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[Michael Winslow Czeiszperger <michael AT czeiszperger.org>]

On Monday, January 6, 2003, at 11:20 PM, Jason Tower wrote:

> maybe you should just move to germany.

That's what I've heard both from people who've been to Germany and 
mentioned in the New Urbanism texts. The big problem with sprawl in the 
US is caused by the constant drive to build subdivisions out in the 
countryside outside a city, leapfrogging the areas for development 
close to existing infrastructure. The subdivisions are built using 
1960's style layouts that isolate the various aspects of life, making 
it difficult and dangerous to walk to a store or a school even if 
people wanted to get out of their cars. You can see this throughout N. 
Raleigh for example.

As the city expands and eventually grows to meet the subdivision, the 
building styles of the classic city and the subdivision clash, and 
costs the city a lot extra to provide infrastructure because of the low 
density. Cities in Germany, according to the texts I've read, combat 
this by using building codes to maintain the character of the city. If 
you want to build a new neighborhood close to an existing city, it has 
to be right next to the existing city, and then fit in with the 
existing character of that city. Over the long term this greatly 
reduces infrastructure costs, gives the city character and leads to an 
increased quality of life.

I'm not against starting new developments out in the country, per se, 
but the problem is no one in the US is building cities anymore, they 
only build developments. There was a big article in National Geographic 
about a developer in Colorado putting up a neighborhood with 50,000 
people in it, and yet had no "main street", or the normal things you'd 
find in a city. All the houses had to be the same color as well, so as 
you looked out over the development, it was grey cookie-cutter houses 
as far as the eye can see.

___________________________________________________________________
Ending a sentence with a preposition is nothing to be ashamed of.
        -- michael at czeiszperger dot org, Chapel Hill, NC