Descripciones mejoradas de Syndetics:

As anyone who has flown into Los Angeles at dusk or Houston at midday knows, urban areas today defy traditional notions of what a city is. Our old definitions of urban, suburban, and rural fail to capture the complexity of these vast regions with their superhighways, subdivisions, industrial areas, office parks, and resort areas pushing far out into the countryside. Detractors call it sprawl and assert that it is economically inefficient, socially inequitable, environmentally irresponsible, and aesthetically ugly. Robert Bruegmann calls it a logical consequence of economic growth and the democratization of society, with benefits that urban planners have failed to recognize.

In his incisive history of the expanded city, Bruegmann overturns every assumption we have about sprawl. Taking a long view of urban development, he demonstrates that sprawl is neither recent nor particularly American but as old as cities themselves, just as characteristic of ancient Rome and eighteenth-century Paris as it is of Atlanta or Los Angeles. Nor is sprawl the disaster claimed by many contemporary observers. Although sprawl, like any settlement pattern, has undoubtedly produced problems that must be addressed, it has also provided millions of people with the kinds of mobility, privacy, and choice that were once the exclusive prerogatives of the rich and powerful.

The first major book to strip urban sprawl of its pejorative connotations, Sprawl offers a completely new vision of the city and its growth. Bruegmann leads readers to the powerful conclusion that "in its immense complexity and constant change, the city-whether dense and concentrated at its core, looser and more sprawling in suburbia, or in the vast tracts of exurban penumbra that extend dozens, even hundreds, of miles-is the grandest and most marvelous work of mankind."

"Largely missing from this debate [over sprawl] has been a sound and reasoned history of this pattern of living. With Robert Bruegmann's Sprawl: A Compact History , we now have one. What a pleasure it is: well-written, accessible and eager to challenge the current cant about sprawl."--Joel Kotkin, The Wall Street Journal

"There are scores of books offering 'solutions' to sprawl. Their authors would do well to read this book."--Witold Rybczynski, Slate

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Introduction
• Part 1 sprawl across the centuries
• 1 Defining Sprawl
• 2 Early Sprawl
• 3 Sprawl in the Interwar Boom Years
• 4 Sprawl in the Postwar Boom Years
• 5 Sprawl since the 1970s
• 6 The Causes of Sprawl
• Part 2 the diagnosis: three campaigns against sprawl
• 7 Early Anti-sprawl Arguments
• 8 The First Anti-sprawl Campaign: Britain in the Interwar Years
• 9 The Second Anti-sprawl Campaign: The United States in the Postwar Years
• 10 The Third Anti-sprawl Campaign: Since the 1970s
• Part 3 the prescription: remedies for sprawl
• 11 Early Remedies: From Anti-blight to Anti-sprawl
• 12 Postwar Anti-sprawl Remedies
• 13 Anti-sprawl Remedies since the 1970s
• Some Conclusions
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliographic Essay
• Index

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

After 70 years of suffering the slings and arrows of academic criticism, suburban life finally finds a compelling defender in Bruegmann. A professor of art history and urban planning at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Bruegmann demonstrates that urban sprawl is a natural process as old as the world's oldest cities, wherein large metropolises reach a point of maturity and those with financial means escape the congestion and high prices of city life. What has changed over the past century, the author says, is that an increasing number of citizens have achieved the financial means to participate in what was once an exclusive luxury of the wealthy. Bruegmann acknowledges that the effects on cities are not always positive, but he also demonstrates that many of the criticisms of suburban sprawl e.g., that it is culturally deficient and environmentally noxious are greatly exaggerated and ignore the very real benefits sprawl offers in terms of privacy, mobility and choice. With his disdain for doomsday predictions and his disregard for the academic consensus, Bruegmann's thorough analysis is sure to be controversial, but a shot of controversy ought to do the field, and public dialogue about it, some good. 25 b&w illus., 5 maps. Agent, Carl Brandt. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

This pugnacious text should stimulate wide debates over definitions, implications, and solutions to what many urbanists interpret as uncontrolled and threatening suburban growth. Bruegmann (art history, architecture, and urban planning, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago) shows cogently how such expansion long has been part of urban growth, and now must be understood within the global phenomena of decreasing core populations and surrounding densification. Yet, as he analyzes causal explanations and genealogies of arguments against sprawl in 1920s Britain, the postwar US, and the 1970s, highlighting discursive continuities, he also tackles many arguments piecemeal, sometimes ignoring complex connections among various environmental considerations, social critiques, and other responses. Considerations of remediation also raise questions: linking postwar anti-sprawl to Stalinist Moscow overshadows a somewhat more balanced reading of Portland. Vague appeals to what "ordinary citizens" want or what a free-market creates, indeed, can ignore those who create and control "ordinary" desires and global markets. Yes, it is time to reject moralistically reductionist arguments against sprawl. Yet, the case for "free" choices that resolve social and environmental problems seems undeveloped for such a challenging work. But this may prove as valuable to those who will disagree as those who agree with such an invigorating text. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. G. W. McDonogh Bryn Mawr College

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Robert Bruegmann is chair of and professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago as well as professor in the School of Architecture and the Program in Urban Planning. His many books include The Architects and the City: Holabird & Roche of Chicago, 1880-1918 , also published by the University of Chicago Press.