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Urban Sprawl Of The United States

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Urban Sprawl in The United States
Kori Thompson
The Gwinnett School of Math, Science, and Technology

Urban Sprawl in The United States
A great number of Americans living today reside in areas where homes, businesses, and institutions are spread sparsely. These areas are commonly referred to as either urban or suburban sprawl. Sprawl is generally designed for the movement of cars and not the movement of pedestrians; most people simply will not, and often cannot, assume the role of pedestrian while navigating through sprawl. People are isolated from each other by the glass walls of cars and the metal gates of enclosed subdivisions. American culture glorifies the suburban lifestyle, but the drawbacks of this lifestyle affect not only those living within suburban sprawl itself, but also those living in the urban areas left behind as people mass-migrated to these sparsely concentrated areas. Despite the common perception that suburban, sprawling, and sparsely-concentrated urban life is overall better quality than urban life, the perpetual growth of urban and suburban sprawl in the United States has had negative environmental, physiological, and sociological effects on the land and population of the United States. Over the next twenty-five to fifty years, new suburban development and redevelopment should be based in design that is less sparsely-built, less car-dependent, less segregated by socioeconomic status, and less segregated by land use;

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