Sprawl City PDF Download

Author: Robert Bullard
Publisher: Shearwater Books
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
"A serious but often overlooked impact of the random, unplanned growth commonly known as sprawl is its effect on economic and racial polarization. Atlanta, Georgia, one of the fastest growing areas in the country, offers a striking example of sprawl-induced stratification." "Sprawl City uses a multidisciplinary approach to analyze and critique the emerging crisis resulting from urban sprawl in the ten-county Atlanta metropolitan region. Local experts including sociologists, lawyers, urban planners, economists, educators, and health care professionals consider sprawl-related concerns as core environmental justice and civil rights issues."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author: Michael F. Logan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The line is drawn in cities of the American West: on one side, chambers of commerce, developers, and civic boosters advocating economic growth; on the other, environmentalists and concerned citizens who want to limit what they see as urban sprawl. While this conflict is usually considered to have its origins in the rise of environmental activism during the late 1960s, opposition to urban growth in the Southwest began as early as the economic boom that followed World War II. Evidence of this resistance abounds, but it has been largely ignored by both western and urban historians. Fighting Sprawl and City Hall now sets the record straight, tracing the roots of antigrowth activism in two southwestern cities, Tucson and Albuquerque, where urbanization proceeded in the face of constant protest. Logan tells how each of these cities witnessed multifaceted opposition to post-war urbanization and a rise in political activism during the 1950s. For each city, he describes the efforts by civic boosters and local government to promote development, showing how these booster-government alliances differed in effectiveness; tells how middle-class Anglos first voiced opposition to annexations and zoning reforms through standard forms of political protest such as referendums and petitions; then documents the shift to ethnic resistance as Hispanics opposed urban renewal plans that targeted barrios. Environmentalism, he reveals, was a relative latecomer to the political arena and became a focal point for otherwise disparate forms of resistance. Logan's study enables readers to understand not only these similarities in urban activism but also important differences; for example, Tucson provides the stronger example of resistance based on valuation of the physical environment, while Albuquerque better demonstrates anti-annexation politics. For each locale, it offers a testament to grass-roots activism that will be of interest to historians as well as to citizens of its subject cities.

Author: Robert Bruegmann
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226076970
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
As anyone who has flown into Los Angeles at dusk or Houston at midday knows, urban areas today defy traditional notions of what a city is. Our old definitions of urban, suburban, and rural fail to capture the complexity of these vast regions with their superhighways, subdivisions, industrial areas, office parks, and resort areas pushing far out into the countryside. Detractors call it sprawl and assert that it is economically inefficient, socially inequitable, environmentally irresponsible, and aesthetically ugly. Robert Bruegmann calls it a logical consequence of economic growth and the democratization of society, with benefits that urban planners have failed to recognize. In his incisive history of the expanded city, Bruegmann overturns every assumption we have about sprawl. Taking a long view of urban development, he demonstrates that sprawl is neither recent nor particularly American but as old as cities themselves, just as characteristic of ancient Rome and eighteenth-century Paris as it is of Atlanta or Los Angeles. Nor is sprawl the disaster claimed by many contemporary observers. Although sprawl, like any settlement pattern, has undoubtedly produced problems that must be addressed, it has also provided millions of people with the kinds of mobility, privacy, and choice that were once the exclusive prerogatives of the rich and powerful. The first major book to strip urban sprawl of its pejorative connotations, Sprawl offers a completely new vision of the city and its growth. Bruegmann leads readers to the powerful conclusion that "in its immense complexity and constant change, the city-whether dense and concentrated at its core, looser and more sprawling in suburbia, or in the vast tracts of exurban penumbra that extend dozens, even hundreds, of miles-is the grandest and most marvelous work of mankind." “Largely missing from this debate [over sprawl] has been a sound and reasoned history of this pattern of living. With Robert Bruegmann’s Sprawl: A Compact History, we now have one. What a pleasure it is: well-written, accessible and eager to challenge the current cant about sprawl.”—Joel Kotkin, The Wall Street Journal “There are scores of books offering ‘solutions’ to sprawl. Their authors would do well to read this book.”—Witold Rybczynski, Slate

Author: Gregory D. Squires
Publisher: The Urban Insitute
ISBN: 9780877667094
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Urban Sprawl is not simply a development that undercuts the quality of life for suburbanites. It has raised alarms across the nation, as fair housing advocates, environmentalists, land use planners, and even many suburban employers who cannot find the workers they need, have recognized that the costs go far beyond aesthetics. Despite the agreement that something needs to be done, there is no consensus on what works. Urban Sprawl: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses assembles leading scholars who analyze the major causes and consequences of urban sprawl and the policy initiatives that are being explored in response to these developments.

