The Urban Scence - Essay Example

Question one: Many of the traits of urban sprawl have interrelated benefits and problems because they are associated with each other. Leapfrog development leads to unlimited outward expansion and low density housing in new growth housing. This provides benefits to people living in this area, such as having access to outdoor space and good commutes, but also have problems associated with extreme cost of maintaining sprawling cities. Fragmentation of powers gives great control to people over their local communities, but at the cost of allowing uncontrolled outward expansion because people can simply build new settlements outside of old settlements, which is the same benefits and problems as lack of centralized planning of land use. Fiscal disparities and segregation between zones have benefits of allowing people be able to live near people of similar economic situation and industry, but at the cost of creating self perpetuating systems of oppression and poverty, because people from bad schools will continue to go to bad schools, have lack of access to services and so on.
Question 2: There are a wide variety of anti-sprawl strategies that have been suggested to prevent sprawl. One of them is regional tax sharing: this means that taxes from upscale, somewhat sprawled areas will continue to be funneled into lower income areas where white flight and been causing emigration, thus limiting the effect of white flight because local services, school and so on will remain relatively good in inner-city areas, making them continue to have good schools, local services and cheaper property taxes that they would otherwise be able to do. Another is to create a regional planning committee which will coordinate growth and expansion, which is a good idea because there is simply no way to create a regional growth strategy without one. The fist strategy discussed in this article is to create a zoning boundary through which urban sprawl cannot go past. This will be a problem in a market based economy due to the fact that people will always pay higher rates to get where they want to go, which will create pockets of poverty and affluence wherever you go. Politicians only have a limited ability to fight sprawl, because they do not have control over areas outside of their control, and one of the fundamental aspects of sprawl is simply leaving the current boundaries and creating a new city/community. Regional planning councils, however, can mitigate this problem though not completely eliminate it.
Question 3: There are a wide variety of technological and organizational factors that produced the urban-industrial city. One of the major ones is the creation of significant road infrastructure, which allows people not only to move around cities easily, but also commute between areas such as other communities outside of a city and the areas they work. This organizational structure is essential to the development of urban industrial cities. Factories especially have played a central role in the creation of the urban industrial city. They have created a specialization that allows for mass produced housing as well as creating significant divisions between different areas of cities and urban areas. Read More