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Friedmann and Miller write about the interdependency and ongoing blurriness of metropolitan areas with their peripheral surroundings. The centric force to the city center gets blurred due to the dissolution of mere working and resting in spatially different areas.Therefore, they name the population growth taking place in metropolitan areas, and secondly the expanding of activities into the periphery of the city.

Main reasons are increasing real income, leisure and mobility and their ‘cumulative impacts’ p. 315. I found the aspect pf leisure time the most relevant, as it not only shifts the focus away from work as the center of activities towards the remaining time, which has to be filled otherwise, but furthermore strengthens the power of decision to the citizens.

Regarding the aspect of recreation, the realisation of becoming a ‘hedonistic leisure society’ p. 316, already gives a hint of the widening interests of a community, which is even harder to grasp, which is in parallel with the search for an answer to these tendencies in urban planning, which are even more difficult to be found. This realisation been made, the urban field avoids defining itself, but rather staying this blurry entity of urban activities that all happen within itself.

Regarding the (new)separation of urban field and the parts outside of it, the ‘urban hierarchy’, p. 314, being 65% of the area and 15% of the pupulation, it remains unclear how this ist going to be integrated? Particularily in what we see now as the political power of these areas as result of this separation, looking from a today’s political perspective.

Also pointing at the argument of summer homes in France, bringing life to rural towns, remains questionable whether this trend should be seen as positive, keeping these towns’ heritage, or rather just being there as just a facade, the visual remnants of itself.

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So Friedmann and Miller are forerunner of the urban field concept. There idea meet on the fact that the concept of center is fading due to the strong urbanisation and growth of peripheries around the cities. For them the modern urban life is a way of looking the cities and rural land as one element. Peoples interact, work and live on a larger scale thanks to the modernisation with cars, economic growth, transport... the urban field is so considering the "city" as one big element with no clear separation between city and rural land. Both argue that, like cities, our ideas must grow in parallel - way of building and designing has to adapt to this reality. We have to build consciously to the trend of society and cities. Building for regional area and not only the core. The conclusion is an important point for every architect to build with eyes wide open on reality. This is a modern architect.

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In their article The urban field (1965), John Friedmann and John Miller state that the current city model with metropolitan core and periphery do not longer correspond to the actual spatial dynamics. They propose a new territorial unit, the urban field, which is based on an interconnection criterion and which spans over center and periphery. In regard to historical context, I found very interesting in 1965 their understanding about the emergence of new spatial dynamics – driven by economical, technological and social factors – and their awareness of a need of planning to develop/keep living qualities. I found also interesting their emphasis on the relation between living qualities and the environment and by this on the need for a simultaneously well-carried environmental planning. These aspects of a state intervention in planning and the integration in a natural environment resonate with the text of Weissmann. To some extent, the last considerations of Friedmann and Miller, related to the preservation of the historical aspects also resonate with the text of Jacobs. For my future work, I consider relevant their understanding of a “durchurbanisierte” territory and therefore the need of a careful planning which do not only include functional and economical aspects but also social, environmental, cultural, historical aspects.

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I found it interesting to see, how the concept of The Urban Field is somehow very pragmatic as it builds up on observed tendencies at the time. Eventough the authors aknowledge the prblematics that come with sprawling settlements, they seem to see this partly harmful trends as partly inevitable.

The fairly thechnocratic approach to me is understandable in the context of the particular Zeitgeist. Nonetheless this attitude does not seem to fit in todays concepts of tackling the issues mentioned in the essay. Also Miller and Friedman do not seem to be that concerned about quantitative land use.

To me, this shows that debates like enviromentalism are shifting over time. While today such problamatics are often discussed on a global scale and planning is often taking place primarly on a neghbourhood scale, Miller and Friedmann only take into account their concept of region.

