Of course, my ox is relatively ungored...[Re-post from 2006]
Elitist whiners decrying "sprawl" have met their debating match in Robert Bruegmann, an art historian from the
If history is any guide, the current revolt of the "sensitive minority" against sprawl will soon seem a quaint product of a bygone era. Highbrow critics loudly castigated the landscape created by "vulgar masses" fed by "greedy speculators" in cookie-cutter postwar American suburbs like
Bruegmann's excellent book "Sprawl "will be reviewed in an upcoming Top Producer, but this essay from The American Enterprise magazine encapsulates many of his key arguments, such as:
Another misunderstanding grows out of the provincialism of critics living in fast-growing urban areas. Many such people have the impression that the entire country is fast being paved over. But in truth, cities and suburbs occupy only a small percentage of our country's land. The entire urban and suburban population of the
One key for me in this never-ending debate is that despite near-universal agreement on the disagreeable nature of urban expansion, it continues unabated. Which usually means people are saying one thing and doing another.
Update: TP dropped the "Required Reading" page, so the full review is posted here on JWorld - On the Coffee Table.
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