Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American DreamA manifesto by America's most controversial and celebrated town planners, proposing an alternative model for community design. There is a growing movement in North America to put an end to suburban sprawl and to replace the automobile-based settlement patterns of the past fifty years with a return to more traditional planning principles. This movement stems not only from the realization that sprawl is ecologically and economically unsustainable but also from a growing awareness of sprawl's many victims: children, utterly dependent on parental transportation if they wish to escape the cul-de-sac; the elderly, warehoused in institutions once they lose their driver's licenses; the middle class, stuck in traffic for two or more hours each day. Founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of this movement, and in Suburban Nation they assess sprawl's costs to society, be they ecological, economic, aesthetic, or social. It is a lively, thorough, critical lament, and an entertaining lesson on the distinctions between postwar suburbia-characterized by housing clusters, strip shopping centers, office parks, and parking lots-and the traditional neighborhoods that were built as a matter of course until mid-century. It is an indictment of the entire development community, including governments, for the fact that America no longer builds towns. Most important, though, it is that rare book that also offers solutions. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - rivkat - LibraryThingAnti-sprawl polemic, with plenty of pictures and statistics to make the case that building bigger houses further out is killing us—and this was well before the mortgage crisis! The authors tout New ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - elainermeyer - LibraryThingSubruban Nation provides a good overview of the condition of the American landscape, which has become, especially over the last sixty years, a stretch of parking lots, strip malls, and segregated-use ... Read full review
Contents
What Is Sprawl and Why? | 3 |
The Devil Is in the Details | 21 |
The House That Sprawl Built | 39 |
The Physical Creation of Society | 59 |
The American Transportation Mess | 85 |
Sprawl and the Developer | 99 |
The Victims of Sprawl | 115 |
The City and the Region | 135 |
The Inner City | 153 |
Development Checklist | 245 |
The Congress for the New Urbanism | 257 |
Acknowledgments | 267 |
| 273 | |
Sources of Illustrations | 281 |
Common terms and phrases
activity affordable allowed American approach architects architecture areas automobile become better building built called cars citizens civic considered construction continue conventional Coral Gables costs create downtown drive economic effective encourage engineers environment existing fact feel feet follow front growth highway historic housing land lanes less live located lots main street mall ment move municipalities natural neighbor neighborhood offer organized parking pedestrian percent physical places planning poor possible problem projects reason recent regional residents response result retail road rules serve side single social space sprawl standard street subdivisions suburban suburbia suburbs successful surrounding tion town traditional traffic transit transportation turn types typically United urban walk walls wide zoning
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream |
| Authors | Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint |
| Publisher | Macmillan, 2001 |
| ISBN | 0865476063, 9780865476066 |
| Length | 293 pages |
| Subjects | › › Architecture / Buildings / Public, Commercial & Industrial Architecture / Urban & Land Use Planning |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |