the fractal city. Urban development is purported to follow the diffusion- limited aggregation model of physics, which generates tree-like clusters of populations around some focal point on the landscape. While providing am- ple evidence of dendritic expansion in city histories (something evidently lacking in their Chapter 3 simula- tions), Batty and Longley admit at the outset that it is difficult to reconcile individual location-making at the ci- ty's edge with the random wandering espoused by the DLA model. Never- theless they forge onwards. Diffusion curves, so familiar to geographers, are used to capture space-time urban ex- pansion and fractal dimensions are shown to be time-dependent. Finally the town of Taunton (in Somerset) is compared to their baseline model, and real-world growth is found to be more compact than simulated growth. Chapter 8 simply extends these ideas, showing how more mathematical sophistication combined with more contextual awareness can further im- prove land-use simulations.

Finally, Chapters 9 and 10 apply fractal analysis to urban densities and size distributions, respectively. This application is not surprising, given that Mandelbrot 's earliest interests were in uncovering statistical models for such empirical regularities. Here Batty and Longley stress that while data collection and density- interpretation issues cloud the results somewhat, their findings suggest that urban fractal dimensionality is closer to 2 than 1. The authors conclude by showing that settlement geometry values, not surprisingly, with physical features (coastlands), policy (Green- belts), and county regions.

This reviewer has mixed feelings about Fractal Cities. On the one hand, this is obviously a well-conceived and prodigious undertaking. The book abounds with useful technical insights, clever methodological nuances, and informative graphics - many done in gorgeous colors. The authors have also gone to great lengths to communi- cate the book's material to various constituencies. However, the book will be more appreciated by those with strong GIS and computer cartography backgrounds and less appreciated by

Book reviews

those with interests in the "urban question". By any measure, though, this is a book that was worthy of publication - its contents go well beyond that found in a series of pre- ceding articles. However, the reader will probably not be convinced that the fractal approach gives any greater insight into urban growth and de- velopment patterns than do the in- sights provided by a host of other tools and techniques used by planners. In the end the fractal approach seems very strong on description, especially visual appeal, and somewhat weak on explanation. The reader is left with the nagging feeling that certain com- prehensible urban features, like densi- ty surfaces, are simply randomized in these fractal simulations. It is unfor- tunate that the authors did not attempt to adapt their models more to urban policy and forecasting issues, for these areas will probably prove the most worthwhile for future work in fractal simulations.

R e f e r e n c e

Mandelbrot, B (1983) The Fractal Geo- metry of Nature, Freeman, San Francis- co.

Gordon F Mulligan University of Arizona

Tucson AZ 85721 USA

The Culture of the English People: Iron Age to the Industrial Revolution N J G Pounds Cambridge University Press Cam- bridge (1994) 477pp £.50.00 hardback; £17. 95 paperback

This is a splendid work; wide-ranging, convincing and written in an accessible and open style, it focuses on what might better be understood by many as the history of everyday life. To anyone who visits historical sites, whether they are iron age or Roman ones, or enjoys the country house experience as entrusted to English Heritage and the National Trust, this book is essential reading. Indeed, it has much greater value than many of the publications on sale in such places because rather than revering the ob- jects, portraits, implements and per-

55

sonal items and extolling their virtue and workmanship for their own sake, Pounds' exposition of their historical context and evolution is convincing.

The foundation for this is Pounds' secure grasp of the geographical deter- minants of everyday life. Topography and work patterns inform the book throughout, sometimes implicitly. The nuanced landscape is analyzed as a product of several interacting forces, where for example, soil type and drainage, geology and topography affect agricultural possibilities, deter- mine building materials, the tools necessary for the dominant daily activ- ity, and in turn influence the pastimes, private and public pursuits in which communities and families engaged. In a sense, Pounds has written "a history of the English working class before industrialisation" without the political and ideological edge which E.P. Thompson brought to his enterprise.

With titles such as "house and household", "heat light and insecur- ity", "food - its production, preserva- tion and preparation", "in sickness and in death" each chapter can be read independently, and is valuable in its own right. But what Pounds weaves together in these and other chapters is a commonsense rationality amongst working people in many areas of their daily activity. Custom and practice are demonstrated to have had a logical foundation, and that long before Adam Smith and the industrial revolu- tion, the principles of comparative advantage were well understood, even if never articulated as such.

That economic geography under- pinned this rationality is central to Pounds' thesis. Nobody who has read his major three volume work on the Historical Geography of Europe will be surprised by this. Resource endow- ment is presented as central feature of his work. Iron and coal deposits, soil quality, the transport network which the coastline and navigable rivers offered are key determinants and identifying cultural characteristics of a region. This emphasis on output has a supply-sided dimension, an economic logic which is present in this most recent work too. Yet this hint of eco- nomic determinism is ameliorated by the attention to the human dimension,

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and in the later stages of the book by the focus on myth, magic and be l i e f - the irrational side of human be- haviour. In so doing, Pounds provides a behavioural interpretation which convincingly complements his earlier pre-disposition for the supply side. Nor are the mechanisms of authority overlooked; the role of the family and that of the parish and community re- ceive attention in separate chapters.

