The Tragic Artistry of Sprawl

[marmar]

from The Infrastructurist:





The New York Times Opinionator blog has a fascinating slideshow of the work of Christoph Gielen, a German-born photographer who has been shooting various landscapes — particularly, sprawl — from a helicopter for the past five years. His subjects include prison exercise yards, Sun Belt suburbs, and other geometric locations. To discover the most photogenic locations from an overhead view(which often corresponded to horrific locations from a direct view) Gielen searched regions by satellite, and then returned to his mapped locations in a chopper.

The Opinionator describes his method as follows:

For Gielen’s suburban missions, on the other hand, his method is to start with a satellite search, surveying the landscape county-by-county till the right, optically provocative geometries are found. To zoom in further on these arranged environments, he occasionally visits them by car, dressing up as a potential home buyer and touring the sites with a real estate agent, gaining insight into the neighborhood’s aspirations: how it sees itself, or, at least, how it is portrayed in the marketing pamphlets and sales pitches of local residents. Far from humanizing the subject, this adds a further layer of abstraction; the landscape’s aesthetics, or lack thereof, become economic calculations. Gielen’s interest in keeping these locations anonymous only furthers this alienation.

The suburbs are totally self-contained, labyrinthine, and generally terrifying. The Times describes them as “static, crystalline and inorganic. Indeed, some of these streets frame retirement communities: places to move to once you’ve already been what you’ve set out to be.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.


http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/09/22/the-tragic-artistry-of-sprawl/

[lolly]

1. I'm missing something??

Namely, what is so horrifying tragic about a picture of a housing development in a concentric design?

For that matter, what is tragic about retirement communities?

[marmar]

2. You like all the prefabricated sameness.....and the lack of logic in endless sprawl?

nt

[xchrom]

3. +1

[uncommon]

7. People need to live somewhere...

While I am a New Englander and don't see a lot of this sort of development here, I don't think it is inherently awful.

[marmar]

12. It's an environmental disaster first and foremost.......

[uncommon]

17. How so? Or rather, how so as opposed to building but NOT designing it in

this manner?

[marmar]

20. This kind of sprawl creates the need to drive more and more to shop, eat, etc.

More and more driving and fuel consumption, and taking more and more open spaces to create these sprawling, energy consuming communities of oversized houses, is tragic for the environment.

[uncommon]

24. With an expanding population, people have to move outwards. This has been true of human societies

since the dawn of time.

I agree that people take more than they need, and that is a social problem we need to address, but I have no issue with people wanting to live in a carefully laid out community of 98% identical homes if that is what they want.

[progressoid]

29. Here...

http://www.amazon.com/Once-There-Were-Greenfields-Undermining/dp/1893340171/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285255109&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Sprawl-Public-Health-Communities/dp/1559633050

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002I61FBW/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1559633050&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0G3ST19R5GVP0590KKNT

[Winterblues]

30. Seems like that picture is the exact opposite of sprawl.

It looks to be the most concentrated grouping of houses I have ever seen. How does heavy concentration equal sprawl?

[Gaedel]

35. You are right

We should all live right next to downtown inner city in "worker's flats".

[uncommon]

36. Exactly.

I get the idealism of hating suburbs, but seriously people need to get over it. More people means more need for housing means housing gets further and further away from urban hubs.

[lolly]

39. Actually

I think we're all supposed to live in super-trendy lofts in cities on the East Coast (OK, maybe San Francisco is acceptable.)

Otherwise, we're mindless automatons with no souls.

[WinkyDink]

41. What's so hot about the grids of city blocks?

[City Lights]

4. What is appealing about being detached and subdivided in the mass production zone?

:thumbsdown:

[HughBeaumont]

21. Possibly because nowhere is the dreamer, or the misfit so alone.

:fistbump:

[City Lights]

28. I knew someone would get it!

:fistbump:

[HughBeaumont]

31. I lived for that video in the 80s, because that kid in the glasses was me.

All of us, really. ;)

[City Lights]

60. Indeed!

And suburban conformity remains stifling, so it rings true today. I never tire of hearing it.

