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Sprawl, November 2005
Hardcover
A Compact History
University Of Chicago Press
November 2005
306 pages
ISBN: 0226076903
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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."
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