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Géographie de la Circulation: L'économie des Transports Terrestres (Rail, Route et eau)by Rene Clozier

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Page 1: Géographie de la Circulation: L'économie des Transports Terrestres (Rail, Route et eau)by Rene Clozier

Clark University

Géographie de la Circulation: L'économie des Transports Terrestres (Rail, Route et eau) byRene ClozierReview by: James BirdEconomic Geography, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Jul., 1965), pp. 276-277Published by: Clark UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/141904 .

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Page 2: Géographie de la Circulation: L'économie des Transports Terrestres (Rail, Route et eau)by Rene Clozier

276 EcONoMIc GEOGRAPHY

quate compulsory purchase procedures that could bring more land into use. (p. 29)

The implication of his argument is that gov- ernment policies and practices and the legal systems in given countries are as significant in creating types of urban agglomerations and the problems within them as are the theoretically universal forces that are believed to give rise to cities everywhere. To take an example not cited directly by Abrams, one may ascribe as much casual influence on the suburbanization of the American metropolis to the Federal legislation concerning loans for housing and State and Federal legislation bearing on savings and loan societies, as to the transportation revolution, or perhaps even more. Or, to put the argument another way, American cities would not have developed in recent years as they have if money were not easier to get for single- rather than multiple-family, middle-income dwellings, a re- sult of the assumption that every American family ought to own its home, and if peripheral locations were taxed according to their increased value due to governmental investment in roads and other utilities. It follows, therefore, that what government helped create, it might also change, and indeed, to some extent, this prin- ciple is reflected in more recent legislation asso- ciated with urban renewal and slum clearance. In the case of Japan, the point is well illustrated by the reluctance of officials in Japanese cities to use the right of eminent domain, which is legally available to them under certain circum- stances. They are reluctant to use it because in postwar Japan such action might be interpreted as being "undemocratic'" and therefore poli- tically suicidal, even though the "general good" is the basic issue.

Abram's treatment of these aspects of urbani- zation is exemplified by his stimulating Chapter 17, "Land Ideologies and Land Policies," in which he observes the increasing acceptance of government responsibilities for the uses of land in urban environments in the name of "public benefit. " He underscores the principle that every urban pattern is the product of a multiplicity of past decisions in coalescence and not necessarily the consequence of immutable laws of develop- ment, which are at best culturally relative in any event. He argues for the creation of urban ''specialists" whose specialty is the city and not some single aspect of it, and decries the lack of an adequately trained consultative cadre of ex- perts (or domestic " imperts " within given coun- tries) who are able to deal with housing and urbanization as a single, though enormously complex problem, wherever it occurs in the world. Unfortunately, in his list of disciplines which would provide basic training for such a career (p. 104), geography is omitted.

On practical grounds, he advocates no single panacea for dealing with the stresses of urban growth wherever they occur. With admirable

restraint and good sense, he even suggests, to use Wellicz's, not Abram's, terminology, that at given stages in urbanization some slums may be more "efficient" and therefore desirable than others, but he is not so naive as to assume that officials in developing countries will accept his suggestion, let alone act on it. Moreover, he laments the tendency of government planners in developing areas to adopt the norms of the West as a basis for planning decisions, and urges that their decisions be based on real and basic needs rather than on a desire to create showpieces for visiting dignitaries. Instead of handsome and expensive high-rise subsidized flats in a Lagos, for example, why not concrete plinths for which road access, sewers, and potable water are pro- vided; or loans for what almost always are an expensive part of home construction-roofs- leaving the rest of the structure to be built by individual or community efforts?

Perhaps the author's concern can be sum- marized in his plea:

for the development of a comparative science of urbanization that can make strides like that in comparative jurisprudence . . . and com- parative religions. It should encourage the much-needed interpretive works of specialized scholars familiar with the materials and meth- ods of the various relevant sciences and criti- cally relate them to the organic whole of each society. With a more scientific approach, the practice of applying loose generalizations and standardized remedies to situations that are vastly different might then be challenged. (p. 211)

NORTON GINSBURG

University of Chicago

Geographie de la Circulation: L'Economie des Transports terrestres (rail, route et ean), by RENE CLOZIER. 404 pages; maps, diagrs., charts, half tones, index. Editions Genin, Paris, 1964. 40 f. 612 x 10 inches.

This book, by the author of a celebrated mono- graph on the traffic of a Parisian railway station, La gare du Nord, forms part of a series called Geographie Economique et Sociale. It is the first of two books on transport in Tome III, and there is to be a second volume dealing with sea and air transport by Professors Gottman and Vigarie. There is no preface to the book, and we are informed of neither the audience nor the standard at which the study is aimed. Perhaps it would be a fair guess to believe that the book is written for the French undergraduate of geog- raphy, economics, or commerce, and review it first from that standpoint.

