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?

Published in: Journal of the American Institute of Planners

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.