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Friedmann and Miller describe new scale of urban life, that has outgrown the former city boundaries and into a much larger "urban field". The separation of individual cities surrounded by countrysides, isn't accurate anymore, since they are all somehow connected through e.g. people that migrate and capital and goods that are exchanged. While describing the two main spatial areas (the metropolitan areas and the inter-metropolitan periphery), they argue that these stand in such a close relationship to eachother, that it's just simply wrong to look at them through an isolating perspective. By comparing their views with Weissmann’s, I discovered that although they share similar ideas, Weissmann’s focus was mainly on the urban planning of the city itself, while recognizing that services needed to be extended to rural areas. Friedmann and Miller, however, argue that these peripheries no longer exist merely as extensions of the city, since the modern city itself can no longer be seen as a separate entity. Urban planning must therefore address the entire regional system in which urban life unfolds, rather than the boundaries between these spaces.

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In the text The Urban Field the topic of how a city is defined/bound is discussed. To Friedmann and Miller the typical image of a city no longer works according to the different urbanization processes. A outward migration from the city centre is described and Friedmann & Miller came to look at this situation from a more distanced point of view. The urban field refers to a merging of metropolitan cores with 300'000 and more inhabitants. The approach seems mainly America focused also based on the far distances described. While this distance to the centre is being stretched further out through developing technologies the city fabric might be re valued over time even though the lines between countryside and city further blur. In my opinion their view is a bit too wide and the social aspect becomes more of a speculation than an assumption. Even though we face a growing urban fabric thought on a smaller scale might also bring widespread change and a new way of approaching growing cities.

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Friedmann emphasizes the important of leisure activities and how we develop as a society to invest more time in that. He also talks about the interesting part of travel time, and how our technological development of vehicles, makes traveling more accessible for urban travellers. With ..."higher speeds, greater versatility, and lower costs expected in transportation and communication... will encourage a dispersion of people and activities... on a unsurpassed scale." I think this is a very interesting point of view, since it makes communities assemble through longer distances, and cities connect. In the end, what makes the city alive is not the buildings, but the communities moving through it. However its clear that this text is mainly written for American citizens, since they emphasize the long distances between cities and being (due to better public transportation) less isolated. Nonetheless, it is important for European urban civilizations to stay connected through distance, by investing in good transportation.

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Friedmann and Miller try to „suggest a new image of the new polis“, an attempt to find a new concept and thus a new language for the city-planning of the future. Striking is their almost optimistic acceptance of the inevitable transformation of metropolitan cities into vast, interconnected regions. They observe the movement of people to peripheries as well as the tendencies to move to city centers, both fundamentally redefining how urban living and cities look like. This movement still is very much relevant and happening today — the lines between cities and countryside continue to blur.  While Jacobs mourned the loss of organic urban communities and Weissmann sought structured, top-down solutions to global urban crises, Friedmann and Miller seem to celebrate dispersion — a “substitution of mobility for location.” In their eyes this „urban field“ is not necessary to be seen as a decline but as inevitable or even desirable as It brings change and thus evolution. Especially interesting is their idea that the „city“ no longer exists as a physical entity, but as a network of flows ( people information, capital, and goods etc.) forming a new unit.

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In “The Urban Field” (1965), John Friedmann and John Miller examine the changing nature of the city in postwar America. Once seen as a dense, centralized, and clearly bounded core, the city, they argue, has expanded outward, merging with its peripheries and giving rise to a new kind of spatial organization. This transformation is attributed to three key forces: rising income, increased leisure, and advances in mobility and communication, all of which have loosened the traditional ties between work, residence, and recreation.

As a response, Friedmann and Miller propose a new planning model: the urban field, in which metropolitan centers are linked through networks of interdependent peripheries. The aim is not to resist dispersion but to organize it, envisioning a flexible and connected territory that accommodates multiple lifestyles and offers greater access to leisure and opportunity.

Yet behind this optimism I think their vision also reveals a blind spot. In celebrating expansion and movement, I believe the authors risk overlooking the loss of place and identity that accompanies such diffusion. Their “urban field,” while conceptually rich, may also foreshadow a fragmented and homogenized landscapes where diversity fades into repetition, and connection gives way to a certain "formlessness".

