Sprawl: a Compact History, Part V -- Make up your mind

Bruegmann:

Despite a common belief that suburban sprawl is accelerating and that the most affluent people are moving constantly outward to areas of ever-lower density, in fact the suburbs of American cities are, if anything, becoming denser.

Ok, fine. But then, two paragraphs later:

Turning from suburban sprawl to exurban sprawl, the picture is quite different. Exurban sprawl is apparently in the process of accelerating, with more people occupying more land at lower densities...

Well, the "common belief" is still true, then, isn't it? Yeah, you have to ignore the distinction between "suburban sprawl" and "exurban sprawl" that he's trying to draw, but, by his own admission, he can't claim that people who think that sprawl is constantly moving outward at an ever accelerating rate are incorrect.

Incidentally, Bruegmann appears to mean the same thing by "exurban sprawl" that I do in this post. His use of "suburban sprawl" is more general than mine, and I think a better term for what I'm talking about might be "mall sprawl".

I promise, everything I have to say about this book isn't negative. 

¶ 1/21/2006 11:09:00 AM