Sprawl Essay

In today’s society the landscape of the city is constantly changing to accommodate for technological innovations, greater populations, and economic opportunity. As the skyline of cities across America are changing at a rate faster than ever seen before, one immense community is being left in the dust. The suburbs of America have refused to change, allowing a great resemblance of what they looked like 50 years ago. The stubbornness of the suburbs to change has led to many issues economically and environmentally. In her essay, “Seventy-Five Percent”, Ellen Dunham-Jones puts forth that 75% of construction in the past decade occurs in the suburban landscape. Yet, in today’s society much of the architectural community contains a strong bias against the suburbs. However, with over half the country’s

Urban sprawl was a major problem and had many negative effects. "Suburban sprawl, “called urban sprawl was a result of overpopulation. Sprawl occurred when cities spread outward. Forests and farmland were being destroyed to create new housing subdivisions, shopping centers, offices, parking areas, civic institutions and roadways. State governments built highways and roads to serve all the new commuters moving in and out of the city. Developers chose to build on less expensive land farther away from the urban core. Land prices were lower and housing in these developments was more affordable. Some people chose a longer commute in exchange for more comfortable, low-priced housing. The sprawl was a chronological process that devastated the land and life of the American people. This problem described here continues to be a problem. And many people are unaware that urban sprawl continues to be a problem. Friendly neighborhoods, traditional pedestrian have fallen victim to this problem. Environmental activists claimed that urban sprawl, was a substantial environmental threat. But activists concerned about sprawl should concentrate on existing government policies that encourage suburban development and prevent greater redevelopment of urban areas.

This, in effect, creates a miniature city of itself, with businesses, homes, schools, libraries, police stations, and hospitals all building there (Morris 39). This may seem like a good thing, but the consequences of this are that huge amounts of previously free land are now being taken over, and many habitats are being destroyed. Forests, swamps, and fields all make way for big businesses.

Gentrification is a general term for the arrival of wealthier people in an existing urban, district a related increase in rents and property values and changes in district’s character and culture. Gentrification works by accretion which is gathering momentum like a snowball. Gentrification has been the cause of painful conflict in many American cities. America’s renewed interest in city life has put a premium on urban neighborhoods, some of which have been built since World War II. It tends to occur in districts with particular qualities that make them desirable and ripe for change. Word travels that an attractive neighborhood has been “discovered” and the pace of change accelerates rapidly. An increase in median income and a decline in the

Many large cities are experiencing skyrocketing rental/housing price because of the excessive demand and more importantly, the scarcity of land. San Francisco, as one of the most important financial centers in the world, is facing a serious dilemma due to its inflated rental/housing prices; people’s dissatisfaction over the government grow as they are excluded from the access to proper housing. San Francisco has the highest rents of any large city in the United States, which makes people, especially from low and medium income group, hard to acquire housing near their workplaces and force to commute from other regions of Bay area into the city. In other words, the high housing prices are pushing people as well as the productive industry out of the city. While people are accusing the government of being responsible for the failure of housing since it underestimates the rate of population growth, which leads to a shortage in the housing market. However, statistic shows that San Francisco actually built more than 30 percent more housing units per capita than New York City and Los Angeles in 2014. (Henry Grabar, 2015) It is because such shortage is artificially created by the policy makers to constraint land use, hence, increasing the supply of housing does not efficiently decrease the housing. The fundamental cause of this imbalanced housing market is the poor allocation of land use.

“We are not victims of sprawl…we are sprawl!” Urbanization in Los Angeles was through “Selfish, profit-driven presentism” (pg.65). This has deafened Angelenos (natives to Los Angeles) to the warnings of environmentalists who have cautioned about environmental crises and ways to prevent them. This later becomes linked to social injustice. For example, when homes are on fire in Malibu, where they should have never

Residential, commercial and industrial development is the largest contributors to landscape change in the state of New Jersey. When buildout occurs in one region, development pressure begins in another, virtually insuring the Megalopolis concept of one huge urban corridor stretching between Boston and Washington D.C. Year after year, farmland dwindles, roads become congested, and more residents are left to compete for diminishing natural resources. Desperate measures and newer technologies are incorporated to replace poor planning and lack of vision on behalf of decision-makers caught between competing interests. When the long term health and wellbeing of the established population and the short term gain of a

In Robert Bruegmann article “How Sprawl Got a Bad Name,” he is the odd man out and is for sprawling. One of his reasons throughout is that all the architectures plan for preventing the problem has failed. Bruegmann shows his argument that the economy has these set of expectations for today’s society. The citizens are not really thinking realistically when it comes to those modern expectations. He backs up his point by stating a big crisis of traffic in Los Angeles and how it is not the congestion it is that the programs sit in place are outdated. One of the more convincing reasons of why Bruegmann is supporting sprawl is “that growing numbers of people have discovered that it is the surest way to obtain the rich, satisfying

The development that is happening, however, is not the issue, the way we develop land is the difficult situation. When low-density residential areas are built, such as schools and roads, it is called a sprawl type of development. This ruins forests, farms, and shorelines, and degrades water and land habitats. Neighborhoods keep expanding and in 2015, the average home

Avid supporters of gentrification believe that it brings safety and increased revenue to the cities, making them more attractive to outsiders and bringing in more residents as a result. Unfortunately, gentrification does not have that desired effect on neighborhoods. According to Source C, a data review examined 114 examples of gentrification over a five year period, studying several signs of a city’s growth.

People are now leaving the inner city areas in search of quieter and more relaxed atmosphere to raise their family. This growth has brought many Americans face to face with our changes in social,economic and industrial areas that supports this massive growth in the outer areas surrounding our major cities.

While providing high quality housing for millions of people across North America, the sprawl of Suburbia has harmed the

Urban sprawl has affected three major cities in many different ways. It has affected the city of Portland with wildlife being cut down for new growth. Secondly it has affected the city of Toronto with run down buildings in its urban core and the speculation on the cost of money to create things. Thirdly it affected the city of Atlanta with air pollution, people were moving out and working in the cities so that created a lot of air pollution. In this essay it addresses three cities and how urban sprawl affected them.

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

An emerging issue is that of urban sprawl. While some aspects of urban sprawl has been seen since ancient times, this phenomenon has started gaining the most momentum in the past century, aided by the advancement of technology, especially with the rise of mass produced automobiles, houses and highway systems. Many people unknowingly contribute to this environmental problem, as is the nature of it. Urban sprawl deals with the growth of the suburbs, the area between the urban and rural areas of a city. Most of America’s largest cities and states, in terms of population, are prime examples of urban sprawl. Opponents of urban sprawl usually cite the government as a major cause of sprawl. The government may be a major catalyst of