Professor Clozier has described the plan of his book as follows: (1) a study of land transport in the context of different physical and human set- tings-the ecology of transport; (2) land routes

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Page 3: Géographie de la Circulation: L'économie des Transports Terrestres (Rail, Route et eau)by Rene Clozier

BOOK REVIEWS 277

and means of communication-the technical problems of transport; (3) transport networks- the economies of transport in various major re- gions of the world (par grands secteurs de com- munications, par grands ensembles de production). In fact there are four parts to the book, and in the last two sections transport is considered throughout the world. Part 3 is devoted to highly- developed countries, and Part 4 to under- developed countries. China appears in Part 3, and Australia is in Part 4 which shows the pit- falls of an over-simple two-fold economic divi- sion of the world. The book thus attempts to cover a world-wide agenda, and the French student may be glad to have it all between the covers of one book. But the membrane of knowl- edge stretched over the whole world becomes very thin in parts.

Considering the magnitude of the task, a reviewer might be expected to be indulgent with an author. But where lack of knowledge or lack of space hedged him about, one would have expected Professor Clozier to have grasped the lifeline of a reference. Here is one of the greatest defects of the book. Despite its vast program, attempting a world-wide coverage, only 119 separate works are cited, an average of less than one every three pages. Of these only 22 were not published in France; five come from Western Germany, four apiece from Belgium, U.K., and U.S.A., and one each from Canada, Italy, Swe- den, Switzerland, and the U.S.S.R. The French student's orientation bibliographique is thus rather parochial, and the author has not been very prolific in his role as ambassador to the world's vast literature on his subject. This charge of parochialism is sustained by referring to the number of pages devoted to the whole of North America (29) and to the U.K. (10), compared with France (43). Yet this point of attack could have been blunted if the author had abandoned his world-wide coverage in favor of the search for basic principles in some areas held up as exemplars. Our hypothetical French student would probably have benefited more from such examples in depth and if many of them were to have come from his homeland, at least that would have helped the pedagogic purpose.

Looking at the book from the viewpoint of the English-speaking reader, one will recognize that the book is in the French tradition of such writ- ings as those of M. Sorre (Les fondements de la geographic humaine, Vol. II: La circulation con- tinentale de surface, 1954, pp. 421-60), and R. Capot-Rey (Geographie de la circulation sur les continents, 1946, an old favorite with this reviewer). The content and style of attack of French circulation geography do not seem to have evolved very much, and the dynamic fea- tures in many road and rail studies throughout the world are not very vividly reflected. But the sections on France and Europe will provide a convenient summary. The author includes a useful chapter on auxiliary means of transport:

high-tension wires, water supply, teflefriques, telecommunications, and even the circulation of capital. Pipelines are included under the charm- ing names of oleoducs and gazoducs. It is such a pity that it all has to be compressed into a dozen pages because of the space demanded by the too widely ranging regional sections.

The photographs are unfamiliar and interest- ing, but the maps vary considerably in both in- formativeness and draftsmanship. Many are mere extracts from network patterns. The map of the Metropolitan Line of London is actually misleading since it isolates one section of the Underground network. (Those who know London will have fun trying to identify the following places: Anglesbury, Mounslaw, Cokforster, and Calino!).

In short, the book must come as a disappoint- ment, at least to readers outside France. Per- haps one had hoped for too much. Yet representa- tives of the French School of Geography have so often been able to summarize a vast sector of literature and yet codify it into illuminating principles.

JAMES BIRD

University College, University of London

Urbanization in Japan (Nihon No Toshi-Ka), by S. KIUCHI, S. YAMAGA, K. SHIMIZU,

and Y. INANAGA. 187 pp.; maps, index. Kokon-shoin, Tokyo, 1964. Y 400.

In the slim but important volume, Nihon No Toshi-Ka (Japanese Urbanization), 18 of Japan's most prominent urban specialists have pre- sented what amounts to the cream of their professional interests. Its 186 pages are filled with the very essence of their ideas and findings, so that the book is highly indicative of the rapid growth in recent years of professional involvement, especially by geographers, in the subject of Japanese urban development.

The four editors-who are also contributors- are all geographers who have distinguished themselves notably in numerous articles, and in some cases, books on this subject, and also through leadership as advisors on urban affairs to Japanese Governmental and UNESCO agencies. Shinzo Kiuchi, of Tokyo University, is virtually the dean of Japanese urban geog- raphy, and his three colleagues, Seiji Yamaga, of Tokyo Gakugei University, Keihachiro Shimizu, of Chiba University, and Sachio Inanaga, of the National Telephone and Telegraph Agency, all have attained unusual prominence in the field. Since each of the eighteen contributors to the book is writing along the lines of his special interest, the work has particular authen- ticity in the presentation of regional as well as systematic facts and opinions. That the book is so small and yet contains so much that is

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