A Field Guide to Sprawl

"Can you define edge node, boomburb, tower farm, big box, and parsley round the pig? Sprawl is hard to pin down and the terms change every day. This concise book defines the vocabulary of sprawl from alligator to zoomburb, illustrating fifty-one colorful terms invented by real estate developers and designers to characterize contemporary building patterns. Sixty-nine aerial photographs, each paired with a definition, convey the impact of development and provide verbal and visual vocabulary needed by professionals, public officials, and citizens to critique uncontrolled growth in the American landscape. This "devil's dictionary" of American building accompanies a critique of metropolitan regions organized around unsustainable growth, where sprawling new areas of automobile-oriented construction flourish as older neighborhoods are left to decline."--BOOK JACKET.

First sentence: Words such as city, suburb, and countryside no longer capture the reality of real estate development in the United States.

Year

2004

Language

English

Publisher

W. W. Norton

Editions

4

Pages

128

ISBN

9780393731989

Data source: Wikidata