A Field Guide to Sprawl - Hardcover

Hayden Ph.D., Dolores

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393731251 ISBN 13: 9780393731255

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004

Synopsis

A visual lexicon of the colorful slang, from alligator investment to zoomburb, that defines sprawl in America. "May well establish Ms. Hayden as the Roger Tory Peterson of Sprawl." ―New York Times

Duck, ruburb, tower farm, big box, and pig-in-a-python are among the dozens of zany terms invented by real estate developers and designers today to characterize land-use practices and the physical elements of sprawl. Sprawl in the environment, based on the metaphor of a person spread out, is hard to define. This concise book engages its meaning, explains common building patterns, and illustrates the visual culture of sprawl. Seventy-five stunning color aerial photographs, each paired with a definition, convey the impact of excessive development. This "engagingly organized and splendidly photographed" (Wall Street Journal) book provides the verbal and visual vocabulary needed by professionals, public officials, and citizens to critique uncontrolled growth in the American landscape. 75 color illustrations

About this title

About the Author:

Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture and American studies at Yale, writes about the politics of design.

From Publishers Weekly:

A mere glance through the pages of this book offers a quick education about the excesses of the recently built environment. By its very nature, sprawl is hard to identify and track, but Hayden, a Yale professor of architecture and American studies, provides a combination of informed but breezy text and 75 large, crisp color images that greatly simplify the task of "decoding everyday American landscapes." Organized alphabetically, with a big two-page spread for each entry, the book moves from "alligator" (an investment that "eats" cash flow, represented here by the vast and ghostly grid of an unbuilt New Mexico suburb) to "zoomburb" (a suburb on steroids, illustrated here by Arizona's spiraling Sun City). Along the way, the reader comes to the depressing understanding that troubling phenomena one might have thought strictly local or temporary—for instance, houses where the garage is the dominant projecting feature—are common enough to have acquired names, in this case "snout house." But more than a set of colorful terms—all of which, from "ball pork" to "parsley round the pig" are carefully sourced—this book is a concise guide to not only sprawl itself but to the powerful political and financial forces that sustain it. If the book has one problematic aspect, it is that Wark's aerial photographs are often so vividly beautiful that they risk aestheticizing their often grim subjects—but their seductive quality serves to draw the viewer into Hayden's passionately sustained argument.
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0393731251
• ISBN 13: 9780393731255
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 128