Twentieth Century Sprawl

Author : Owen D. Gutfreund
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780198032427
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Twentieth-Century Sprawl written by Owen D. Gutfreund and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, Owen Gutfreund offers a fascinating look at how highways have dramatically transformed American communities nationwide, aiding growth and development in unsettled areas and undermining existing urban centers. Gutfreund uses a "follow the money" approach, showing how government policies subsidized suburban development and fueled a chronic nationwide dependence on cars and roadbuilding, with little regard for expense, efficiency, ecological damage, or social equity. The consequence was a combination of unstoppable suburban sprawl, along with ballooning municipal debt burdens, deteriorating center cities, and profound changes in American society and culture. Gutfreund tells the story via case studies of three communities--Denver, Colorado; Middlebury, Vermont; and Smyrna, Tennessee. Different as these places are, they all show the ways that government-sponsored highway development radically transformed America's cities and towns. Based on original research and vividly written, Twentieth-Century Sprawl brings to light the benefits and consequences of the spread of American highways and makes a major contribution to our understanding of issues that still plague our cities and suburbs today.

Author : William T. Bogart
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 113945871X
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Don't Call It Sprawl written by William T. Bogart and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-09-25 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Don't Call It Sprawl, the current policy debate over urban sprawl is put into a broader analytical and historical context. The book informs people about the causes and implications of the changing metropolitan structure rather than trying to persuade them to adopt a panacea to all perceived problems. Bogart explains modern economic ideas about the structure of metropolitan areas to people interested in understanding and influencing the pattern of growth in their city. Much of the debate about sprawl has been driven by a fundamental lack of understanding of the structure, functioning, and evolution of modern metropolitan areas. The book analyzes ways in which suburbs and cities (trading places) trade goods and services with each other. This approach helps us better understand commuting decisions, housing location, business location, and the impact of public policy in such areas as downtown redevelopment and public school reform.

Author : Robert Bruegmann
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226076970
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sprawl written by Robert Bruegmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : Owen D. Gutfreund
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book 20th Century Sprawl written by Owen D. Gutfreund and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Christopher C. Sellers
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807835439
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Crabgrass Crucible written by Christopher C. Sellers and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although suburb-building created major environmental problems, Christopher Sellers demonstrates that the environmental movement originated within suburbs--not just in response to unchecked urban sprawl. Drawn to the countryside as early as the late 19th c

Author : Simon Gunn
Publisher : Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN 13 : 1780220731
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Middle Classes written by Simon Gunn and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2011-06-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first general history of the English middle classes, based on BBC TV programme of which Will Self said "No simple overview can do justice to this programme - an exemplary series and mandatory viewing'. Afternoon tea, the Women's Institute, Mrs Beeton, department stores, suburbia, seaside holidays and cycling clubs - all preserves of the great middle class. But where did the middle classes come from? And what makes a person middle class today? Although the term 'middle class' is part of our everyday language, the middle class has not been a feature of the British social scene from time immemorial. Drawing on the memories and life stories of individuals and families, as well as the words of distinguished historians and social commentators, this fascinating portrait of a people traces the roots of middle-class values in Victorian England through to the great educational reforms of the twentieth century. Panoramic and personal, this book provides a compelling picture of this influential social group and looks at what their future might be.

Author : Greg Hise
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801862557
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Magnetic Los Angeles written by Greg Hise and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1999-08-20 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suburban development is often considered synonymous with enhanced personal mobility, single-family housing, and life cycle homogeneity. According to this view, individual suburbs are residence-only enclaves, isolated commuter-sheds for a managerial and mercantile elite. Magnetic Los Angeles challenges this common vision of the expanding, twentieth-century city as the sprawling product of dispersion without planning, lacking any discernable order.

Author : Jon C. Teaford
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421420384
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Twentieth-Century American City written by Jon C. Teaford and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Touching on aging central cities, technoburbs, and the ongoing conflict between inner-city poverty and urban boosterism, The Twentieth-Century American City offers a broad, accessible overview of America's persistent struggle for a better city.

Author : Galina Tachieva
Publisher : Island Press
ISBN 13 : 1597269859
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sprawl Repair Manual written by Galina Tachieva and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2010-09-14 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a wealth of research and literature explaining suburban sprawl and the urgent need to retrofit suburbia. However, until now there has been no single guide that directly explains how to repair typical sprawl elements. The Sprawl Repair Manual demonstrates a step-by-step design process for the re-balancing and re-urbanization of suburbia into more sustainable, economical, energy- and resource-efficient patterns, from the region and the community to the block and the individual building. As Galina Tachieva asserts in this exceptionally useful book, sprawl repair will require a proactive and aggressive approach, focused on design, regulation and incentives. The Sprawl Repair Manual is a much-needed, single-volume reference for fixing sprawl, incorporating changes into the regulatory system, and implementing repairs through incentives and permitting strategies. This manual specifies the expertise that’s needed and details the techniques and algorithms of sprawl repair within the context of reducing the financial and ecological footprint of urban growth. The Sprawl Repair Manual draws on more than two decades of practical experience in the field of repairing and building communities to analyze the current pattern of sprawl development, disassemble it into its elemental components, and present a process for transforming them into human-scale, sustainable elements. The techniques are illustrated both two- and three-dimensionally, providing users with clear methodologies for the sprawl repair interventions, some of which are radical, but all of which will produce positive results.

Author : Thad Williamson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780199708864
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.6X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sprawl, Justice, and Citizenship written by Thad Williamson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-12 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Must the strip mall and the eight-lane highway define 21st century American life? That is a central question posed by critics of suburban and exurban living in America. Yet despite the ubiquity of the critique, it never sticks-Americans by the scores of millions have willingly moved into sprawling developments over the past few decades. Americans find many of the more substantial criticisms of sprawl easy to ignore because they often come across as snobbish in tone. Yet as Thad Williamson explains, sprawl does create real, measurable social problems. Utilizing a landmark 30,000-person survey, he shows that sprawl fosters civic disengagement, accentuates inequality, and negatively impacts the environment. Yet, while he highlights the deleterious effects of sprawl on civic life in America, he is also evenhanded. He does not dismiss the pastoral, homeowning ideal that is at the root of sprawl, and is sympathetic to the vast numbers of Americans who very clearly prefer it. Sprawl, Justice, and Citizenship is not only be the most comprehensive work in print on the subject, it will be the first to offer an empirically rigorous critique of the most popular form of living in America today.