SPRAWL –: A COMPACT HISTORY

Opis produktu

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 eighteenthcentury 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 citywhether 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 milesis the grandest and most marvelous work of mankind.Almost compulsively contrarian Alan Ehrenhalt Governing MagazineLargely missing from this debate [over sprawl] has been a sound and reasoned history of this pattern of living. With Robert Bruegmanns Sprawl: A Compact History we now have one. What a pleasure it is: wellwritten accessible and eager to challenge the current cant about sprawl Joel Kotkin Wall Street JournalControversial and gleefully contrarian Kevin Nance Chicago SunTimesSure to become a flash point in the debate over sprawl and is therefore well worth reading even if the book tempts you to toss it out the window Blair Kamin Chicago TribuneTo judge whether sprawl is a symptom of global capitalism at its most rampant and wasteful... technical arguments must be addressed. Bruegmann takes us through them lucidly and economically neither flinching from nor getting mired in detail and steering deftly between neocon smugness and liberal anguish. These qualities make Sprawl a textbook for our times Andrew Saint London Review of BooksIf you have not read Sprawl: A Compact History drop everything obtain a copy and read it. It is the most important book on the American landscape since Jane Jacobs

Data Publikacji: 2006-10-20
Wymiary: 230 mm 162 mm 550 gr 19.36 mm