Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Sprawl

The Definition of Automobile Dependence

By Aaron Naparstek | | 8 Comments
Working for a failing automaker to make enough money to keep your beat-up, failing mini van rolling through your sprawled-out, failing city. From today’s New York Times story on escalating gasoline prices. For ordinary Americans like Phyllis Berry, a 31-year-old factory worker for General Motors in Cleveland, gasoline costs are starting to hurt. “I used […]

Disney’s Highway to Hell

By Brad Aaron | | 27 Comments
This scarifying nine-minute peek into an auto-enslaved Disney world of the future, as seen from 1958, is as amazing for what it gets right (like urban sprawl) as much as what is laughably off the mark (like urban sprawl = Utopia). Notice how skinny everyone is, though no one ever walks (except dad, from his […]

Making the Case for Compact Development

By Sarah Goodyear | | 9 Comments
From the people at Smart Growth America comes word of a new book, Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, just out from the Urban Land Institute. In the book, researchers argue that more compact development (such as Atlantic Station, a mixed-use complex in Atlanta built on reclaimed industrial land, shown at […]

World Cities Adding One Million People Every Week

By Jason Varone | | 2 Comments
Syndicated columnist Neal Peirce asks whether our planet will be able to absorb the population "mega-surge" currently underway in Africa, Asia and Latin America. From Common Dreams: The problem is that the global population base has increased so radically that even seemingly modest birthrates can have momentous consequences. Joel Cohen (head of the Laboratory of […]

The Suburbanist Paradox

By Jason Varone | | 13 Comments
The Atlantic Monthly’s Matthew Yglesias argues that high-density living is a key strategy to fight climate change. Yglesias takes issue with fellow Atlantic Online blogger Ross Douthat and author Joel Kotkin, who defend suburban sprawl — what James Kunstler has famously called "the most destructive development pattern the world has ever seen, and perhaps the […]

How Americans Get to Work

By Jason Varone | | 5 Comments
According to a new U.S. Census Bureau analysis of data from the American Community Survey, most Americans drive to work — alone, and public transportation commuters are concentrated in a handful of large cities. From the Bureau’s press release: Despite rising fuel costs, commuters continued to drive their cars in 2005. The survey, gathered over […]
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