Reddit Reddit reviews Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

We found 5 Reddit comments about Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
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5 Reddit comments about Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream:

u/[deleted] · 5 pointsr/pics

I heartily recommend the book Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream.

I honestly don't think any outsider can really understand American culture unless they understand the immensity of car culture and suburbia in the country.

The book is fantastic at explaining how it all came to be. Did you know that in the 1920's, General Motors deliberately began a campaign to dismantle streetcar and trolley systems? They succeeded, forcing people into buses and cars. It's fascinating.

u/doebedoe · 5 pointsr/urbanplanning

Fixing existing developments and creating better ones in the future are very different beasts. One very influential group working on latter is the Congress for New Urbanism. A useful volume by a few of CNU's leading practioners is Suburban Nation. One pertinent critique of New Urbanism though is that is has been relatively ineffective about the retrofitting you describe. For that you might check out books like Retrofitting Suburbia.

If you want a good rant on how we got into the mess J.H. Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere is an angry read. On patterns that underlay places we like being in, there is the always present work of Christopher Alexander. For my money one of the most under-read great urbanists of our time is Richard Sennett, particularly his book The Uses of Disorder.

Finally, Jacob's has a lot of prescriptive stuff in Death and Life. I'll give you that it is not as rule-based as most contemporary approaches, but therein lies its greatness.

u/cometparty · 3 pointsr/Austin

You need to read about New Urbanism. I recommend starting with this book

It's not the intention to put anyone out of business. But sooner or later you have to come to grips with the reality that this little town has become a city and cities require planning, not "build whatever wherever". The space above these shops is prime real estate. If you just build (and maintain) crap 1-story buildings, you have to build OUT (sprawl), when as it gets closer to the city center it should be build UP. Would you like to see the hills of West Austin deforested and developed? Or would you rather see existing real estate get redeveloped and revitalized?

u/nickpickles · 3 pointsr/todayilearned

Well, there could be a lot of factors determining sub-par mass transit in an urban area. At the most basic level it could be lack of funding. In WA state we dealt with this over ten years ago with Tim Eyman's I-695 which in my area cut mass transit funding 50%. When you have a group of voters who say "fuck it" to funding bus/light rail you're going to have progressively worse service.

Another aspect is urban congestion. If you are running a bus line without dedicated lanes in a dense downtown region (or the center of an auto-centric sprawl city like Atlanta) it's going to back up and cause delayed routes, more gas consumption, and longer rides. Light rail, commuter rail, and BRT can move faster in most locations but require a larger investment (more money per mile of service, which won't happen if voters turn down taxes and bonds for it). Also factor in the continued sprawling out of cities like Phoenix, which requires more money to service fewer riders due to low density.

It's funny now because many cities are opting to re-implement the trolley lines they so quickly tore up in the 40's/50's/60's, albeit at a cost. When you had cities growing organically with an urban core that included housing followed by streetcar neighborhoods, the transportation system was integrated into the environment (you walked in downtown, took a streetcar to home/visit in the peripheral neighborhoods). The streetcars were tracked and had the right of way. When the cities tore the tracks up and placed their buses within the street traffic, which would become more congested than we could have ever imagined, in many cases we see them giving up a dedicated right of way for transit and forcing their vehicles right into the shark tank, so to say.

The post-war boom that fueled auto production/purchase coupled with the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 swelled the streets with cars and kicked off the suburban sprawl that still persists today (although the numbers have lowered significantly since the 1990's and took a sharp decline since 2008). A few good books on these subjects include: Suburban Nation, The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000, and How Cities Work : Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken Here are a few about specific cities with high amounts of sprawl that go into what factors caused this and the problems faced today: The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles and Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City (which I am reading right now and can say so far is a really interesting history of the city).

u/mapgazer · 1 pointr/nyc

Most urban planners would tell you that slowing down traffic is exactly what you want to do so that cars must drive slower, pedestrians are in less danger, people are more inclined to use public transportation, and in general areas are more liveable. Here is an excellent book on the subject if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Nation-Sprawl-Decline-American/dp/0865476063