Planning notes [Number 52, 10 April 1967]

              PLANNING   NOTES
AN   INFORMATION    PUBLICATION   ON
URBAN    DEVELOPMENT   IN    GREENSBORO
DEPARTMENT  OF   PLANNING  • GREENSBORO,    NORTH    CAROLINA
NUMBER   52
10 April 1967
GREENSBORO PUBLIC LIBRARY
THE PRIMATE CITY
Greensboro is a growth center. Between
1960 and 1965, the Greater Greensboro Area
attained a population of 750,000.
Look at a population map of North
Carolina. Greensboro is the center of the
largest population concentration in the
state. The five county area surrounding
Greensboro is almost as large as Charlotte
and Raleigh-Durham combined. In fact, from
Atlanta on the south to the nation's capital
to the north,this five county concentration
(Guilford, Forsyth, Davidson, Randolph and
Alamance) is more populous than any comparable area.
Milwaukee supported a championship
baseball team with only a few thousand more
people with which to fill "County Stadium"
and Atlanta,though somewhat larger,displays
the "Braves" to a packed house each weekend of the season. Green Bay fields the
scourge of the National Football League
and 50,000 people file into Packer Stadium
on frozen Sunday afternoons to watch the
home team perform. In Green Bay, 50,000
people equals about one-fifth of everybody
in Northeastern Wisconsin.
Seven hundred fifty thousand people are
a potent force. A metropolitan area this
size can support open heart surgery and
chamber music. An area this large can offer
its citizens a Marshall Fields or a Macy's.
A major university, an art museum, off
Broadway Theater — all are possible with
750,000 people to feed, clothe and entertain. Many cities of 750,000 have already
begun to plan a rail rapid transit system
in order that rush hour travel may be less
grim. In fact, when students of urbanism
speak of a growth center they refer to a
node of population that continues to grow
in spite of itself. Planning for an even
larger population is therefore, a realistic
endeavor in such an environment.
Why, then, if the five county region
surrounding Greensboro has attained growth
center status, does Greensboro look and act
like a town of one hundred thirty thousand
instead of a city of three quarters of a
million people? The answer is fragmentation.
The Greensboro five county growth
center consists of six suburbs in search of
a city. The usual pattern is, of course,
the primate central city surrounded by suburbs and satellites. Will it always be
thus? Will we always be the Guilford,
Forsyth,Davidson, Randolph, Alamance metropolitan area or will one of the cities in
this five county area grow to become the
primate city?
We must confess that we do not know.
No one can predict, with reasonable certainty, whether the area will grow in fragments, as in the past,or whether one of the
cites is destined to become the central
city for the five county region in question. We can say, though, that if destiny
has an appointment with Greensboro, Greensboro must be ready to assume the status of
primate City for the region.
What makes a great
tiful natural setting
on a marsh. Historica
much has ever happe
National Capital? Nei
are capitals. All gre
have two characteris
exciting downtown and
lation close enough
the taste and purchas
it.
city great? A beau-
? Amsterdam is built
1 importance? Nothing
ned in Copenhagen. A
ther Milan nor Munich
at cities, though, do
tics in common: An
a middle class popu-
to downtown and with
ing power  to sustain
If we had to guess, we would go with
Charles Abrams and agree that:"every suburb
needs an urb". What is Greensboro doing
to prepare herself, should  destiny  choose