A Field Guide to Sprawl

Great coffee table book with humorous anecdotes and good pictures of what our man-made world has become in the last 60 years.

This is a beautifully illustrated glossary of some of the terminology that has become associated with the phenomenon of suburban sprawl. Such inventive terms as "ball pork" and "snout house" are illustrated with superb photographs, and accompanied by concise written explanations and selected references to help the reader follow up on topics of interest. This is not a textbook for urban planners, who will already be familiar with the content, but I have effectively used material from this guide in my introductory urban planning classes, where the exemplary photographs speak louder than a thousand words.

The numerous color aerial photos in this book do a wonderful job of putting US development patterns into a whole new perspective. This isn't intended to be the end all be all of commentary about sprawl. For that, there are plenty of other great books that emphasize analysis and critique rather than a visual approach (A Better Way to Live is an example of a terrific book in the former category). This book is a great introduction to the different kinds of sprawl and what they look like. Sure, Dolores Hayden puts a fairly cynical touch on what commentary there is, but when you see the pictures of how developers have ruined our open spaces, you'll understand why. In short, a great little book that achieves its purpose very well.

Dolores Hayden's intriguing book visually decodes fifty-one examples of bad building in the landscape and the use of aerial photography to do this was a good idea, sprawl by its nature stretches off into the horizon but when seen at ground-level could seem pretty ordinary. Some of the differences though, especially with domestic dwellings, seem a bit arbitrary, there are seven examples of housing shown which, to me, don't seem that different. With commercial sprawl it is easy to understand the visual differences, from 'Rural slammer' (Soledad) to 'Tank farm' (part of the port of Houston) Though the book is primarily visual, with seventy-five well chosen aerial photos used to illustrate the categories, I thought the essay on the first ten pages was first class in explaining the reasons behind sprawl, basically the fault of those folk in Washington allowing commercial interests to favor suburban white populations and male-headed households during the last few decades. The back of the book has a useful bibliography, list of websites and index. Jim Wark's aerial photos were used by the author to carefully explain the categories and you can see several hundred other examples of his work in 'America' (ISBN 8854400033). If you like aerial photos have a look at Alex MacLean's book 'Designs on the Land' (ISBN 0500284148) with over four hundred stunning color photos of what is happening commercially on the ground. Though a large number of Americans live in the sprawl environment (and by choice, too) it is worth remembering that over ninety percent of the US is still open land. This fascinating book is a useful visual guide to how bad things can get. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

If you have ever wondered what to call those cul-de-sacs that took the place of the dairy farm down the road, this field guide will finally give you the language to express yourself. With fascinating aerial photographs of all sorts of American sprawl, and interesting, to-the-point accompanying paragraphs, this field guide is a must to share with those neighbors of yours who lack the imagination to envision what will happen in their part of the woods (if the woods still exist) when subdividers come to town. (Naw, it's not happily ever after because the property taxes will increase revenue for the town.) Read this guide and you will never be content to leave the future of God's green earth in the hands of suburban planners again.