[lolly]

63. Well, sure

I'd much rather live on a custom built estate in the rural countryside.

Know where I can find one near my job for about, oh, 300K?

[Dogtown]

5. Beehive

Insectual symmetry.

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. If you live on the third, fourth, fifth... circle out the center

There are no bikeways or walk ways to get to the center, I see only peoples back yards.
You have to use the four arteries and to traverse three or more times the distance.

Now in the Center I wonder if you can find a stores there or are is it just the Senior Center?
For sixties planning it was not thought out well for community living.

[blondeatlast]

10. I know the area well. No stores within the community, just the Clubhouse.

In this area, that's pretty standard.

In most retirement communities, residents have to drive a few miles to go shopping, to the doctor, etc. Sterile as hell.

[Moostache]

13. So...

If there was a shopping / market / community recreation area at the center of the circle and a few walking / bike paths that traversed the rings you'd be OK with this? I am just trying to understand what the objection to the design is beyond the aesthetics; because for me, it is much more a case of WHERE, and not HOW, this is built.

The desert southwest is an energy sucking vampire and an ecological disaster because of what it takes in electricity and water and other resources to make the area viable in the first place, not the tragicomic design choices of the cookie cutter architects that built these places. It is the decision to warehouse large numbers of people in Las Vegas and Phoenix and Tuscon that is the really bad idea, IMO anyway.

[marmar]

15. It's not just about aesthetics.....Building communities like this means more and more driving....

...... to shop, eat, etc, and the impact on the environment, not just in desert cities, has big consequences.

[uncommon]

19. People don't want to live in cities.

So if someone wants to live in a suburb, and the closest house to the city that fits their requirements and is affordable to them is 40 miles away, what are they supposed to do? Get an apartment in the city because it means less driving?

Ideally, yeah, but people want to live their lives in a way that is comfortable for them.

[Ichingcarpenter]

23. ARCOSANTI is more of my type of vision

Architect Paolo Soleri, using a concept he calls arcology (a portmanteau of architecture and ecology), started the town to demonstrate how urban conditions could be improved while minimizing the destructive impact on the earth.



Arcosanti is an experimental town that began construction in 1970 in central Arizona, 70 mi (110 km) north of Phoenix,


Its an interesting place I went to back in the late 80s


http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000793.html

[blondeatlast]

59. It is amazing, to be sure. nt

[blondeatlast]

56. Okay--so what to do about it? I moved here with parents when I was 8,

that was in the '70s.

Is it more okay for people to live in Buffalo or Chicago?

[uncommon]

58. Yes. You should move. Your parents were horrible, selfish people for consigning you to a life

devoid of urban flavor and more lenient zoning laws.

:sarcasm:

[lame54]

25. This might put it in perspective...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omPGf5_6dUA

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

37. Furthermore, how is that sprawl?

Looks rather dense to me.

When I think sprawl, I think lots of big, mostly empty parking lots, and lots of commercial space.

[nyc 4 Biden]

8. houses in neat rows!

oh the horror!

[xchrom]

9. weird that so few seem to understand the disconnect from being human in these communities.

i misunderstood -- i thought there was a general understanding of why these community designs were bad for people, and the quality of their lives.

oh well.

[uncommon]

11. On the flip side, people choose to live in these places - often at a higher expense than

living somewhere else. Why?

[xchrom]

14. conformity and exclusivity?

i actually don't know to that question.

because not all of this hyper designed ugliness is exclusive -- and yet...

on edit: and yet good design is our answer to all of this -- i didn't want to get out with out saying that.

[uncommon]

16. So maybe it's just what some people want, and let them have it?

I mean, some people like to eat chicken livers. I think it's disgusting, but it doesn't hurt me so...

