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Sprawl

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The term sprawl means to stretch out with a lack of consideration. When I picture a grown man sprawling on a couch, I picture him irreverent: shoes on, one foot on the coffee table and one propped on the couch arm, his hands folded on his chest. Picturing urban sprawl is much the same: an unkempt, uncontrolled and un-officiated way of developing land. Reid Ewing, in his article, “Is Los Angeles Style Sprawl Desirable”, defines sprawl as low density developments which are poorly accessible and lack functional open space. According to John Randolph an advocate for environmentally conscious land use, sprawl is “land-consumptive, dispersed, auto-dependent land development made up of homogeneous segregated uses: housing subdivisions, shopping centers, office/business arks, large civic institutions, and roadways heavily dependent on collector roads (37)” Sprawl is a term which, in the urban planning vernacular, is used to criticize suburban community’s lack of planning which results in auto-centric residents and inefficient and hazardous land usage. Characteristically, sprawl happens when a large population relocates from the city core to the suburbs. The perfect example of how sprawl is happening in America is Atlanta, Georgia. According to Robert D. Bullard’s analysis of Atlanta’s sprawl, between 1990 and 1997, the greater Atlanta area gained 475,600 people of which, only 2,647 (less than 1 percent) were added to the city. Atlanta’s area boundaries doubled in the 1990’s as people moved to the suburbs to be closer to jobs and to partake in the booming housing market.

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