Geography 4742: Land Use

Class Notes

Gillham, Chapter 2: The Origins of Sprawl

This is about the evolution of "urban form" or urban morphology. We actually discussed this first before going over What is Sprawl (Chap. 1).

The Industrial City: industrialization changed the whole nature of city form away from the agrarian village. It especially added greatly to the population in cities and the connectionsamong cities and between them and the countryside.

Mercantile or agrarian cities transformed into:

Industrial Cities

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.

Evolution of modern suburbs:

Railroad suburbs (mostly wealthy factory owners and managers) something like "estate suburbs", not mass market suburbs yet.

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.

Automobile Suburbs:

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.

The Road and Highway effect:

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.

Other Forces:

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, even "colonial style" houses in the first few decades of federal subsidies, that would only be built in new suburbs, setting a pattern..

From "Bedroom Communities" to full dispersion.

Move from mostly residential suburbs to suburbs with shopping (moved from downtown department stores to "shopping centers"), and then employment centers moved out to suburbs and “:Edge Cities”. , and you get full-suburbanization, in which essentially all new development is at suburban density and form, and any new development or RE-development in older areas is rare and newsworthy (e.g., redevelopment of Stapleton Airport, Lo-Do with lofts, etc.)

The suburban office complex (vies with downtown high rises): spread out, with nice landscaping, large, surface parking. Really dominated Silicon Valley.

Suburbs drain people and money from core cities—this is one of the social critiques of suburban spread that raises equity issues. You might not care if the market were doing this along, but government appears to enable and even encourage sprawl.

Old core cities decline, then enter in some cases notable re-newal, urban gentrification, renewal projects, etc., all of varied success.