Suburban Sprawl - Heaven or Hell?

Contains an interesting critique of pro-sprawl author Robert Bruegmann's book, Sprawl: A Compact history -

Suburban Sprawl - Heaven or Hell?
Americans Are Getting Frustrated with the Suburban Sprawl Lifestyle

By Joel Hirschhorn

If all the sprawl subdivisions covering America is heaven, then we know that people get to heaven in their cars. On the other hand, when sprawl residents fill up their several household cars with gas and choke on what all their driving is costing them, they are likely to think they’re in hell. And when they arrive home tired and stressed out and have a few spare minutes to pay their bills for electricity, natural gas and – for many – rising mortgage costs and soon reach for the bottle of anti-depressant pills and later some prescription sleeping pills, they know that life in suburban sprawl is no longer the heavenly American dream.

Though I once lived in classic suburban sprawl - in Madison, Wisconsin - and eventually learned to hate that automobile dependent lifestyle, it was not until I worked on the sprawl issue from a public policy perspective for the National Governors Association that I learned just how awful the past half-century of relentless sprawl has been for our nation. Mae West said “too much of a good thing is wonderful.” Maybe that’s a good way to decide whether something is good or not. For me ice cream and Chinese food are good and too much of each of them is definitely wonderful. You can probably think of a number of good things in your life. However, think about what you have seen outside of downtowns – the congested roads and highways, the endless strip malls, the big box stores with their seas of parking lots, the never-ending rows of chain restaurants and fast-food joints (that are pretty much the same everywhere in the nation), and all those cookie-cutter subdivisions covering hills, valleys and once beautiful farmland. Is all of that “wonderful?” If not, suburban sprawl is definitely not good. And we certainly have much too much of it covering an incredible amount of America from Puerto Rico to Hawaii to Alaska and everywhere in between.

Link: Suburban Sprawl - Heaven or Hell? - Associated Content.