Ben Ross discusses Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism
Tue 9/2, 7pm – 8pm
Ben Ross discusses Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American
Urbanism
Oxford University Press 9780199360147
More than five decades have passed since Jane Jacobs wrote
her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and since a front page
headline in the New York Times read, "Cars Choking Cities as 'Urban
Sprawl' Takes Over." Yet sprawl persists, and not by mistake. It happens
for a reason.
As an activist and a scholar, Benjamin Ross is uniquely placed to diagnose why
this is so. Dead End traces how the ideal of a safe, green, orderly retreat
where hardworking members of the middle class could raise their children away
from the city mutated into the McMansion and strip mall-ridden suburbs of
today. Ross finds that sprawl is much more than bad architecture and sloppy
planning. Its roots are historical, sociological, and economic. He uses these
insights to lay out a practical strategy for change, honed by his experience
leading the largest grass-roots mass transit advocacy organization in the
United States. The problems of smart growth, sustainability, transportation,
and affordable housing, he argues, are intertwined and must be solved as a
whole. The two keys to creating better places to live are expansion of rail
transit and a more genuinely democratic oversight of land use.
Dead End is, ultimately, about the places where we live our lives. Both an
engaging history of suburbia and an invaluable guide for today's urbanist, it
will serve as a primer for anyone interested in how Americans actually live.