Superbia

Here's something you don't see too often, a positive spin on sprawl with some historical context to help frame the discussion. Or so it seems.

LA Curbed calls him a dingleberry from Chicago, but I think there might be more to it than that. Robert Bruegmann's Sprawl : A Compact History is now on my must read list (as soon as I finish paring down the bunch of Joseph Ellis books I've collected). I don't really think the Curbed folks read the book, they were just spouting opinions based the LAT review: Sprawling into controversy.

I'm not a big fan of sprawl, but I've always seen it as a natural progression of civilization. Crawl in your hole and call it obscene if you like, but that's the way the system appears to work. I've watched parts of the process in several cities (most notably Virginia Beach during a frantic phase of their build out in the early and mid eighties).

Coming to SoCal after living for a couple years just off the outer banks was traumatic. So many people, so much traffic. Ultimately it left us ready to leave for somewhere else and I had a good job offer in Flowery Branch, GA. We were ready to jump and yet even back in early 1993 I could see a tiny town being transformed (the four lane highways and strip malls were new and empty). I need to check it out but would bet it's just another Lake Lanier area suburb of Atlanta now.

Around that time some friends dragged us out to Ventura County and we learned the upside of the sprawl equation. With reasonable connector roads (highways and canyon routes initially), a distant location becomes a new community for those willing to make the trek. The initial long distance commuters (mostly pilots and aerospace employees, based upon the folks who moved here in the sixties that I've had the opportunity to interview) pushed for better roads and inspired developers to build more in a once 'remote' region. The end result? Sprawl and all the chaotic economic growth that goes along with it. When we finally moved out here, I spent the same 45-50 minutes getting to work, but it was driving through canyon roads and then tooling along the PCH through Malibu (versus winding my way along the 405 in stop and go) and my family could live an altogether different life style. That's slowly changing, because there's no easy way to halt sprawl.

What I'm most interested in learning about are the historical constraints which cause expansion to wash back toward the center and the economic impact. Should be a fun read.