[xchrom]

22. huh? -- it does hurt though.

i'm not talking in hippy dippy feel good ways here -- these places are waste lands of sorts -- wasteful putting up, wasteful gettting around in them, and on and on.

this is bad unsustainable design -- you can't really argue for it or say 'duh if that's what people want...' -- that stuff is past tense already.

[Gormy Cuss]

18. You might find the article attached to the OP's link to be helpful

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/the-geometry-of-sprawl/?ref=opinion

There's a good discussion of the why in the comments.

[xchrom]

27. yeah those are some great comments. nt

[lolly]

43. OK, here's a quote from the article:

Looking at Gielen’s work, it’s tempting to propose a new branch of the human sciences: geometric sociology, a study of nothing but the shapes our inhabited spaces make. Its research agenda would ask why these forms, angles and geometries emerge so consistently, from prehistoric settlements to the fringes of exurbia. Are sites like these an aesthetic pursuit, a mathematical accident, a calculated bending of property lines based on glitches in the local planning code or an emergent combination of all these factors? Or are they the expression of something buried deep in human culture and the unconscious, something only visible from high above?

According to this, it's nothing new. Seems to be a human impulse to build in these patterns.

On edit:

And the comments seems to echo the comments here pretty closely. Half join the "suburbs are a horror show that sucks all vitality from life" chorus and the other half are asking "what's the problem?"

[uncommon]

49. Exactly - the comments and even the article itself hardly proved a point other than

the fact that different humans have different ideas of how they want to live.

[xchrom]

52. except we have a list of accumulated problems

that have come from living with bad design.

pollution, waste, isolation, resources, etc.

the so what comments seem? to come from an ignorance of what -- at least i thought -- were arguments that were dead in the water.

there aren't any good 'pro' arguments for this kind of design for our contemporary civilization.

[Gormy Cuss]

68. The comments also provide a fine starting list for further reading on the subject of why

living areas have been arrayed in this way and other ways, which is why I posted above that the comments should be read.

Here's the list of books cited:

Spiro Kostof's "The City Shaped"

Jim Corner and Alex Macleans, "Taking Measure Across the American Landscape"

The Social Logic of Space" by Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson

Nathaniel Owings, "THE AMERICAN AESTHETIC"

"Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream" (Duany; Plater-Zyberk, and Speck)

Lewis Mumford, "The City in History"

[Warpy]

26. That kind of sprawl actually makes a certain amount of sense

with the retail stuff in the middle and concentric rings of bedroom housing around it. That means no one is beyond walking distance of amenities.

Worse are the horrible examples of needlessly curved streets and cul-de-sacs that are impossible to navigate unless you know where you're going and that make walking to amenities a half a day job. Add walls and gates to give the illusion of invulnerability and the residents are trapped.

[EOTE]

32. Seems almost like Amsterdam, to me.

Although I guess Amsterdam has canals and is more horse shoe shaped and less ring shaped, but it seems like the general gist of it. I doubt many here would have the audacity to consider Amsterdam "sprawl". I like having an area's streets laid out intuitively.

[marmar]

33. Amongst the rows of canal houses in Amsterdam are stores, cultural institutions.....

.....cafes, bike paths and trams. And the homes are densely packed. That's hardly the case in this suburban Arizona picture.

[EOTE]

34. So if a suburban area doesn't have a storied cultural history...

then it's worthless sprawl and detrimental to society? I'm thinking a lot of this "outrage" is simply "holier-than-thou" liberalism.

[Name removed]

44. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Gaedel]

40. I grew up in the "D".

Long stretches of perfectly rectangular blocks oriented on the alignment of the French "ribbon farms" with twelve houses on each side of the block and the block lengths carefully measured off by some multiple of the old 66-foot Gunter's Chain used by surveyors.

A convenience store was a two block walk, but a supermarket was a mile and a half slog.

By the way, how many supermarkets can Detroit city residents walk to now?

