Urban Sprawl In North America

Urban sprawl in North America

Introduction

After the Second World War, the development of planning in North America transformed a lot. Under the influence of the war, the major planning principle of Britain in this period more focuses on post-war reconstruction and promoted the economic recovery. In contrast to Britain, although America attended the war, it had fewer negative effects on American development which it even promoted the economic development in America (Liu, 2010). Therefore, it became one of reasons that America appeared the phenomenon of ‘urban sprawl’ which caused a series of issues involved economic, environmental, transport, demographic and social areas. The general explanation of urban sprawl is that urban
(4) In order to satisfy the requirement of middle class, from 1920 to 1930, a large number of villas with garden were designed in the center of city which caused the inefficient land use. (5) After the Second World War in 1945, American economy increasing rapidly which promoted this phenomenon happened. Consequently, urban development did not match the expectation of designer which expected to institute the city basis on villa with a large scale of garden and private cars’ system. Therefore, the government implements relevant policy to avoid this situation and the most important concept is Smart Growth.

Smart Growth

Smart Growth as a planning notion has a significant effect on North America. In
1996, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (a government apartment that provide principle of Smart Growth in the network) established and which defined Smart Growth is development that change the pattern of traditional urban growth or no growth question to how and where should new development be adapted (Knaap and Talen, 2005). Generally, the major propose concentrate

on

improving

economic,
According to the information, it is not difficult to discover that Smart Growth focus on creating an impact living and working condition with a comprehensive use of building’s function and public facilities. The major principle of Smart
Growth is multiple land use and maximizes the value of land or buildings, which is completed different development approach compared with previous method in America. However, one of the most important issues of Smart Growth is that
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it did not have explicit requirement which limited the use of private cars. As this essay mentioned, diverse reasons caused urban sprawl and one of the most significant reason is the undue dependence of private cars. Additionally,