In the decades since World War II, suburbanization and urban expansion have encroached on otherwise rural areas and often including wild lands at a rate of almost a million acres per year. In our quest to answer these questions we bring the concept of urban planning within social change into view in order to critically examine ourselves in terms of our social change in the past few decades.
What is urbal sprawl?
What is the history behind suburbanization?
How have our cultural values contributed to our utilization of space?
What economic and market forces effect urban sprawl?
Which sociological forces impact sprawl?
WHO is affected?
How is the land affected?
As we shape our urban space, does it in turn, shape us?
What forces must be overcome to end urban sprawl?
What efforts are being made to counteract sprawl?
Mike Davis, City of Quartz pp. 3-4. Faustian in our hoping, we believe there is 'always something better out there'. Often without regard to consequence, we expand in search of our desires; land, prosperity, freedom, status, power. This outward expansion from metropolitan areas takes a certain form, brings with it a certain type of development, and pushes growth which is blind to limits of sustainability. Characteristics of urban sprawl type development can be defined as low-density, poorly planned, land-consumptive, automobile dependent areas, designed without regard to its surroundings.
Because the new developments were relatively inexpensive, the middle class fled outward in search of land and the American Dream. Forced to shift with the population, businesses followed their employees as well as their customers. People took their jobs with them, and convenience centers a.k.a. strip malls were constructed sporadically throughout the new developments. The institution of Zoning Codes followed development, rather than preceding it, rendering zone laws irrelevant to most established development. Markets in these new sub-urban areas consisted solely of housing, pushing other forms of development further from residential areas. This only escalated the established automobile dependency. In order to accommodate suburb residents, the Highway interstate system was implemented in the 1960's.
Thus, automobile dependent, low density development began to encroach on rural and wild lands. The lack of urban planners and thus the absence of holistic thinking and planning has rendered suburbia poorly planned since its beginnings.
Continuing in the frontier tradition, the notion of westward expansion has catapulted into outward expansion. It seems that these same frontier values of expansion have transferred into a more modern frontier value consisting of the formation of concentric circles around our established settlements.
The culturally imbedded notion that land is infinite contributes to our conception of boundless space. Until recently, we have been ignorant to the constraints and exhaustible potentials of land.
Within our throwaway culture, we continuously implement raw development and growth rather than resort to infill development. In other words, if mistakes are discovered in urban planning, we simply move and develop elsewhere, rather than remain and create solutions.
The illusion that suburbs seem safer*link to steve* exacerbates the migration outward, and at the same time, idealizes the homogeneity of sprawled areas.
As the global population continues to increase, and 40% of Americans live in metropolitan areas, we are becoming increasingly crowded. Immigration and migration to urban areas only exacerbate the dilemma of creating sustainable space for urban populations.
The capitalist system fosters decision making for the benefit of the individual, ignoring community-based concerns. Sprawl ignores community-based concerns. Like capitalism, it caters to the individual's short term needs irrespective of long-term ideals.
The perception that suburbs are cheaper plays a large role in sprawl. The 'more for your $$$' argument' is effective when considering mortgage and property tax systems are more feasible to the suburban homeowner.
Businesses sprawl in search of freedoms from regulation, lower insurance rates, and access to a better educated work force.
An absence of regional planning allows for sporadic development. A lack of regional consciousness promotes urban systems of imbalance and segregation, perpetuating the centralization of poverty.
As technology continues to develop, a decentralization of employment centers begins to unfold. Enhanced communication via the internet allows more people to work at home as well as to establish regional offices. While this phenomenon decreases commuter traffic and pollution, it exacerbates urban sprawl by promoting business and residential variations of development. In other words, business centers become intermixed with residential areas, creating unbalanced patterns of dispersal. This is aesthetically evident in the commonalty of strip malls. Large scale companies sprawling in search of lower property taxes construct buildings in the midst of suburbia. This shift in placement of work locations has been gaining force since the 1960's. In Chicago, three out of every five non-governmental jobs are located outside of the city since 1990. This accounts for more than 1 million jobs located in the western suburbs of Chicago. In the surrounding counties the number of-commuters has doubled in the last two decades. Most strikingly, jobs in those counties accounted for 53 per cent of the metropolitan area's job growth from 1985-1990. Chicago's situation parallels similar trends around the nation. As a result of this "job sprawl", roadways arise to provide access to consumers and accommodate the remaining commuter employees.