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Keller Noé / kellernoe@ethz.ch “Where we stand: a decade of world city research” is by John Freidman is a Text, where he analyzes former city research and investigates what it, that makes a World city. To do so, he formulates 5 key agreements, which are basically statements that can be used to describe world cities. In three steps, he goes into looking at the research. 1. He describe what the questions are, that are discussing what world cities are. 2. He reviews two large scale studies. And 3. He looks at some actual case studies. I honestly found it not easy to follow what he was saying. Mostly he references certain Authors and their work, to which I have no connection. Therefore I also felt like everything that he described made sense, however without arriving at any major conclusions. I found it interesting to look at how they speculated about the future of cities and what the next “regime” or era it is, that they are moving in economic terms and how that would influence the world cities. Also how some cities like Düsseldorf could become World cities. I would say what I should take away from this, is that the city isn’t just the built material, however always a result of the current global network especially in terms of the economy.

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Friedmann describes world cities as the main control points of global capitalism, linking local economies to worldwide networks of money, labor, and information. He shows how cities are shaped by economic power but gives little attention to political or social agency. Compared to Ernest Weissmann Friedmann’s view is far more global and market-oriented. Weissmann still believed in strong state planning and social responsibility to solve urban problems, while Friedmann highlights how cities are now driven by transnational market forces beyond local control. Both share a deep concern for inequality, but Friedmann’s idea of “life space vs. economic space” moves this conflict onto a global scale. For me as an architect-student, his text shows that design always operates within systems of power and that we must actively create spaces that protect local life within the forces of global capital.

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John Friedmann's text is written for an American audience and its main theme concerns the dynamic and changing meaning of 'the city'. What was particuliarly fascinating to me is how similar data can give off radically different impressions depending on how it is framed. In map 1, cities with a population over 25000 are maped as a 25 mile radius whereas in map 3 Friedmann depicts 'urban fields'. These cover far larger areas, through which the perception of how urbanised the USA is shifts significantly. Ultimately, Friedmann manages to 'reinvent' what urban life means, enabling him to open a whole new viewpoint to the status quo. However, I think one must be careful when generalising such large areas. The concepts of urban fields poses the risk of reducing different places to one abstract theory, as well as not regarding social inequalities in this concept.

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John Friedmann and John Miller, in The Urban Field (1965), argue that the traditional concept of the city has become obsolete. Modern society no longer shows clear boundaries between urban and rural areas. Instead, an “urban field” is emerging — a vast network of metropolitan centers, smaller towns, and open landscapes that are economically, socially, and technologically interconnected. Advances in communication, mobility, and income allow people to live and work beyond the dense urban cores, leading to new lifestyles, settlement patterns, and political relationships.

For architects, this vision implies a profound shift in responsibility. Architecture can no longer focus only on individual buildings or city centers; it must address the broader patterns of space, movement, and environmental continuity that shape modern life. Designers will need to create flexible, sustainable environments that support community while adapting to dispersed living.

For the future of architecture, I find it especially important that architects preserve a human scale within this expanding network — creating places that foster identity, social connection, and harmony between built and natural environments.

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What I find most interesting in this part of The Urban Field is how Friedmann and Miller rethink the idea of the city. They argue that the “urban” no longer stops at city limits — it extends into a whole territory made of cores, peripheries, and all the flows that connect them. I like how they describe this as a kind of living network rather than a fixed form. Their point that planning should adapt to this larger scale also makes a lot of sense.

That said, I don’t fully agree with their optimism about decentralization. They see the spread of urban life into the countryside as something mostly positive, but we now know it can also lead to sprawl, loss of farmland, and more car dependency. It feels a bit too confident in technology and growth — something typical for the 1960s.

In its historical context though, the text is quite visionary. They were already describing processes we’re still dealing with today — regional urbanization, mobility, and blurred boundaries between city and landscape. It’s also very much a product of its time, written in a moment of economic expansion and faith in planning.

It reminds me of other texts we read about the regional city or the megalopolis, where the city is understood as a continuous urban fabric rather than a single entity. Friedmann and Miller kind of anticipate those later debates.

For me as an architecture student, what stays with me is the idea of thinking in fields instead of isolated objects. It’s a good reminder that architecture is part of a bigger system — mobility, ecology, and social networks. I think this way of seeing could really shape how we design in the future, especially when dealing with larger territories or questions of sustainability.

