The Limitless City: A Primer on the Urban Sprawl Debate - Softcover

Gillham, Oliver

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1559638338 ISBN 13: 9781559638333

Publisher: Island Press, 2002

Synopsis

One of the great debates of our time concerns the predominant form of land use in America today -- the all too familiar pattern of commercial and residential development known as sprawl. But what do we really know about sprawl? Do we know what it is? Where did it come from? Is it really so bad? If so, what are the alternatives? Can anything be done to make it better? The Limitless City offers an accessible examination of those and related questions. Oliver Gillham, an architect and planner with more than twenty-five years of experience in the field, considers the history and development of sprawl and examines current debates about the issue. The book:

• offers a comprehensive definition of sprawl in America
• traces the roots of sprawl and considers the factors that led to its preeminence as an urban and suburban form
• reviews both its negative impacts (loss of open space, increased pollution, gridlock) as well as its positive aspects (economic development, personal freedom, privacy)
• considers responses to sprawl including "smart growth," urban growth boundaries, regional planning, and the New Urbanism
• looks at what can be done to improve and counterbalance sprawl

The author argues that whether we like it or not, sprawl is here to stay, and only by understanding where it came from and why it developed will we be able to successfully address the problems it has created and is likely to create in the future. The Limitless City is the first book to provide a realistic look at sprawl, with a frank recognition of its status as the predominant urban form in America, now and into the near future. Rather than railing against it, Gillham charts its probable future course while describing critical efforts that can be undertaken to improve the future of sprawl and our existing urban core areas.

About this title

About the Author

Oliver Gillham, AIA, is an architect and planner based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During his more than 25-year professional career, he has collaborated on plans to create urban centers for rapidly developing areas, plans to change transportation patterns to discourage sprawl, and plans to revitalize downtowns drained by competition from suburban centers. Mr. Gillham has worked in both the private and public sectors on projects across the United States and in Australia and India.

From the Inside Flap

"The Limitless City is the most thoughtful, comprehensive, and balanced book yet published on the issue of American sprawl. Every citizen who is concerned about the environmental and economic impact of our automobile-oriented civilization can find profit and pleasure in its pages."

-Kenneth T. Jackson, Barzun Professor of History at Columbia University and author of Crabgrass Frontier.

"The Limitless City provides a grimly fascinating history of the political, social and economic forces that created sprawl, describes the policies and practices that continue to encourage and even subsidize it, and offers valuable suggestions for loosening its destructive stranglehold on America."

-Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation

"Oliver Gillham has done an excellent job of describing the current state of the sprawl debate in the United States. He provides a helpful synthesis of what we know about the origin, costs and consequences of sprawl and, more importantly, possible solutions and alternatives. The Limitless City is a useful and timely contribution to the growing literature on metropolitan growth dynamics."

- Bruce Katz, Senior Fellow and Director of the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy

"Oliver Gillham provides a wide-ranging introduction to land use and growth issues, illuminating the links between suburbanization, inner city health, and conservation of rural lands. His writing is lively and accessible to a general audience, and his interpretations are sure to spark new debates over public policy in this important arena."

-Professor Elizabeth Deakin, Director, UC Transportation Research Center, University of California, Berkeley

Edition details

• Publisher: Island Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1559638338
• ISBN 13: 9781559638333
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328