Berkeley Planning Journal

Major western cities have experienced strong growth in the 1980s and have become poly-nucleated urban areas. In order to solve the problems that growth and decentralization have created or exacerbated-in particular, housing and transportation problems-officials and planners have proposed and sometimes implemented new development policiesandnewformsofmetropolitanplanning. Thisarticle provides an overview of the major issues facing western world cities, presents the pros and cons of alternative courses of action, and proposes a set of guidelines to mitigate the social costs of cu"ent metropolitan growth.