1990s as the electronic information revolution
challenged many conventional assumptions about
urban space and urban life, and Americans have come
to regard this expansive phenomenon as a recent
problem. But such physical expansion of cities was
nothing new, nor particular to America. In the years
between World Wars I and II,
the land area of
London doubled while the population increased by
only 30 percent, from six-and-a-half million to eight-
and-a-half million people (Clawson and Hall: p. 33).
Much of this phenomenal upsurge took the form of
suburbs sprawling along the main arterial roads
leading out of the city, and enlarged communities
developing around new underground train stations.
This rapid urban growth gave rise to cries about pro-
tecting the countryside from shoddy development
that are almost identical to those heard today.
However, recent experiences in many American
cities have elevated this pattern to even higher levels.
The extent of this dramatic push towards lower den-
sities and larger land acquisitions for urban purposes
is illustrated most vividly by the case of Cleveland,
Ohio.
Here the population
decreased
by 11 percent
between the years of 1970 and 1990, but the land
area of the metropolitan area actually
increased
by
33 percent! (Benfield et al., 1999). Detroit, Michigan
provides similar figures for the same 20-year period.
Its population declined by 7 percent yet its land area
grew by 28 percent. Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Dayton
all followed this same paradoxical trend. Most other
major cities in the USA increased their population
during the same period and continue to do so. Of the
100 largest urbanized areas in the country, 71 cities
grew in
both population and land area, some very
dramatically, while 11 experienced no population
growth (or decreased in numbers) yet increased in
area (www.sprawlcity.com). This growth occurred
almost exclusively at the suburban edge: between
1950 and 1970, American suburbs grew in popula-
tion more than eight times faster than central cities,
by 85 million people compared to 10 million.
The growth followed new market opportunities
with little thought for the consequences, but by the
late 1980s the effects of this suburban migration of
people and wealth was more clearly seen: the centers of
most
American cities, once proud hubs of commerce
and culture, became hollow shells. Dallas, Texas,
during the 1980s provides a perfect illustration of the
conditions in the city center at that time. White,
middle-class office workers drove in from the suburbs,
parked their cars in parking decks, walked through
air-conditioned pedestrian bridges or skywalks into
their office towers, went for lunch and shopped in the
internal pedestrian malls linked together in the lower
floors of the office buildings, walked back through the
skywalks to their cars at the end of the day and drove
home. Not once did the typical
office worker set foot
on the streets, or engage in any pedestrian activity that
was part of external public space. On some days,
before they skywalked back to their cars after work,
they might even catch a Maverick’s basketball game via
subterranean passages. The streets – hot and unpleas-
ant in the summer months – were predominantly the
territory of the black and Hispanic lower class workers
and the unemployed.
This dystopian downtown scene contrasted with
affluence in the suburbs, where development gobbled
up green fields for new residential subdivisions and
shopping centers at an astonishing rate. In the same
period from 1950–1970,
the consumption of land
for residential purposes in greater Chicago grew at an
amazing 11 times faster than the region’s population.
This suburban expansion has continued almost
unchecked despite the radical improvement of many
American city centers during the 1990s.
America lost 4 million acres of
prime
farmland to
urban use during the decade from 1982 to 1992.
That equates to 1.6 million hectares, or an area
nearly as big as Wales. That may not sound much in
the context of the huge American continent, but it
doesn’t count other, less productive rural areas that
are also converted to housing subdivisions,
shopping
malls and office parks. The speed at which this over-
all transformation takes place is hard to contemplate.
The city of Charlotte, North Carolina, for example,
converts open space to suburbs at the rate of 41 acres
per day, or 1.7 acres per hour! (Brookings Institution,
2002). Nationally, this process of urbanization is
equivalent to gobbling up land a rate of 45.7 acres
per hour, every day (Benfield et al., 1999).
It wasn’t residential use alone that expanded the
suburbs. During those same two decades from 1950
to 1970 the suburbs provided 75 percent of all new
jobs in the retail and commercial sectors. To use a
dramatic example, between 1970 and 1990 the con-
sumption of land for industrial and commercial uses
in greater Chicago increased by 74 percent, 18 times
the rate of that metropolitan area’s population growth.
Meanwhile, the decline of central cities continued,
often
in dramatic ways, with increasing instances of
stark poverty, rising crime, homelessness and other
major problems, often associated with drug abuse.
By 1990, the flight of the residential middle class
from the city center was all but complete, and many
CHAPTER TWO
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CITIES, SUBURBS AND SPRAWL
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