Boom! A master planned community. Boom! A big-box mall! Our Sprawling, Supersize Utopia. This article, by New York Times columnist David Brooks, takes a look at exploding suburbs and exurban migration. This migration is nothing new, author Joel Garreau wrote extensively about it in his 1991 book Edge Cities. The phenomonon really took off after World War II, during the period of post war prosperity, and is best represented by this famous postwar American suburb. A veritable army of "suburban sprawl critics" has emerged over the years including Jane Jacobs and James Howard Knunstler plus many others including some who are predicting the immenent demise of suburbs because of oil depletion. For Brooks the critics of suburbs "just regurgitate the same critiques decade after decade, regardless of the suburban reality flowering around them" but you can't dismiss what the architect Paolo Soleri says about American society that "we have a society that is moving very rapidly to the super-, super-, super-consumptive."
posted by thedailygrowl on Apr 30, 2004 - 28 comments

Do you have a favourite city park? Nominate it for the Great Parks/Great Cities Awards, to be presented this July in New York. And read about Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto; neighbors came together to help the city manage the park when they found out that the Parks Department had allotted no money for its upkeep.
posted by tranquileye on Jun 12, 2001 - 19 comments

"Avoiding Downtown easier these days" I wonder what rock these folks have been living under. Would you believe that "thousands of people are able to live, work and have every service available to them without ever going Downtown"? This was a front-page story here, no less.
posted by binkin on May 25, 2001 - 26 comments

Washington DC Metro Popularity is Possible Problem as physical limitations may hinder expansion and usability in future years.
posted by vanderwal on Mar 26, 2001 - 7 comments