Suburban Sprawl Essay

These changes make a new living pattern, in which people live in the suburban area and drive to work, becomes possible. As a result, more and more people move out of cities and live in suburban area. These suburban communities are called suburban sprawl. As most people live in the suburbia, merchants relocate themselves with their customers. Office and jobs stayed in the cities in the beginning. Gradually, offices moved out too because it is cheap for them to set up office at suburbia where closer to their workers and targeted clients. After families and jobs moving out, cities became empty and the population density decreased. What make it worse is the zoning code applied in the low-density residential area. Started from the City Beautiful Movement, zoning code was adopted as a useful approach to organize city’s functions. It works well at high population density area where residents can still reach what they need within a short distance. When it applied to suburban sprawls, it causes some problems. It means districts with different function are separated and far away from each other. To get all services, residents must travel for very long distance. To do so, it everyone needs to drive.
Sprawl causes many consequences. The authors list four major ones: traffic congestion, inconvenient …show more content…
In a sprawl, shopping center is designed solely to shopping. In traditional communities’ main street, people can do many activities other than shopping. What’s more, parallel parking is usually allowed in traditional main street but forbidden shopping center in a sprawl. In this case, a main street in a traditional community plays the role of parking and shopping, while parking and shopping cannot be done at same location in shopping center. Finally, sprawl hardly create a memorable place. Open space in a sprawl is usually not fully used. Large and empty place would either improve the quality life or create a vista that impress