Another central thread to Pounds' argument is the view that traditional societies could not conceive of scien- tific causation. Thus any departure from some perceived normal or natu- ral course of events was interpreted as the arbitrary act of some supernatural agency, and therefore, only by an appeal to some (other) supernatural agency was it possible to recapture the presumed 'normal' state, whether this was the disappearance of plague or flood, or of less dramatic events, for example, to insult or injure an indi- vidual or obtain revenge. Counter- balancing the rational and logical means developed by an essentially illiterate population to undertake their daily tasks was a superstructure of belief which attempted to take account of the inexplicable. Pounds argues that the durability of rural rather than urban beliefs in magic and folklore owed much to the more varied and unpredictable nature of their agricultural lives. Prosperity and proximity in an urban milieu, Pounds contends, together with an urban dis- course fertilised by new sources of information, brought an earlier end to magic in towns and cities.

The book has its blemishes. The historiography is rather dated. The references to the towns and cities take little account of publications in the last 10 yr. The historical jump from Ro- man to medieval exemplifies this; the recent surge in interest amongst archaeologists for late-Saxon and ear- ly medieval finds goes unremarked. The geographical coverage reflects Pounds' own preference for Cornwall and the south-west, and more exam- ples from other parts of England could have been incorporated by reference to the excellent literature often pub- lished in local historical and archaeological journals and in theses.

Book reviews

London is dealt with elliptically, and no reference made to the nature of metropolitan culture, its growing per- vasiveness, or systems of power which it accentuated.

There are too, a few errors of com- mission - proof-reading oversights mostly - and occasionally an irritating diatribe from Pounds. For example, he deplores (p 230) the 'current prac- tice of rearranging (headstones) around the boundary fence of the churchyard . . . ' and yet where an opinion would be welcome as in how a system of co-operation had built up in medieval communities, Pounds shel- ters behind the convenience of this being beyond 'the scope of this book' (p 182).

The definition of culture which Pounds adopts revolves heavily on the body of ideas which governed a com- munity, the tools and artefacts which those people used, and how together these related to their environment. This interconnection is critical. Pounds rejects the approach to 'mate- rial culture' adopted by others, refus- ing as he does to acknowledge that objects can be disentangled from the beliefs and myths which surround them. Based on the imperatives of nature - eating and drinking; shelter and relaxation; communication; sex- ual behaviour; birth and death; social instincts; sickness and disease; religion and wider views - Pounds then pro- ceeds to identify the cultural responses of traditional societies - that is to say pre-industrial ones - to each of these. But this integrated and credible view of material culture is itself treated inconsistently, since Pounds omits consideration of clothing and fashion, and language, music and dance. These omissions are significant. Can a his- tory of English culture really be con- templated without them?

Le Goff's remark that 'the history of mentalit~ is the history of the gradual' might serve as a summary of Pounds' work. Yet he is able to combine an account of a type of roof tile, or the cost of limestone, or the regional varieties of diet while still conveying a sense of dynamic, however gradual that shift might be. At times geo- grapher and historian, and alternately anthropologist and archaeologist,

Pounds synthesises an immense amount of material. This is an im- pressive achievement, and the book should be on the shelves of all who are interested in the history of everyday life, whether they live in England or not.

Richard Rodger Department of Economic and

Social History University of Leicester, UK

Competitive Cities: Succeeding in the Global Economy H Duff), E and F N Spon London 195 pp £24.99 hardback

This is a study of how four large cities are responding to the problems of the 'post-industrial era'. It is based in part on the findings of a study tour fi- nanced by the German Marshall Fund in the US, though the author has done a great deal of independent work. Literary and statistical sources have been widely used and Duffy's reviews of the current condition of the cities are both coherent and comparable.

The four cities - Atlanta, Birming- ham (England), Rotterdam and Toronto - are well chosen. They make up four of the six North Atlantic 'second cities' chosen for the original study. Atlanta and Toronto have mod- ern economies and growth has been their main feature since the 1970s, despite the world recession. Birming- ham and Rotterdam have faced the problems of recession in countries which were hard hit between 1973 and the 1980s. Britain experienced the col- lapse of its manufacturing base during both the depression of the 1970s and the appreciation of the pound sterling in the early 1980s as its growing oil exports undermined its exports of manufactured goods. The Netherlands had to pay heavily for its energy be- tween 1973 and 1981 and its manufac- tured exports quickly became uncom- petitive.

The four cities are seen as having many problems in common, including racial diversity, unemployment, de- ficiencies of education and training, poverty, and single-parent families.