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I find that Friedmann and Miller make an important distinction between the metropolitan areas and the periphery, as each is affected differently by urbanisation and industrialisation. Their observation that the periphery deteriorates as industry concentrates in the centre is something that reminded me of various other social theories. I agree that the expansion of urbanisation into the periphery could improve these areas, but it also reveals the absence of a safety net to maintain quality of life during economic decline. When the industries leave, I think that social services often collapse with it as well.

While new technologies and social trends allow people to live further from city centres, I find their reliance on the private sector to meet essential needs worrying. Their optimism about growing wealth and leisure now seems misplaced, as the 21st century has not been really taking people’s time or wages into consideration. Although they describe a “wealthy leisure society” as the driving force behind urban change, this focus feels narrow and idealised to me.

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In the article entitled “The Urban Field”, John Friedmann and John Miller take us through their view on the 1960s’ changing aspect of the city. Traditionally defined as a centralized, dense, clearly delimitated area towards which people and activities converge, the writers demonstrate that the city as we know it no longer embodies these characteristics, instead blurring into the periphery and pushing people outwards due to its centrifugal force. Friedmann establishes this centrifugal force, orienting urban development to occur around cities instead of within them, as being caused by three factors : rising income, increased leisure, and improved mobility and communication technologies.

As a solution to this state of affairs, Friedmann and Miller advocate for a planning model called “The Urban Field” : where metropolitan cores are efficiently connected by inter-metropolitan peripheries, replacing the old contrasted town and countryside. Though some may be pessimistic about this urban sprawl, Friedmann remains positive about the benefits this urban expansion could bring to every-day citizens : a broader choice on their desired way of life based on the availability of diverse environments, allowing better accessibility to leisure activities vital to family life.

However, to this hopeful proposal we can also oppose its own weaknesses : in overcelebrating mobility and multiple lifestyles, these urbanists might be underevaluating place attachment and cultural differentiation, leading to what many peripheries today resemble :  “a grey formlessness,” an environment perceptually and socially diluted.

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One idea that I find especially relevant for my future work as an architect is their view of the city as something fluid and constantly expanding beyond its old boundaries. They describe the urban field as a network of connected spaces/places to live, work, and move through, rather than a single dense center. This way of thinking makes me see architecture not as designing isolated buildings, but as shaping relationships between people, landscapes, and infrastructures. In such a world, buildings should respond to movement, communication, and change. I think this perspective is important today, when cities keep spreading and technology connects everything. It challenges me to design more flexible, open, and connected spaces that can adapt over time and support the ways people actually life across neighborhoods, regions, and digital networks.

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Friedmann and Miller address problems we still face in the 21th century already in the 60s in this text. Gentrification, urban centers becoming unliveable, overpopulation in the centers etc.

Their approach of the urban field seems to be a nice blend of top down as well as bottom up strategies to me, as they foresee a masterplan to roughly guide but not completely control. Innovations and strategic planning seem to be a form of helping things move along with the goal of creating a more harmonious environment around metropolitan cores. Pointing out that transportation and communication will be major forces pushing towards even getting to the possibility of urban fields is a great observation, that turned out correct - now as home office is becoming more popular due to accessibility of communication, allowing freedom of location and also stable transportation as I have especially noticed in Switzerland and China make daily commuting very accessible.

Although Friedmann and Miller do talk largely about families and workers, I think young people nowadays despise the idea of living in a „boring“ place and the cultural activities in peripheries are - in what I hear around me and personally feel - not yet advanced enough for young adults to thrive thoroughly yet. There is something about having so much diversity, creativity and culture all accumulated in one place - the metropolitan cores - that still makes them indispensable.