[xchrom]

45. detroit has been destroyed by design. -- it was an amazing vibrant, diversified

place at one point.

so not sure what your point is -- other than it's a community the whole country abandoned?

[marmar]

46. What's your point? What does Detroit have to do with this piece?

nt

[Gaedel]

48. Tell you what

Go to Google Maps

Home in on the area bounded by Moross, Harper, Kelly, and Whittier in Detroit.

Zoom in to about the same level of detail that the guy did on the circular subdivision in Arizona.

Tell me that late-30s subdivision design in the wonderfully vibrant Detroit of the time wasn't just as sterile as what you are lamenting in the Arizona case. Detroit just had straight lines and this developer used curved lines.

Yes, Detroit was truly a great place back then.

[marmar]

50. What makes you think I find a late 30s subdivision in Detroit to be some kind of model?

nt

[uncommon]

51. The point is that urban areas did the same damn thing to the environment and to people

they are just more crowded. Once upon a time people thought the design of cities was sterile and inhuman.

[xchrom]

57. yes there were subdivisions in the thirties -- what's your point?

did we have an extraordinary accumulated data then about community design?

what is good and beneficial and what is harmful -- to all of us?

the photos here are only visual representations of what we know isn't sustainable -- and we need better design.

on your side of though -- i will say there are better communities being designed all the time.
designed around materials, use, transportation, etc.

[Warpy]

69. Right, the picture used in the OP wasn't a very good example of sprawl

However, the model of each house on its quarter to half acre invariably produces sprawl and walking distances to amenities are much farther than they are in the city.

Personally, I'd prefer living in a city high rise (with good sound insulation, of course, something I rarely found in Boston) to living in a detached house with its yard, but that doesn't exist in this town. I can still manage to walk to most of what I need, though, and the streets were laid out sensibly.

Sprawl to me is what I described above. Here it's even unfriendlier to walkers as the only portion of the house visible from the street is a vast expanse of two car garage door and there are no sidewalks. There is no chance to meet neighbors or get any sort of street life going.

[Roland99]

47. Looks like maybe some schools in the middle?

More and more, I'm seeing "village" type developments going in.

But are they any better? Every part of town ends up with an anchor grocery store, the typical top fast-food joints, some "local" flavor in the form of a mexican or chinese restaurant and a hair salon or two. Sure, it makes it more convenient for people who live nearby but it's just another "economies of scale", cookie-cutter development.

Granted, I'm pretty much in one of those, myself, but the price was right, good neighbors, and in a few years we can move no more than 1-2 miles down the road and live in rural splendor.

[Ichingcarpenter]

54. There are no Schools, Shops or businesses in the center

There are no pathways to get to the center only the 4 arteries.

Shopping is outside the circle., the center is the senior's center
as was said early in the thread.

If every third or second circle included some shops it could work nicely
with more pathway for walking or bikes radiating out of the center.
As it is right now ... very poor design.

[lolly]

62. So, is this a senior citizen development?

If so, then there is no need for a school.

If that is a senior's center in the middle of a retirement community, I'm guessing they offer community programs--college extension classes, exercise classes, club meetings, etc. You know, those horrible soul-destroying, anti-human activities that suburbanites engage in.

[xchrom]

64. some of the problems of urban sprawl in the desert southwest --

http://www.greatbasinwater.net/issues/index.php

from some one who lives there -- http://www.brazilbrazil.com/urban.html

this even contains a decent list of books you can educate yourself with -- http://www.squidoo.com/sprawl_stinks

impacts on wildlife -- which by the way contributes to a good quality of life for humans -- http://www.nrdc.org/cities/smartgrowth/pwild.asp

water? -- who needs stinking water --http://www.waterworld.com/index/display/article-display/357858/articles/waterworld/volume-25/issue-4/departments/viewpoint/cities-struggle-with-water-supply-issues-in-desert-southwest.html

the effects of bad design -- http://www.embarq.org/en/problem/urban-sprawl

little things like arenas instead of libraries -- http://whydowntown.ca/2010/08/29/good-design-bad-design-library-vs-arena-showdown-winnipeg-edition/

bad design and public health -- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1435615/

it goes on.

