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ton, D.C., including New York City,
Pruladelphia, Baltimore, and everything
in between, among, and around.
"San-San" meant a huge complex
stretching from San Francisco to San
Diego, with the ugliness that is Los
Angeles somewhere in between. Sorne
have joked that San-San should expand
to stretch from Marysville, just north of
Sacramento, to Tijuana, just south of
the border in Mexico. The new strip
city would be named
Ma,.i-juana,
one of
its chief consumer items.
"Crupitts" was the term formed from
the strip city ultimately gulping the
whole territory from Chicago, aod envi–
rons north to Milwaukee, and east to
Pittsburgh. But this would only be the
beginning.
World population will pass four bil–
lion by 1975. Demographers and popu–
lation experts estímate that world
population will
d011bie
within another
35 years to
EIGHT
billion in 2010, and
DOUBLE AGAIN
35 years later!
Most of these additional billions will
flock
to the cities.
Cities grow slowly - and change
slowly. Witness Rome, London, or
París. The shuddering impact of tech–
nology upon cities originally designed
around narrow cart trails, canals and
footpaths is everywhere evident.
Most urban planning envisions city
growth
in
terms of a decade, or so. Few,
if any, are remotely concecoed with a
period of 50 or 70 years. At a speech
delivered in Los Angeles, a past Presi–
dent of the National Chamber of Com–
merce spoke glowingly of the beautiful
"50-storied high-rise apartment com–
plexes" with shopping centers, swim–
ming pools, rooftop restaurants, and a
"magnificent view of the sea." But
when dozens upon dozens of such
buildings are built, the only ones with
such a "magnificent view" remain those
crowded the closest to the ocean. The
others simply stare at the balconies of
other apartment dwellers.
Denseness Breeds Tenseness
But people actually seem to
desi,.e
city life - the opportunity to trade a
pleasant country environment for a
small apartment in a huge building.
More than half of the American popu–
lation lives on less than 1 percent of the
The
PLAIN TRUTH
land, with 70 percent of all Americans
clustered together in 250 metropolitan
areas. In Australia, nearly half the pop–
ulation lives in only 2 large metropoli–
tan concentrations. In Britain, the most
urbanized nation on earth, nearly 80
percent of the population is crowded
together into cities. Judging from
present trends, more than half the
people on the planet will be living in
and around cities of more than 100,000
population each by the late 1970's.
Generally, the older the city, or the
more poverty-stricken its various ghettos
(oftentimes ethnically oriented) , the
more densely packed the human inhabi–
tants are.
In London, 30,000 people Iive within
each square mile. In Manhattan, it's
78,000! Parts of París have 73,000
people per square mile, and Tokyo
bulges with 80,000 Japanese for every
square mile of inner city.
If
the entire American population
were compacted together as are the
black and Puerto Rican peoples of Har–
lem, the entire United States population
could be housed in only 3 of the 5
boroughs of New York City.
The only comparable example in the
whole eco-system of earth of such
incredible crowding would be insect
colonies. Yet, there is nothing precision–
like about human crowding, as in the
case of ants, or bees.
The Tragic Effects of Crowding
To obtain sorne data on what the
simple pressure of "too many" can do,
Dr. John Calhoun of the National Insti–
tute of Mental Health pioneered what is
called "experimental overpopulation."
In one experiment, Calhoun confined
thirty Norway rats in a ten-by-fourteen–
foot room, partitioned into four inter–
connected pens. The nests resembled
modero boarding houses. The rats were
left alone for sixteen months, while
researchers watched.
Soon, the thirty rats multiplied to
eighty, and a "rat slum" carne into
being. As the population kept rising,
with no controls, all instinctive patterns
of behavior disintegrated.
Mothers began neglecting nests, and
abandoning their young. Many rats
wandered about in dazed, random,
senseless pattern. Sorne rats even devel-
July 1971
oped aberrant sexual habits, such as
homosexuality. Others became canni–
balistic. The death rate of the rat
metropolis soared to overwhelming
proportions, surpassing 90 percent of
all live births in the more congested
pens.
It
is probable that had the experi–
ment continued, the total population
would have perished.
All this took place m just sixteen
months.
In 1968, Calhoun and his staff built
severa! mouse "universes" (little pens
of tin, of varying sizes) inside a barn–
like building on the NIMH (National
Institute of Mental Health) animal
research farro. Four males and four fe–
males were placed in ead1 one - and
soon the populations began doubling,
and redoubJing. Behavioral changes
were again carefu!Jy noted.
In the largest "universe," which was
intended for 100 mice, 2,000 animals
struggled to survive.
The whole social order disintegrated.
Pointless physical attacks became the
order of the day. Groups mauled "inno–
cent" passersby for no apparent reason.
Mothers neglected their young. Most
males lay listlessly about, gnawing oo
others' tails. Females developed aggres–
sive, masculine tendencies. What little
sexual activity remained was usually
abusive, and degenerative in character.
The males became too defeated to at–
tempt procreation. The females became
too self-assertive to allow it - normal
roles became compJetely reversed.
An unexpected result of the study was
the emergence of a new class of crea–
tures who obviously withdrew into sorne
inner sanctum of their own, and became
somewhat oblivious to their intolerable
surroundings. These mice devoted them–
selves to an excessive degree of washing
- working for hours on keeping their
skins clean.
The behavior of crowded rats was not
an isolated phenomenon. Consider two
further experiments in crowding.
Deer, Cats, af:?.d - Men
Sorne fifty years ago, five deer were
released on a 280-acre island in
Chesapeake Bay on the East Coast of
the United States.
They flourished, until there were al–
most 300 of them. Suddenly, for no