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N THE PURSUIT of national urbanization policies, I m o r e and more countries have opted for the politically important goal of redistributing their populations away from what are viewed as extreme concentrations in relatively few metropolitan areas. Such a goal has been given important intellectual support by research on urban systems, which suggests that a more spatially dispersed demographic equilibrium is not only attainable, but also desirable. This view is based on some very strong implicit assumptions about the role of the economy in space. Specifically, it is presumed that the demographic equilibrium can be achieved and sustained by means of a (costless) redistribution of economic activity among geographic areas. Such an assumption is at best highly questionable. The efficient location of economic activity may in fact dictate a quite different spatial distribution of population when efficiency is taken in its broadest sense to include social costs and benefits in addition to private costs and returns. Under such circumstances, a policy of population redistribution is likely to have important welfare costs including, in certain circumstances, perverse income distribution results.Current debate over this issue has focused on trying to establish the efficiency and distributional advantages attributable to the size of spatial entities.' One difficulty with much of this debate is that it is based on analyses pertaining to employment conditions or to income levels among different-sized spatial units at a point in time. More appropriate is an examination of the longer-term performance of these units, for the objective of population policies of the sort being considered is a new equilibrium distribution of the population that is sustainable over time? Otherwise, the redistribution will constitute an unstable solution requiring an unending infusion of resources to stay on target.

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