The High Price of Urban Sprawl Essay

As people have difficulties to reaching services and activities without having a car, owning a car has its disadvantages and problems also. The problem’s origin date back to the 1920s. While cities were being planned, overall design was based on car usage, but did not account for growth in that population. Urban sprawl added to increased car usage, which was not taken into account during the design phase, and improper

13. Urban Sprawl: Urban sprawl refers to migration of population from high density urban areas to low density rural areas which results in spreading of city over more and more rural land. Urban sprawl results in land degradation, increased traffic, environmental issues and health issues. The ever growing demand of land displaces natural environment consisting of flora and fauna instead of being replaced.

The third listing for the definition of sprawl in the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary is as follows: “to spread or develop irregularly”. Unfortunately, this is the pattern, or lack thereof, with which America’s development is following. Every single day the world population rises, and these new babies have to live somewhere. Due to the fact that the birth rate is larger than that of the death rate in America (http://www.bartleby.com/151/a24.html), new homes and communities must be developed to accommodate all of the incoming people. This fundamental concept is coupled by another very powerful driving force prompting people to live in the suburbs of America, and that is greed. The economy makes

There are many who suggest the solution to the decline of the suburbs is to urbanize the area by densifying and overall making the suburbs more similar to a city. Laura Vaughan argues that the development of a spatial layout similar to that of a city would help the suburbs to become more efficient socially and economically. However, this approach directly contrasts the purpose of the suburbs, which was originally meant to provide a private, quiet environment for single family homes away from loud and busy city life. In his book, “Sprawl: A Compact History,” Robert Bruegmann explains that suburbia is not a bad thing but possesses “benefits that urban planners fail to recognize” and is a natural process of the growth of urbanism. While the suburban landscape does possess much potential, those who support the continued existence of the suburbs as they exist are naive and fail to recognize the environmental, social, and economical impact that the suburbs impose. The suburbs possess many social and political issues that need to be addressed. There is no doubt that there is massive potential in the suburban

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.

“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

Increasing numbers of people beginning to migrate to cities to find work, instead of working in the

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

This paper is a review of past and current research based on the cause and effect of urban sprawl in the United States with a case analysis of Fairfax County, Virginia. The motivation for this review is to shed light on issues that surround urban sprawl in large metropolitan areas and to discuss recommendations for research and ways to improve various effects of sprawl. The second motivation for this research is to show that there needs to be uniformity among researchers and urban planners, better data and analysis should be done to combat sprawl. My goal with this literature review is to define urban sprawl, define classic patterns in the United States, how we measure sprawl, the cause and effect of sprawl in the United States, give detailed background information on Fairfax County, future trends and implications of sprawl in Fairfax County, how to combat sprawl in the United States as well as in Fairfax County and key priorities in future research.

Human Geographer David Ley defines Gentrification as “the transition of inner-city neighborhoods from a status of relative property and limited property investment to a state of commodification and reinvestment.” (Ley Artists 1) In the past 50 years gentrification has swept over cities across the globe and has completely reshaped the way people think about why people live in certain neighborhoods. British sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification in 1964 to describe what was happening in the London borough of Islington, where Indian immigrants were being forced out in favor of creative young professionals. (Thomson). The term comes from the old english word gentry, which generally means wellborn well-bred and upper class people. For the most part of the last five decades gentrification has made large cities and downtown urban areas safer, more desirable for commercialization, more affluent, greener and more eco-friendly and has played a role in the vast change of demographics of many neighborhoods. This ‘urban renewal’ has been subject to many political debates, academic studies and research to figure out its positive and negative impacts on the socioeconomic nature of the cities it takes place in. Here on the eastern seaboard of the US we see gentrification in every city from Center City Philadelphia, to Chelsea, to Columbia Heights in DC. However this movement to gentrify is not reserved for the

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.

Public transportation is serious need of a massive overhaul in this nation. We are in desperate need to catch up to the European standard of public transportation in this country. In Europe, citizens can travel across cities, bodies of water, and even counties with their state of the art public transportation system. Europeans are not nearly as reliant on cars and oil as the United States is because they have the much more practical option of taking the transportation provided to them by the government to where ever they need to go. They have set a model that the United States needs to strive for and meet in the near future.

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,

Public transportation can help reduce stress caused by driving, save money, and also protect our environment by reducing the number of vehicles on the road. In order to get more people off the road and into the public transportation system we must increase the number of buses and taxis that are available. We must also increase the number of stops available for daily bus routes. With more stops on the map more people are likely to use the bus system. Each city or town will be able to decide where more bus stops are needed and make the adjustments necessary to provide better service for the taxpaying citizens. Of course, none of this is possible without adequate funds in each town/city and the gas tax is guaranteed to provide those funds. Providing more public transportation will help us reach our ultimate goal of protecting the environment and ourselves.

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