Suburban Nation: The rise of Sprawl and the decline of the American Dream

Book of the Month
Suburban Nation: The rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream.

This book is awesome. After reading this book you wont believe how badly we are destroying our cities and available resources in the United States. As you read you will come to find out that a good majority of the problems we are encountering in our society (school violence, personal fitness, gas prices, property taxes) are directly connected to the way we have planned our cities since world war II. Essentially we design our cities first for the automobile and second for people. The issues discussed here are so fundamental and basic from width of residential roads, zoning codes, and street corner radius's. Urban Sprawl is already consuming South Eastern Idaho by one strip shopping center, and one single residential type subdivision at a time. I just hope someone steps in too correct this problem before its too late. Every Idahoan has to agree that this problem needs to be corrected before our beautiful valley turns into a situation like the Wasatch front, Las Vegas, or Denver area. Too some extent it is too late however if the correct changes are made now the problem can be minimized. The pictures show a Traditional Neighborhood Development and situation that we find now in our cities. The more pedestrian friendly environment is actually a new neighborhood that was built in the Washington D.C. area. That Land Developer is experiencing success that others can't match, unless they stop building ugly by creating one level retail boxes with plastic signs which are surrounded by excessive amounts of surface parking. I know my words are harsh, but sometimes the truth hurts. The solution is to mix our land uses instead of dividing them up geographically and economically and then connecting them with extremely expensive collecting roads. This kind of design forces every person to own their own car, and causes all kinds of local municipality budget problems like bankruptcy. Think about it America n parents are forced to buy their teenagers cars because they can't possibly take them every where they need to go and also where they need to go. That is a direct result of segregated land uses. I invite you to read this book and bring an open mind so that you can get rid of your newly acquired ideas about how cities should look (ideas that developed in the last three decades) and return to what cites you older folks grew up with "The American Dream."