Geography 4742
Land Use
Lecture Notes
Chapter 2: The Origins of Sprawl
This is about the evolution of "urban form" or urban morphology.
The Industrial City: industrialization changed the whole nature of city form away from the agrarian village. It specially added greatly to the population in cities and the connections between cities and between them and the countryside.
Mercantile or agrarian cities transformed into:
Mass population switch to cities (1920 census). Factories and workers concentrated in core areas---walk to work---the "Pedestrian city." Dense, vertical cities. A set of social and environmental problems emerged.
Zoning and urban reform emerged: separate the uses, but with industry still concentrated (even more so) needed innovations in transport.
Railroad suburbs (mostly wealthy factory owners and managers) something like "estate suburbs"
Then mass-produced suburbs and transport, allowed:
Streetcar suburbs (1880s; electrified trains): still dense, small lots, often multi-family, 1/10 acre lots. Still, large areas were opened up, as streetcars could be built more cheaply and aimed in different directions.
The ultimate transformation of transport was to totally individualized transport anywhere within a road grid. 1927 Radburn, in Fairlawn NJ. Bid boom in 1920s outside most cities.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s "Broadacre City" – spread out agrarian suburb linked to "democratic" ideals.
Mass produced autos, plus integrated road and highway system---not by accident but by policy, all allowed the modern suburbs.
The "Interstate" system really pushed this along. The Act in 1956. Included "National Defense" highway system. Example of German Autobahns (witnessed by Eisenhower in WWII), nuclear preparedness. Federal project: 90% fed, 10% state;
first inter-city, then intra-city.
Spokes and rings provide skeleton for suburban nodes.
Financing for home ownership---National Housing Act of 1934—partly an economic recovery act.—insured mortgages.
FHA/VA loans favored single-family, thus favored suburbs, and redlined older urban neighborhoods. FHA also set minimum housing standards that favored single family, evn "colonial style" houses that would only be built in new suburbs.
Move from mostly residential to the move of shopping from downtown department stores to "shopping centers" and then employment centers, and you get full-suburbanization, in which essentially all new development is at suburban density and form.
The suburban office complex (vies with downtown high rises)
Suburbs drain people and money from core cities
Old core cities decline, then enter in some cases notable re-newal, urban gentrification, renewal projects, etc., all of varied success.