Product Description

A visual lexicon of the colorful slang, from alligator investment to zoomburb, that defines sprawl in America. Duck, ruburb, tower farm, big box, and pig-in-a-python are among the dozens of zany terms invented by real estate developers and designers today to characterize land-use practices and the physical elements of sprawl. Sprawl in the environment, based on the metaphor of a person spread out, is hard to define. This concise book engages its meaning, explains common building patterns, and illustrates the visual culture of sprawl. Seventy-five stunning color aerial photographs, each paired with a definition, convey the impact of excessive development. This "engagingly organized and splendidly photographed" (Wall Street Journal) book provides the verbal and visual vocabulary needed by professionals, public officials, and citizens to critique uncontrolled growth in the American landscape. 75 color photographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46124 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780393731989
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
A mere glance through the pages of this book offers a quick education about the excesses of the recently built environment. By its very nature, sprawl is hard to identify and track, but Hayden, a Yale professor of architecture and American studies, provides a combination of informed but breezy text and 75 large, crisp color images that greatly simplify the task of "decoding everyday American landscapes." Organized alphabetically, with a big two-page spread for each entry, the book moves from "alligator" (an investment that "eats" cash flow, represented here by the vast and ghostly grid of an unbuilt New Mexico suburb) to "zoomburb" (a suburb on steroids, illustrated here by Arizona's spiraling Sun City). Along the way, the reader comes to the depressing understanding that troubling phenomena one might have thought strictly local or temporary—for instance, houses where the garage is the dominant projecting feature—are common enough to have acquired names, in this case "snout house." But more than a set of colorful terms—all of which, from "ball pork" to "parsley round the pig" are carefully sourced—this book is a concise guide to not only sprawl itself but to the powerful political and financial forces that sustain it. If the book has one problematic aspect, it is that Wark's aerial photographs are often so vividly beautiful that they risk aestheticizing their often grim subjects—but their seductive quality serves to draw the viewer into Hayden's passionately sustained argument.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
A concise guide to not only sprawl but to the powerful political and financial forces that sustain it. (Publishers Weekly )

A flair for words and a collection of stunning photographs….Captivating. -- New Urban News

A flair for words and a collection of stunning photographs. . . . Captivating. (New Urban News )

A landmark contribution to this literature.
(Boston Globe )

A wonderful guide to the terrible things being done to the American landscape.
(Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation )

A wonderful guide to the terrible things being done to the American landscape. -- Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

An eye-popping compendium of 51 'built conditions' and the memorable terms that describe them. -- Boston Globe, Jennifer Schuessler

Engagingly organized and splendidly photographed. -- Wall Street Journal, Julia Vitullo-Martin

Introduces an array of fresh and frequently funny expressions to describe what's happening to our urban and suburban landscapes. -- Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Dale White

May well establish Hayden as the Roger Tory Peterson of Sprawl. -- The New York Times, Patricia Leigh Brown

May well establish Ms. Hayden as the Roger Tory Peterson of Sprawl.
(New York Times )

Novel…a compact, quirky, self-styled 'devil's dictionary'….fascinating color aerial photos. -- Library Journal, David Soltesz

With Hayden's informative text and Wark's beautiful photographs, Sprawl is infinitely easier to digest than actual examples of sprawl. -- New York Arts Magazine, Tia Blassingame

Zooming alligators! This is a handy introduction to some curious ways of using the land. -- Landartnet.org

[T]ake a look at this snappy pictorial guide to developer slang, US-style, which could rival Dr Seuss for verbal inventiveness. -- Civic Focus Magazine

About the Author
Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture and American studies at Yale, writes about the politics of design.

Customer Reviews

Sprawl: Coming to a neighborhood near you!
If you have ever wondered what to call those cul-de-sacs that took the place of the dairy farm down the road, this field guide will finally give you the language to express yourself. With fascinating aerial photographs of all sorts of American sprawl, and interesting, to-the-point accompanying paragraphs, this field guide is a must to share with those neighbors of yours who lack the imagination to envision what will happen in their part of the woods (if the woods still exist) when subdividers come to town. (Naw, it's not happily ever after because the property taxes will increase revenue for the town.) Read this guide and you will never be content to leave the future of God's green earth in the hands of suburban planners again.

The sprawl-buster's decoder book.
Dolores Hayden's intriguing book visually decodes fifty-one examples of bad building in the landscape and the use of aerial photography to do this was a good idea, sprawl by its nature stretches off into the horizon but when seen at ground-level could seem pretty ordinary. Some of the differences though, especially with domestic dwellings, seem a bit arbitrary, there are seven examples of housing shown which, to me, don't seem that different. With commercial sprawl it is easy to understand the visual differences, from 'Rural slammer' (Soledad) to 'Tank farm' (part of the port of Houston)

Though the book is primarily visual, with seventy-five well chosen aerial photos used to illustrate the categories, I thought the essay on the first ten pages was first class in explaining the reasons behind sprawl, basically the fault of those folk in Washington allowing commercial interests to favor suburban white populations and male-headed households during the last few decades. The back of the book has a useful bibliography, list of websites and index.

Jim Wark's aerial photos were used by the author to carefully explain the categories and you can see several hundred other examples of his work in 'America' (ISBN 8854400033). If you like aerial photos have a look at Alex MacLean's book 'Designs on the Land' (ISBN 0500284148) with over four hundred stunning color photos of what is happening commercially on the ground.

Though a large number of Americans live in the sprawl environment (and by choice, too) it is worth remembering that over ninety percent of the US is still open land. This fascinating book is a useful visual guide to how bad things can get.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Great little book
The numerous color aerial photos in this book do a wonderful job of putting US development patterns into a whole new perspective. This isn't intended to be the end all be all of commentary about sprawl. For that, there are plenty of other great books that emphasize analysis and critique rather than a visual approach (A Better Way to Live is an example of a terrific book in the former category). This book is a great introduction to the different kinds of sprawl and what they look like. Sure, Dolores Hayden puts a fairly cynical touch on what commentary there is, but when you see the pictures of how developers have ruined our open spaces, you'll understand why. In short, a great little book that achieves its purpose very well.