Author: Pamela Blais
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774818980
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Urban sprawl � low-density subdivisions and business parks, big box stores and mega-malls � has increasingly come to define city growth despite decades of planning and policy. In Perverse Cities, Pamela Blais argues that flawed public policies and mis-pricing create hidden, "perverse" subsidies and incentives that promote sprawl while discouraging more efficient and sustainable urban forms � clearly not what most planners and environmentalists have in mind. She makes the case for accurate pricing and better policy to curb sprawl and shows how this can be achieved in practice through a range of market-oriented tools that promote efficient, sustainable cities.

Author: Peter Calthorpe
Publisher: Shearwater Books
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
"In The Regional City, two of the most innovative thinkers in the field of urban design and land use planning offer a detailed look at this new metropolitan form: its genesis, physical structure, and policy foundation. Using full-color graphics and in-depth case studies, they provide a thorough examination of the emerging field of regional design, explaining how new forms of smart growth and neighborhood design can help put an end to sprawl, urban disinvestment, and squandered resources." "This book is a must read for environmentalists, planners, architects, landscape architects, local officials, real estate developers, community development advocates, and students in architecture, urban planning, and policy."--BOOK JACKET.

Author: Alex Marshall
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292792433
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
“Marshall writes with wit, reason, and style . . . An excellent resource on the history and future of American cities.” —Library Journal Do cities work anymore? How did they get to be such sprawling conglomerations of lookalike subdivisions, mega freeways, and “big box” superstores surrounded by acres of parking lots? And why, most of all, don't they feel like real communities? These are the questions that Alex Marshall tackles in this hard-hitting, highly readable look at what makes cities work. Marshall argues that urban life has broken down because of our basic ignorance of the real forces that shape cities—transportation systems, industry and business, and political decision-making. He explores how these forces have built four very different urban environments: the decentralized sprawl of California’s Silicon Valley; the crowded streets of New York City’s Jackson Heights neighborhood; the controlled growth of Portland, Oregon; and the stage-set facades of Disney’s planned community, Celebration, Florida. To build better cities, Marshall asserts, we must understand and intelligently direct the forces that shape them. Without prescribing any one solution, he defines the key issues facing all concerned citizens who are trying to control urban sprawl and build real communities. His timely book is important reading for a wide public and professional audience.

Author: Jason Diamond
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566895901
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
For decades the suburbs have been where art happens despite: despite the conformity, the emptiness, the sameness. Time and again, the story is one of gems formed under pressure and that resentment of the suburbs is the key ingredient for creative transcendence. But what if, contrary to that, the suburb has actually been an incubator for distinctly American art, as positively and as surely as in any other cultural hothouse? Mixing personal experience, cultural reportage, and history while rejecting clichés and pieties and these essays stretch across the country in an effort to show that this uniquely American milieu deserves another look.

Author: David Kolb
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820336629
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
People often bemoan the spread of malls, suburban strips, subdivisions, and other sprawling places in contemporary America. But are these places as bad as critics claim? In Sprawling Places, David Kolb questions widely held assumptions about our built environments. Kolb agrees there is a lot not to like about many contemporary places, but to write them off simply as commodified “nonplaces” does not treat them critically. Too often, Kolb says, aesthetic character and urban authenticity are the focus of critics, when it is more important to understand a place’s complexity and connectedness. Kolb acknowledges that the places around us increasingly have banal exteriors, yet they can be complex and can encourage their inhabitants to use them in multiple, nonlinear ways. Ultimately, Kolb believes human activity within a place is what defines it. Even our most idealized, classical places, he shows, change over the course of history when subjected to new linkages and different flows of activity. Engaging with the work of such writers and critics as Henri Lefebvre, Manuel Castells, Karsten Harries, and Christian Norberg-Schulz, Kolb seeks to move discussions about sprawl away from the idea that we must “choose between being rooted in the local Black Forest soil or wandering in directionless space.” By increasing our awareness of complexity and other issues, Kolb hopes to broaden and deepen people’s thinking about the contemporary built environment and to encourage better designs in the future.

Author: Howard Frumkin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
'Urban Sprawl and Public Health' offers a survey of the impact that the built environment can have on the health of the people who inhabit our cities. The authors go on to suggest ways in which the design of cities could be improved & have a positive impact on the well-being of their citizens.