| Description |
301 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
1. Defining sprawl -- 2. Early sprawl -- 3. Sprawl in the interwar boom years -- 4. Sprawl in the postwar boom years -- 5. Sprawl since the 1970s -- 6. The causes of sprawl -- 7. Early anti-sprawl arguments -- 8. The first anti-sprawl campaign : Britain in the 1920s -- 9. The second anti-sprawl campaign : the United States in the postwar years -- 10. The third anti-sprawl campaign : since the 1970s -- 11. Early remedies : from anti-blight to anti-sprawl -- 12. Postwar anti-sprawl remedies -- 13. Anti-sprawl remedies since the 1970s |
| Summary |
"As anyone who has flown into Los Angeles at dusk or London 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 resorts pushing far out into the countryside. Detractors call it sprawl and assert that it is economically inefficient, socially inequitable, environmentally irresponsible - and 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 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 provides readers with many provocative insights that confound received opinion about what urban life has been and could be."--BOOK JACKET |
| Analysis |
Overseas item |
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Town planning |
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Urban sprawl |
| Notes |
Formerly CIP. Uk |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [277]-280) and index |
| Subject |
Cities and towns -- Growth.
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City planning.
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Land use.
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Metropolitan areas.
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Urban policy.
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| LC no. |
2005007591 |
| ISBN |
0226076903 (cloth : alk. paper) |
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