellectual, and moral traditions. This glimpse of the three big subjects,
economics in this section, and social patterns and culture in the final section, is
obviously incomplete. Still, selected concepts, particularly linked with resource
and environmental dimensions, provide useful foundations and insights.
Growth, regulatory, and ecological economics
Keyeconomic systems for considering natural systems and their uses in
urban regions are presented as follows: (1) growth economics and regulatory eco-
nomics, which are familiar and in various combinations currently predominate
in urban regions; and (2) ecological economics for resources and the environ-
ment, which is growing, because in many ways it complements and addresses
the shortcomings of the familiar approaches.
Afewbackground observations are helpful. First, most economic theories are
essentially non-spatial. Places for people and habitats for species are basically
ignored and unimportant in economic models. Yet since spatial arrangement is
so important to understanding and policy in urban regions, linking economics
and spatial pattern is included here.
Second, for comparability and analysis, attempts are made to translate ‘‘every-
thing”into auniversal currencywith the same units for direct comparability. The