Geography 4742 Land Use Analysis
February 13, 2003
Sprawl
Gillham: Chap 1: What is Sprawl?
Ok, we’re on to our second text, and I chose sprawl as a focus for the third of the class because it incorporates so many dimensions of land use, including what, where and why. And though its focus is urban, you also find issues of farmland and water and habitat wrapped up in it. But msot important, the "debate" looked at by a critical thinking class requires better definition and assessment of a complex land use phenomenon. Gillham has his own ideas but this book acts as a reasonably balanced primer on the issue.
Growing concern, lots of rhetoric, but what is the problem (if there is one)?
Gillham sees it as mostly a market outcome pretty much the same as suburbanization: the dominant form of current development.
Dictionary: spreading of urban development onto undeveloped land.
Typically seen as urban and commercial development at and beyond the urban edge.
Also as:
Also, just as non -esthetic development (looks ugly—like big box retail, car lots, cookie-cutter sub-divisions, etc.).
Ewing definitions:
Gilham’s definition (as a class or subclass of urban development):
"urbanization characterized by leapfrog development, commercial strips; low density, separated land use; auto dependence, minimum of public space."
Typical form of contemporary suburban development. I see it as decreased density (fewer people per unit of area) and suburban in style.
Factors in Sprawl/Suburbanization:
Land Ownership/Use/Development:
Land is a private commodity to be bought and sold, with as increased value as possible (appreciation, speculation)
Real estate Market-production system: increasing value to make a profit.
Demands occurs, market delivers—this is key fundamental precept. But the product industry can also set demand by what it delivers. This can be called FORDISM: mass production, economy o scale, a few product types.
Cost of land: urban to rural gradient. High cost where "economics of agglomeration" rules. Land available; where there is a lot of land, there is low price; Also affected by access to transportation (port, etc.). Key here is that a post-industrial economy values land price more than access and agglomeration, so development spreads out to reduce competition for land. This applies to residential, too.
Transportation patterns: not just land market forces, but infrastructure.
MODE choice
PATTERN of system/network: one of the more powerful forces, based on government investment of what was a good idea and often unintended consequences. The well-designed, ubiquitous road network.
Interstate and intercity Highways; rings and by-passes; arterials; local; farm-to-market.
Telecommunications: reducing the lock of place and worker agglomeration on post-industrial society.
Regulations and standards: In addition to market forces, the state steps in.
Zoning to separate sues linked by roads
Finance, role of tax and government in finance: creates similar patterns even w/o zoning.
Suburbanization: the dominant setting of development and population in US since 1960s.
Beyond suburbs: it is really the Urban form of 21st Century, no more Urbs, just suburbs
Now: Metropolitan regions
Feb. 18
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.