Friday, October 9, 2009

Sprawl as defined by Suburban Nation

Over fall break, I went back to Virginia Beach to see some friends and family that I haven’t seen since I started here at GA Tech. At first I thought I was definitely against sprawl because of how terrible the book made it sound, but when I saw the book mention my hometown as an example of sprawl, I started taking the material with a grain of salt. When I was back in Virginia Beach, I looked around to see what was so bad with my town and I really didn’t see what the big problem was. I understand that the book was written in 2000 and was published in 2001 so my hometown may have changed in eight to nine years, but the changes would have been too drastic. Maybe it’s the connection I have to the city that makes me not want to see any faults with it. All of my closest friends live there and since I hadn’t seen them for a long time, maybe I was confusing my joy for being in a familiar area with my overall feel for the city. But if sprawl is so bad, how could I have enjoyed my time in a sprawling area so much?

While I was there, I was able to drive through the streets without too much of a problem with traffic and the stores weren’t too far apart to be an inconvenience for me. Also, as one approaches the boardwalk, near the ocean front, the city starts to look more like a traditional neighborhood than sprawl, but that is where there is the most traffic. Because there are so many little streets that are narrow, all of the traffic is funneled into the two lanes and so it becomes congested. I understand that sprawl may be bad but I feel like Virginia Beach was a bad example and because it is my hometown, I’m not always receptive of the information that the book presents.

-Michael Saunders

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