{"id":1550,"date":"2007-06-14T05:32:06","date_gmt":"2007-06-14T10:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/sprawl-for-some\/"},"modified":"2007-06-14T06:36:11","modified_gmt":"2007-06-14T11:36:11","slug":"sprawl-for-some","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/sprawl-for-some","title":{"rendered":"Sprawl for Some"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t recall why I never finished reading Robert Bruegmann’s Sprawl: A Compact History<\/a>. Presumably this was because of the standard reason I don’t always finish non-fiction books: I picked up some novel that caught my interest and never looked back. That doesn’t mean that I won’t get around to finishing the book, but my readings are all over the darned place right now. I’m reading annual reports this month, but that’s the job.<\/p>\n

Anyway, here’s an article by Prof. Bruegmann about the virtues and decline of sprawl<\/a>:<\/p>\n

But let’s assume for a moment that I’m entirely wrong and that sprawl is terrible. Could we stop it if we wanted to?<\/p>\n

The record is not encouraging. The longest-running and best-known experiment was the one undertaken by Britain starting right after World War II. At that time, the British government gave unprecedented powers to planners to remake cities and took the draconian step of nationalizing all development rights to assure that these plans could be implemented. The famous 1944 Greater London plan, for example, envisioned a city bounded by a greenbelt. If there happened to be any excess population that couldn’t be accommodated within the greenbelt, it was supposed to be accommodated in small, self-contained garden cities beyond the belt.<\/p>\n

Did the plan work? In one sense it did: The greenbelt is still there, and some people consider that an aesthetic triumph. But the plan certainly did not stop sprawl. As usual, the planners were not able to predict the future with any accuracy. The population grew, household size declined and affluence rose faster than predicted. Development jumped right over the greenbelt–and not into discreet garden cities, because this policy was soon abandoned.<\/p>\n

The ultimate result was that much of southeastern England has been urbanized. Moreover, because of the greenbelt, many car trips are longer than they would have been otherwise, contributing to the worst traffic congestion in Europe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m gonna get back to AstraZeneca’s annual shareholder letter now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t recall why I never finished reading Robert Bruegmann’s Sprawl: A Compact History. Presumably this was because of the standard reason I don’t always finish non-fiction books: I picked up some novel that caught my interest and never looked back. That doesn’t mean that I won’t get around to finishing the book, but my … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Sprawl for Some”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-suburbs","category-urban-issues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-p0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":754,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/call-of-the-sprawl","url_meta":{"origin":1550,"position":0},"title":"Call of the Sprawl","author":"Gil","date":"December 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The Slate review of Robert Bruegmann's Sprawl: A Compact History left me pretty interested in reading the book. Now Glenn \"Instapundit\" Reynolds has weighed in with a column on Bruegmann's book, further piquing my interest. Like I don't have enough stuff to read.","rel":"","context":"In "suburbs"","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1256,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-dec-22-2006","url_meta":{"origin":1550,"position":1},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Dec. 22, 2006","author":"Gil","date":"December 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a short Unrequired Reading session this week, since I'm still getting over the year-end issue blowout, and I'm trying to take it easy during this little\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0holiday trip to Louisiana. Here's a neat interview with William T. Bogart on redefining sprawl and tossing out \"planning\": Why is it that we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":927,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/more-on-jacobs","url_meta":{"origin":1550,"position":2},"title":"More on Jacobs","author":"Gil","date":"April 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Witold Rybczynski at Slate has a brief appreciation of Jane Jacobs's work. He points out that Jacobs largely ignored the suburbs, which is putting it mildly. In her best-known book, she considers them solely as a negative, the way most urban theorists do. Which reminds me that I need to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5587,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-i-love-and-what-i-dont-like","url_meta":{"origin":1550,"position":3},"title":"What I Love and What I Don’t Like","author":"Gil","date":"September 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I had a sort of crappy end-of-day at work. I tend to internalize my frustration and play out phantom conversations endlessly. This tendency gets exacerbated by the fact that I don't talk to friends very much. I drive home from work, IM with my wife for a few minutes to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music"","block_context":{"text":"Music","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/music"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1606993798","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2148,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/i-think-in-circles-and-circles-are-hard-to-break","url_meta":{"origin":1550,"position":4},"title":"I think in circles and circles are hard to break","author":"Gil","date":"July 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"After dropping Amy off at the bus stop this morning, I came home and realized I was on the precipice of nausea and that a 20- or 25-minute drive to the office likely would've pushed me over the edge. So I wrote in sick, went back to bed for 3+\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0375705457","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":775,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/present-day","url_meta":{"origin":1550,"position":5},"title":"Present Day","author":"Gil","date":"December 28, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Made it home safe and sound yesterday afternoon, but the final approach was a bit shaky. By which I mean, the plane was wobbling from side to side for the last 10 minutes before we touched down. I pounded a G&T at the terminal bar to steady the old nerves,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}