Sprawl Quotes

“In 1995 Bank of America issued a famous report on sprawl in California. The bank pronounced: 'Urban job centers have decentralized to the suburbs. New housing tracts have moved even deeper into agriculturally and environmentally sensitive areas. Private auto use continues to rise. This acceleration of sprawl has surfaced enormous social, environmental, and economic costs, which until now have been hidden, ignored, or quietly borne by society.”
― Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000

“It's in the nature of the landscape to change, and it's in the nature of people to help the process along...”
― John Darnielle, Universal Harvester

“It is the flight from us that sent them sprawling into the subdivided woods. And the method of transport through these new subdivisions, across the sprawl, is the automobile, the noose around the neck of the Earth, and ultimately, the Dreamers themselves.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“The activities of automobile manufacturers, commercial real estate developers, and the federal government have been far more important in determining patterns of transportation than consumer choice.”
― Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000

“That Mrs. Munt should be the first to discover the misfortune was not remarkable, for she was so interested in the flats, that she watched their every mutation with unwearying care. In theory she despised them — they took away that old-world look — they cut off the sun — flats house a flashy type of person.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“Gomi. Thirty-five percent of the landmass of Tokyo was built on gomi, on level tracts reclaimed from the Bay through a century's systematic dumping. Gomi, there, was a resource to be managed, to be collected, carefully plowed under.

London's relationship to gomi was more subtle, more oblique. To Kumiko's eyes, the bulk of the city consisted of gomi, of structures the Japanese economy would long ago have devoured in its relentless hunger for space in which to build. Yet these structures revealed, even to Kumiko, the fabric of time, each wall patched by generation of hands in an ongoing task of restoration. The English valued their gomi in its own right, in a way she had only begun to understand; they inhabited it.

Gomi in the Sprawl was something else: a rich humus, a decay that sprouted prodigies in steel and polymer. The apparent lack of planning alone was enough to dizzy her, running so entirely opposite the value her own culture placed on efficient land use.

Her tax ride from the airport had already shown her decay, whole blocks in ruins, unglazed windows gaping above sidewalks heaped with trash. And faces staring as the armoed hover made its way through the streets.”
― William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive

“Sociologists point out that the suburbs have done an efficient job of sorting people into communities where they will be surrounded by people of the same socioeconomic status. Meanwhile, the architectures of sprawl inhibit political activity that requires face-to-face interaction. It is not that sprawl makes political activity impossible, but by privatizing gathering space and dispersing human activity, sprawl makes political gatherings less likely.”
― Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

“No,' [Angie] said, 'not like mine. Do you know anything about Africa religions, Porphyre?'
He smirked, 'I'm not African.'
'But when you were a child...'
'When I was a child,' Porphyre said, 'I was white.”
― William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive

“Hey! Pal! How do I get to town from
here?
And he ssid: Well, just take a right
where they're gonna build that new
shopping mall,
go straight past where they're gonna
put in the freeway,
take a left at what's gonna be the new
sports center,
and keep going until you hit the place
where they´re thiinking of
building that drive-in bank. You can't
miss it.
And I said: This must be the place.”
― Laurie Anderson , United States Reprint edition by Anderson, Laurie (1984) Paperback

“Hey! Pal! How do I get to town from
here?
And he said: Well, just take a right
where they're gonna build that new
shopping mall,
go straight past where they're gonna
put in the freeway,
take a left at what's gonna be the new
sports center,
and keep going until you hit the place
where they´re thinking of
building that drive-in bank. You can't
miss it.
And I said: This must be the place.”
― Laurie Anderson , United States Reprint edition by Anderson, Laurie (1984) Paperback