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I find they recognise an important distinction between the metropolitan areas and the periphery, as each is affected differently by the trends of urbanising and industrialisation of that time. Their observation that the periphery is becoming a worse place for people to live because the industry is being concentrated in the centre is interesting, and I agree that as the trend of urbanisation being expansion into the periphery is going to help these areas, however to me this shows how there is no safety net for people that would make sure that people's quality of life is prevented from declining in times of economic dips (not even crises). It shows how when the industry leaves, the social services start to fall. Even the projects attempting to revitalize the periphery are mostly seeing the solution being bringing the industry into the periphery so that it can provide the people with all the important things they need. It is true that new technology as well as new social trends allow and push people to live further from the centres, and that this will improve the situation for those living in the periphery (however it is also possible that they will ruin the good aspects of living in the periphery), I find this reliance on the private sector for important needs of the population worrying. The authors could not have predicted the exponential technological progress we would make in technology that would allow people to live further away from the periphery and their estimations of people becoming richer over the years and being able to afford more leisure time and activities have unfortunately been too optimistic. Additionally, I do not think that people having more time and desire for leisure activities was a comparatively big reason for why the centres expanded outwards. The text perceives people's want of time and space for leisure as a driving force of these developments, however I do not believe that the 21st century was kind enough to people's time and wages to allow for such considerations. They admit that the concept of the wealthy leisure society is in focus, but I find this to be a surprising perspective.

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In their text, John Friedman and John Miller address the problem that the traditional image of the city no longer corresponds to contemporary developments. To emphasize this, they refer to Max Weber, who stated that the “age of the city seems to be at an end” — not only from a sociological perspective but also from a planning point of view.

Instead of the classical concept of the city, Friedman and Miller introduce their notion of the urban field. By definition, this refers to a merging of metropolitan core areas with at least 300,000 inhabitants and non-metropolitan peripheral spaces. However, this pattern cannot be reduced to a Euclidean geometry; rather, it must be understood as a space–time continuum.

According to Friedman and Miller, the tendency toward the formation of urban fields is driven by the emergence of a “hedonistic leisure society,” which demands greater space and mobility. What I found particularly interesting is that Friedman and Miller did not rely solely on quantitative data but also used mapping as a research method. When looking at their maps, the idea of urban fields becomes immediately clearer and more convincing at first glance.

However, mapping itself should also be critically examined, since it tends to convey certain ideas in a seemingly scientific and objective way. In this context, I also wonder to what extent the “scientification” of the urban field makes sense, considering that “the city” still remains an important institution and reference point within our society.

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I found the Urban Field really fascinating, especially considering it was written in the 60s. What stood out to me most was the way Friedmann and Miller used the data, technology, and social trends of their time to make predictions about how cities might grow and evolve. They imagined the city not as a fixed boundary, but as a network of connected places, what they called the “urban field.” I liked how they saw urbanization as something dynamic, influenced by mobility, communication technologies, and changing lifestyles.

What I found most interesting was their belief that technology could reshape the relationship between core cities and their peripheries. Instead of seeing rural areas as “left behind,” they imagined them becoming part of a continuous urban fabric through better accessibility and new forms of communication. That idea feels very relevant today, especially with how digital networks, remote work, and mobility are again changing where people live and how cities function.

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In comparison to Weissmann and Jacobs, Friedman zooms out of the city and looks at the greater whole. Urbanization is happening everywhere - in the metropolitan cores but also around them - reaching far out into the peripheries. That’s why urban and rural can no longer be distinguished. Friedman talks about urban fields: areas with a diameter of two hours by ground transport, as a limitation for commuting and recreational excursions of daily life. I ask myself how much lager this diameter is today, how much further you can go with nowadays technology.

I find it interesting that the shift to a "leisure society" is one of the main aspects of Friedman’s text. With wealth, society (middle class) can finally take some time off after the tough work situation during industrialization. With this free time, new interests are emerging: the need for green spaces, culture, and sports facilities rises.

I personally have never thought about when this shift happened and what changes it brought for urban planning. I find the connection of the two very intresting. Leisure, wealth, mobility, and the communication revolution are the factors leading to an urban patchwork—a multicentralized urban field instead of the monocentralized city cores with suburbia of industrialization.

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Friedmann1995_Where We Stand Decade of World City Research 2

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The Urban Field (1965), pp. 312-319

Published in: Journal of the American Institute of Planners

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Post your reading response to the text until 16.10.25 13:00 on this Padlet

Suggestions for the Reading Response:

-What are the most important arguments and suggestions that you can take away from the text?

-Which arguments would you disagree with the author on, and why?

-How do you evaluate the text in light of its historical context?

-How could this text be related to other texts already read in this seminar?

-Which arguments do you consider significant for your future work as an architect?