I used to be (particularly around 2000) really interested in the history and literature of the time period 1965-1980 or so including the hippie phenomenon, Watergate, disco, inflation, etc.
Lately though I took a look at
https://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Ages-Americas-Technetroni...
and a conference proceedings about Brzezinski's ideas that came out in the next few years. Partially I wanted to roll my eyes at times because my interests have moved on but something that struck me was an essay by Paul Goodman which reflected a sentiment that was really common at that time to the effect that people were dogpiling into urban areas, that large cities were becoming unmanagable, that the exodus into urban areas had to be stopped, etc. This report was a relatively late one on the topic
https://www.amazon.com/Dispersing-Population-America-Learn-E...
which did not have any 1960s radical positioning but rather saw it is an almost universal political problem that the UK was too concentrated in London, France too concentrated in Paris, etc. All of these countries saw some need to do something about it.
That kind of talk stopped abruptly circa 1980 when we got Reagan and Thatcher and competition between international economic centers seemed too fierce for, say, the UK to give up any competitiveness at all by dispersing its financial sector out of London.
Today the message is overwhelmingly that people are more productive when they live in big cities thus it is an economic necessity for population to concentrate. There's a counternarriative now which is not positioned as a counternarriative that housing has become unaffordable in places with vibrant economies.
As I see it is the old "large cities have become unmanageable" theme that's become crystalized.
Right now it can seem like a political problem (e.g. existing residents, landlords, etc. profit from the current situation) but since growth is prevented through this mechanism there are many other problems we're not seeing (if California was adding as much population as it could could they afford infrastructure investments, could they handle environmental impacts, provision social services, etc.)
Lately though I took a look at
https://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Ages-Americas-Technetroni...
and a conference proceedings about Brzezinski's ideas that came out in the next few years. Partially I wanted to roll my eyes at times because my interests have moved on but something that struck me was an essay by Paul Goodman which reflected a sentiment that was really common at that time to the effect that people were dogpiling into urban areas, that large cities were becoming unmanagable, that the exodus into urban areas had to be stopped, etc. This report was a relatively late one on the topic
https://www.amazon.com/Dispersing-Population-America-Learn-E...
which did not have any 1960s radical positioning but rather saw it is an almost universal political problem that the UK was too concentrated in London, France too concentrated in Paris, etc. All of these countries saw some need to do something about it.
That kind of talk stopped abruptly circa 1980 when we got Reagan and Thatcher and competition between international economic centers seemed too fierce for, say, the UK to give up any competitiveness at all by dispersing its financial sector out of London.
Today the message is overwhelmingly that people are more productive when they live in big cities thus it is an economic necessity for population to concentrate. There's a counternarriative now which is not positioned as a counternarriative that housing has become unaffordable in places with vibrant economies.
As I see it is the old "large cities have become unmanageable" theme that's become crystalized.
Right now it can seem like a political problem (e.g. existing residents, landlords, etc. profit from the current situation) but since growth is prevented through this mechanism there are many other problems we're not seeing (if California was adding as much population as it could could they afford infrastructure investments, could they handle environmental impacts, provision social services, etc.)