Increased automobile dependence undermines governmental and public efforts to increase air quality and to conserve energy. As metropolitan areas sprawl, water and energy sources are configured further and further from original sources.
As sprawl literally erodes tangible community, it has brought about a shift in our priorities. As we move further outward in search of cheap land, we move further from our communities and towards isolation. While this isolation may bring tranquillity and property to those who could otherwise not afford it, our focus changes to ourselves, rather than our community.
In search of sustainable ways to use land and space, a self-centered consciousness of isolation renders us unable to conceive of the benefits of community-based decision making. Central to the concept of sustainability, is the concept of making choices based on an awareness beyond ourselves, inclusive of our community, our earth, and future generations. Without this consciousness, sustainable development cannot happen, and we will continue to erode our quality of life.
The few auto use reduction efforts, such as command and control policies, various market mechanisms, and voluntary efforts, have met widespread opposition from both the public and their political leaders.
In order to ensure quality of planning, regionalists take into account whole areas, rather than develop for the benefit of one municipality. Regional sharing of tax revenues represents one method of attempting to foster this co-operation. Another option would be an imperative set down by city governments requiring local communities to adopt slow growth plans such as Portland's Metro 2040, under which area municipalities are encouraged to live up to social responsibilities by the 1980's emergence of a metropolitan government "with the capacity to guide regional development." Success in regional planning in areas such as Portland, Oregon encourages a homegrown revolution in perceptions and attitudes, which are, of course, a critical component of change in any arena.
. "..they have gone beyond the initial goals of farm and forest preservation and have begun discussing additional objectives. They have started to think about how transportation systems can be better coordinated with residential, employment, and commercial growth, so that the region can maintain its good qualities, such as easy access to Portland's central city...countryside would remain within reach of everyone, since suburban sprawl would be limited."
Opposition to sprawl is widespread. However, opposition in itself cannot act as a force with which to combat an expansion as rapid and dangerous as urban sprawl. A revolution needs to occur in the hearts and minds of citizens, in communities, in regions, in nations. This revolution may be inspired by wilderness, just as it may be motivated by architectural integrity and brilliance. This revolution may be realized through governmental action, or grassroots education. However it happens, it must be the people who combat sprawl.
We have been conditioned to believe that infinite boundless space is available to us. We are instilled with the conviction that richness is out there somewhere, just beyond our latest expansion. It is this type of mentality which has fostered our sprawl, and the same mentality that must be revolutionized. If sprawl exists as an intricate knit of complexity within our culture, so do the forces powerful enough to stop it. If, through avenues small and large, we can create a homegrown and powerful revolution, we may be able to overcome the ravaging forces of urban sprawl.
New Urbanist specialists Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany and Elisabeth Plater-Zuperc have succeeded in spearheading the movement onto the cutting edges of fields from real estate to architecture to urban planning.
In response to the aesthetically repulsive nature of sprawl, New Urbanists propose pedestrian-based, well planned communities. As sprawl often springs up without much thought or planning aside from profit and accessibility by car, Urbanism communities emphasize well planned communities reflective of their values.
Geis, Don and Tammy Kutzmark. Developing Sustainable Communities. Public Management. Aug. 1995, pp. 4-13.
15 Ways to Fix the Suburbs. Newsweek, May 15, 1995
Langdon, Philip. "A Better Place to Live". Amherst Press: UMASS Press, 1994.
Katz, Peter "The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community". McGraw Hill: Massachusetts, 1994.
Young, Dwight. "Alternatives to Sprawl." Cambridge, Mass: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 1995. http://www.denverpost/com/urban/html
http://www.bankamerica.com/community/env_p8.html
"They call this progress, but they don't say where its going; also there are some of us who would like the chance to say whether or not we want the ride." William Faulkner 1947