Marginal Industries, Low Wages, and High Risks

In 1956 about two out of every three Americans lived in a metropolitan area. The greatest growth since 1950, however, was not in the central cities themselves, but in the surrounding country. Fully half of the increase occurred in territory listed as rural in the 1950 census; by 1960 many of these newly developed suburban areas were officially classified as urban. The rural population of America, then, has once again shrunk, both absolutely and also relative to urban population. And the percentage of people living in those great agglomerations known as metropolitan areas has increased, thanks primarily to the urbanization of the suburbs. In some parts of the country—notably in that great swath running from Alexandria, Virginia, to Portland, Maine—metropolitan areas are gradually fusing into a great super-metropolis, a megalopolis.

These population shifts produce profound changes in living habits, culture, economy, and politics—changes so rapid and radical that unless they are anticipated they can overwhelm the civilization from which they spring. The special character of metropolitan problems lies in their complexity, their inextricable intertwining. The special response of our society must take the form of planning, partly localized and voluntary but mainly over-all and governmental. To foresee and provide for the coming crisis, it is desirable that we have some insight into the inner dynamics of the metropolis. The ten volumes of the New York Metropolitan Region Study undertake to provide such insight—and to suggest the nature of the city’s future. Made in New York, the second volume of this series, places three metropolitan industries under the microscope: garments, printing-publishing, and electronics.

These three were chosen because they have a heavy specific gravity in the area (28 per cent of the manufacturing employees of the region); because they produce for national consumption and are therefore not tied to the city by force of a limited market; because they have been shifting industries locationally both within the region and between the region and the rest of the nation. Made in New York discusses these three highly mobile industries in an attempt to answer one major question: Why, in each, do certain products and certain stages of production gravitate into the metropolitan region?