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Portland is a PR machine for light rail & streetcar

Here are Some Facts About Portland Oregon          

“It must always be remembered how cost-effectiveness works in the public sector: the cost IS the benefit.” - author unknown




What is Sprawl ?


Another View


From:

Is urban sprawl really an American menace?

In Sprawl, cheekily subtitled "A Compact History," Bruegmann, a professor of art history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, examines the assumptions that underpin most people's strongly held convictions about sprawl. His conclusions are unexpected. To begin with, he finds that urban sprawl is not a recent phenomenon: It has been a feature of city life since the earliest times. The urban rich have always sought the pleasures of living in low-density residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities. As long ago as the Ming dynasty in the 14th century, the Chinese gentry sang the praises of the exurban life, and the rustic villa suburbana was a common feature of ancient Rome. Pliny's maritime villa was 17 miles from the city, and many fashionable Roman villa districts such as Tusculum—where Cicero had a summer house—were much closer. Bruegmann also observes that medieval suburbs—those urbanized areas outside cities' protective walls—had a variety of uses. Manufacturing processes that were too dirty to be located inside the city (such as brick kilns, tanneries, slaughterhouses) were in the suburbs; so were the homes of those who could not afford to reside within the city proper. This pattern continued during the Renaissance. Those compact little cities bounded by bucolic landscapes, portrayed in innumerable idealized paintings, were surrounded by extensive suburbs.


.......sprawl is not the anomalous result of American zoning laws, or mortgage interest tax deduction, or cheap gas, or subsidized highway construction, or cultural antipathy toward cities. Nor is it an aberration. Bruegmann shows that asking whether sprawl is "good" or "bad" is the wrong question. Sprawl is and always has been inherent to urbanization. It is driven less by the regulations of legislators, the actions of developers, and the theories of city planners, than by the decisions of millions of individuals—Adam Smith's "invisible hand." This makes altering it very complicated, indeed. There are scores of books offering "solutions" to sprawl. Their authors would do well to read this book. To find solutions—or, rather, better ways to manage sprawl, which is not the same thing—it helps to get the problem right.


Sprawl - technically defined as "low-density, automobile-dependent development beyond the edge of service and employment areas"  (Sierra Club)


While there's no universally accepted definition, the Vermont Forum on Sprawl concisely defines sprawl as "dispersed development outside of compact urban and village centers along highways and in rural countryside."  (www.plannersweb.com/sprawl/define.html)


Transportation Research Conference, identified ten "traits" associated with sprawl:

1. unlimited outward extension

2. low-density residential and commercial settlements

3. leapfrog development

4. fragmentation of powers over land use among many small localities

5. dominance of transportation by private automotive vehicles

6. no centralized planning or control of land-uses

7. widespread strip commercial development

8. great fiscal disparities among localities

9. segregation of types of land uses in different zones

10. reliance mainly on the trickle-down or filtering process to provide housing to low-income households

 (www.plannersweb.com/sprawl/define.html)


The following definition (and explanation) was e-mailed to us by Kurt Seidel of Phoenixville Borough, Pennsylvania:

"Sprawl is characterized by housing not located within walking distance of any retail."

Explanation: "This is a powerful definition because of its simplicity. All of the benefits of traditional neighborhoods flow from the ability to walk to a destination worth

walking to, even a pizza shop, but preferably a cafe or pub.

If people walk to a cafe, they would walk to a bus or train-station located near the cafe. If you provide one, just one, retail establishment worth walking to, people will do it, and all else follows from that.

Especially the 1/3 of people in our society who can't drive, be they elderly or 10-15 year-olds."

 (www.plannersweb.com/sprawl/define.html)


The following definition was e-mailed to us by Craig Kelly:

"Sprawl is NOT the consumption of farms and green space.

It is: Disadvantageous development that



The following was e-mailed to us by John Elsden of Manchester, New Hampshire (which John notes is "A walkable city!"):

"Sprawl is the result of inappropriate land development policies over the past 50 years which has made the American Public unable and unwilling to walk anywhere, except in older cities where there is a great mix of development."

 (www.plannersweb.com/sprawl/define.html)