Raymond Vernon, professor of International Trade and Investment, is currently directing the nation's first comprehensive study of a metropolitan area in 30 years.

The New York Metropolitan Regional Study, financed by grants totaling $600,000 from the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers' Fund, is designed to fore-cast the economic future of the Metropolitan area for use in city planning.

In a series of nine books published by Harvard University Press, Vernon and his colleagues will relate the findings of the three-year survey. The first, Anatomy of a Metropolis, by Vernon and Edgar M. Hoover '28, professor of Economics at University of Pittsburgh, was published last Monday.

After exploring the reasons for growing "grey areas" and decreasing population in the nation's old cities, the book examines the causes and results of the general factory "flight to the suburbs." The chief result, according to Vernon and Hoover, is the appearance of suburban slums.

Two more books in the series will appear this month. The Newcomers, by Oscar Handlin, professor of History, deals with the history of Negroes and Puerto Ricans in the New York area. Also to be published is Made in New York, by Roy B. Helfgott, James M. Hund, and W. Eric Gustafson, instructor in Economics.

The final six works of the study will appear in 1960.