Methods Employed by Geographers in Regional Surveys: Discussion

The Rural Planning Perspective at an Opportune Time

“…Hudson (1935) presented methods for regional surveys, giving examples of agricultural lands inventory maps. The next issue of the journal published reactions to Hudson’s article, which expressed interest in understanding “the part which the natural and man-made features of the land occupancy pattern played in the evolution of the type of economy, the social and political system [emphasis included]” and vice versa (Bigger et al 1935, 36). However, it was not until the 1960s that American planning and political science scholars began to see small town and rural communities as objects worthy of study, rather than as parts of regions or the urban hinterlands, and this moment marked the analytic turn in the rural planning literature (Sokolow 1963; Wildavsky and Polsby 1964; Clavel 1970).…”