Sprawl

by Bruegmann, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780226076904
• ISBN10: 0226076903
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

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."

Author Biography

Robert Bruegmann is chair of and professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago as well as professor in the School of Architecture and the program in Urban Planning. His many books include The Architects and the City: Holabird & Roche of Chicago, 1880-1918, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(16)
PART 1 sprawl across the centuries
1 Defining Sprawl	17	(4)
2 Early Sprawl	21	(12)
3 Sprawl in the Interwar Boom Years	33	(9)
4 Sprawl in the Postwar Boom Years	42	(9)
5 Sprawl since the 197os	51	(45)
6 The Causes of Sprawl	96	(19)
PART 2 the diagnosis: three campaigns against sprawl
7 Early Anti-sprawl Arguments	115	(2)
8 The First Anti-sprawl Campaign: Britain in the 1920's	117	(4)
9 The Second Anti-sprawl Campaign: The United States in the Postwar Years	121	(16)
10 The Third Anti-sprawl Campaign: Since the 1970's	137	(32)
PART 3 the prescription: remedies for sprawl
11 Early Remedies: From Anti-blight to Anti-sprawl	169	(4)
12 Postwar Anti-sprawl Remedies	173	(26)
13 Anti-sprawl Remedies since the 1970's	199	(21)
Some Conclusions	220	(6)
Acknowledgments	226	(5)
Notes	231	(46)
Bibliographic Essay	277	(4)
Index	281