Dead end : suburban sprawl and the rebirth of American urbanism

Resource Information

The work Dead end : suburban sprawl and the rebirth of American urbanism represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of San Diego Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Dead end : suburban sprawl and the rebirth of American urbanism

Title remainder

suburban sprawl and the rebirth of American urbanism

Statement of responsibility

Benjamin Ross

Creator

• Ross, Benjamin

Subject

• Cities and towns -- United States -- Growth
• HISTORY / United States / State & Local / General
• Land use -- Planning
• Land use -- United States -- Planning
• SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Geography
• SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Urban
• Cities and towns -- Growth
• Suburbs -- United States
• Traffic flow
• Traffic flow -- United States
• United States
• Urbanization
• Urbanization -- United States
• Suburbs

Language

eng

Summary

• "More than five decades have passed since Jane Jacobs wrote her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and since a front page headline in the New York Times read, "Cars Choking Cities as 'Urban Sprawl' Takes Over." Yet sprawl persists, and not by mistake. It happens for a reason. As an activist and a scholar, Benjamin Ross is uniquely placed to diagnose why this is so. Dead End traces how the ideal of a safe, green, orderly retreat where hardworking members of the middle class could raise their children away from the city mutated into the McMansion and strip mall-ridden suburbs of today. Ross finds that sprawl is much more than bad architecture and sloppy planning. Its roots are historical, sociological, and economic. He uses these insights to lay out a practical strategy for change, honed by his experience leading the largest grass-roots mass transit advocacy organization in the United States. The problems of smart growth, sustainability, transportation, and affordable housing, he argues, are intertwined and must be solved as a whole. The two keys to creating better places to live are expansion of rail transit and a more genuinely democratic oversight of land use. Dead End is, ultimately, about the places where we live our lives. Both an engaging history of suburbia and an invaluable guide for today's urbanists, it will serve as a primer for anyone interested in how Americans actually live"--
• "A witty, readable, and highly original tour through the history of America's suburbs and cities to uncover the human impulses that keep sprawl spreading"--

Assigning source

• Provided by publisher
• Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

DLC

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

HT352.U6

LC item number

R67 2014

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography