Urban Sprawl

"When you cannot tell where the country ends and a community begins, that is sprawl. Small towns sprawl, suburbs sprawl, big cities sprawl, and metropolitan areas stretch into giant megalopolises --formless webs of urban development like Swiss cheeses with more holes than cheese."

U.S. House, 1980.

Each morning, millions of Americans start their engines and grind their way to work. They leave quiet settings for the hustle and bustle of the cities. These people will travel miles part from their homes in some cases from one state to another. The problem is that is not about couple of Americans traveling is about thousands and millions. They endure the traffic, lost time, and general inconvenience to be surrounded by farmland and open space and a hundred or so homes exactly identical to theirs. They are terminating the large or small laws which are awe-inspiring pieces of American life. These lawns are welcome mats to our homes. They represent the best face to visitors and neighbors, frame our houses, cradle our children, connect our property to our neighbor's but also serve as friendly boundaries. But now everything is transformed into strip malls, shopping malls, houses, office buildings and more parking lots all these referred the movement of urban sprawl. Not only land or territory is transformed, but also the society. The society is becoming more individualistic, careless of the environment, tries to be rational obtaining the more for less, tend to non-involve with others and want as much space or privacy as possible. This movement is every day increasing because more people are unable to meet the expenses of living in the city. Another reason for the growth of suburbs is that more jobs are moving out of the city so people are following them.

Urban Sprawl is fundamental for understanding the forces shaping urban development and the social and economic costs of this very visible problem. Most people would rather spend their weekends at an official, regulated and landscaped park rather than hiking through some un-named forest track. While there is the standard human desire for new experiences, people often are only willing to try pre-tested experiences. Even when one realizes the societal manipulation, it still seems difficult to jump over the railings and really cut a new path. Government has always had an interest in the development of land in a beneficial, efficient, and aesthetically pleasing manner for Americans. Since these variables are highly subjective, land use law, which covers environmental takings and zoning issues, are among the most contentious issues facing local, state, and federal officials. They preserve the land as it is because it will serve them in some function, that of some obscure goal of outside recreation for the people.

According to John J. Macionis and Vincent N. Parrillo authors of the book Cities and Urban Life define sprawl as a way to describe spread-out or low-density development beyond the edge of services and employment (93). Moreover in Wikepedia urban sprawl is defined as the rapid and expansive growth of a greater metropolitan area, traditionally suburbs over large area. It is a recent problem that has rapidly grown and expanded thought out the United States.

Some of the basic characteristics of sprawl are single-use zonings, are low-density, car dependent, have a scale of development, and have a homogeneity design. When one thinks about single-use zoning one thinks about one of the different types of segregation in which is not directly apply to people, but will eventually affect how individuals will live and will behave. The single-use zoning is away to group establishments such as stores are concentrated in one area, housing in another area, industry in another, etcetera. The low-density land use is another characteristic of urban sprawl in which land is misuse or in some way waste. In other words, low-density land use means owning too much land and only using a very little proportion of it. For example, live the American Dream of owning single homes with a large yard enough parking for their automobiles. A house of their own, out of town enough to be quiet, but never too far from civilization. Urban sprawl has a large scale of development in which houses are larger, the roads are wider, and large stores have expansive parking lots compared to the city (Wikepedia). The large scale developments have not limits and do not limit costs and effects in the long-run. Because of this large-scale development houses are built homogeneity in design and one resembles one another. Just in my neighborhood- Brighton Park- between 40th & Rockwell and 42nd & Rockwell the houses are alike from one another. The design is so alike that even from the interior the houses are identical.

Though sprawl has always been a problem in a sense, it became critic or most-known since more people is moving to the suburbs and becoming automobile dependent. With the arrival of the automobile, people could live farther away from the city and their work. This phenomenon is worsening every minute because of the irresponsibility of the government and residents. Instead of solving the problem, the government and residents are expanding it. The government is constructing more and more highways to avoid traffic when they should start some environmental policies and limitations to all the residents without exceptions. But this problem is traffic problem is present everywhere, not only in the suburbs. I live in one of the neighborhood of Chicago and in my house we are five members in the family (my parents, brother, sister, and me) and we own seven cars, from which we use only five every single day for an average of two hours. Although most of the suburbs there is public transportation, people do not ride it because the waiting is long and there are very few routes. Therefore some of the states are starting to strongly promote the use of public transportation by opening new routes that will be convenient for many residents and maintaining reasonable fares, while other states are developing properties faraway from others and constructing more highways

In the article Sprawl is Not Inevitable, Reports Finds by the CNN.com states that the Sierra Club's organization second annual sprawl report, entitled "Solving Sprawl," shows that states and communities across the nation are using innovative programs and tools to manage poorly planned growth. The report rates each of the 50 states by measuring progress in four broad categories: open-space protection, land-use planning, and transportation planning and community revitalization. In each area, the report found states with innovative programs that are already working as well as laggard states that have been slow to adopt sprawl solutions. In addition, the report offers profiles of the top states,