[lolly]

65. Sprawl in the desert

Is a problem with location, not design.

Building where there is no access to water, other amenities creates problems. Many of these developments end up sitting empty, and deservedly so.

Humans in general create environmental problems, in cities and in suburbs, and we should certainly work to mitigate that.

But that is a separate set of arguments from the issues with the design itself, which, as the linked article admitted (?), is one that has been repeated throughout human societies.

[lolly]

66. Delete--Double Post

nt

[xchrom]

67. um it's 'design' that creates these problems

the advantage of urban areas is that you have better control of impact -- it's a more contained area -- and there can be better focus -- practically has to -- on over all impact.

bad design -- is what we're talking about here -- the impact of bad design -- and the impacts are very large.

good design is also the answer in both urban areas and suburban -- but we have to stop having a shrug shoulder attitude about it and say this is what people want.
because the negative effects of bad deign don't stay in that neighborhood alone.

waste accumulation for example -- http://www.tutorvista.com/bow/impact-of-waste-accumulation

other problems associated with suburban sprawl -- http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/whitepaper.asp -- talk about design -- a design for disaster -- this isn't just stuff to shrug at and say 'people are like this, or it will get better with use over time'
some of these places won't even last.



http://www.azuswebworks.com/us/urbansprawl.html


a list of works documenting the bad effects of urban sprawl -- http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=the+accumulated+effects+of+urban+sprawl&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

news from south africa on the impact of golf estates -- http://www.environment.co.za/golf-courses-polo-fields-effects/the-impact-of-golf-estates.html

[Tsiyu]

38. The problem for me

Where does rain run off?

Where do they grow anything besides ornamental trees?

Where do kids ride their bikes, and moms walk their dogs? Where do dads push the strollers?

I'd go insane in that concrete compound, personally. But to each his own...

[xchrom]

42. it's bad wasteful, unsustainable design. and all of the things you note are just part

of all that list.

there's little good in it.

[lolly]

53. Depends on where it is

If it's in many parts of the southwest (as some have hinted) there probably isn't much rain to speak of.

They probably don't grow anything besides ornamental trees. Ideally, they would have drought-friendly landscaping if they're in the Southwest.
It's not a farm community. Some of them might have gardens in their backyards. Does everybody in your average vibrant urban center have a place to grow something?

Bike riding/stroller pushing--can't tell from the picture. Are there sidewalks? Then that's where they would push strollers. They would ride bikes in the street, just as they do in cities.

[Gaedel]

73. I would like to zoom in further

There well could be sidewalks, though there is no grass setback dividing the sidewalk from the street. It looks like there is a white band on each side of the black road at the end of the driveways. I don't think they would have paved the gutter a different color from the street.

I agree they could have used a few radial walkways to supplement the four radial streets.

[uncommon]

55. Into a drain, like everywhere else? Grass and bushes and flowers and the odd vegetable

garden I'm sure. On those nice wide roads, just like in neighborhoods the world over. On the sidewalk on the streets that have them.

These arguments make no sense whatsoever.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

61. Makes perfect sense...

if you haven't got a real argument.

[Name removed]

70. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Tsiyu]

72. I must have hurt someone's feelings...so sorry

but as I said, I was not making an argument but asking questions.

There is a difference.

If pointing that out is offensive, so be it.

The picture in the OP, to be honest, would be my personal vision of human hell on earth.

It defies all sane uses of land and hearkens back to Louis XIV's "I will conquer nature" fantasy.

But as I said in my original post in this thread:

To each his or her own. Wish more people felt that way lol

[Odin2005]

71. That is actually very dense for a suburb, the only problem is no sidewalks or bikepaths.

The real problem with suburbs is that there are no stores, schools, etc. within walking distance. It's car use that is the problem.