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Which Is the Most Sprawling City in the World? (in the U.S. by most measures)

Where is the world's most sprawling city?


19 April 2017

By Douglas Murphy

Read More: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2...ty-los-angeles

Demographia World Urban Areas PDF: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf

Quote:
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Although the first use of the term “urban sprawl” appears to be in the context of London in 1955, what we know as sprawl is a quintessentially American invention – it is aspirational, a culture of free individualism, of conspicuous wealth, and requires a seemingly limitless supply of land and resources.

- There is no reliable combined measure of sprawl, and many geographers shy away from using the term because of its negative connotations. Perhaps the most reliable metric comes from looking at population density. To look at the whole world is difficult, as definitions of metropolitan boundaries don’t always match up, but free-market think tank Demographia’s annual World Urban Areas survey attempts just that. --- The results seem to tally with what we expect: American areas completely dominate the low densities, and among many smaller conurbations the lowest density large cities are Atlanta, Boston, St Louis, Orlando and San Juan.

- The only real competition the Americans have is with places like Brisbane, Australia, or Quebec City, Canada, both countries with a lot of land and a love of the car. In Europe, down there in the low densities are a number of French urban areas such as Nantes and Toulon, but little else, while the Middle East sneaks in with Saudi Arabia’s Ad Dammam. According to Demographia’s metric, East Asian and South American cities tend not to sprawl at all. --- The problem with an average value though, is that it mistakes particular characteristics. For example, London and Athens have very similar average densities, but the Greek city has a far denser core and a much more sprawling suburbia.

- Some researchers try to overcome these difficulties through additional metrics. Researchers for Smart Growth America introduced mixes of use, presence of “centres”, and accessibility as other factors. Their research was pretty damning for the southern states, with Atlanta, Nashville and Memphis to the bottom of the list. --- Elsewhere, Thomas Laidley of NYU recently created a Sprawl Index using aerial imagery. One remarkable aspect was the discovery that Los Angeles is now the densest urban centre in the US. The city which is usually considered the ultimate in sprawl has reached such a consistent intensity of development that there is very little spare land of any kind that could lower its score.

- Even as it stands on the cusp of change, the ultimate sprawling city still has to be Los Angeles. Think of the classic view from the Griffith Observatory, looking down at that vast carpet of concrete with its threads of light from the clogged highways. LA is decentred, potentially limitless, and stands for everything terrible about what happens when cities are developed without planning: swathes of low density housing, completely severed by roads, the whole terrain plagued by filthy smog. --- Architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne talks of a ‘first’ Los Angeles at the beginning of the 20th century, when it grew much like a European city, before the ‘second’ LA happened post-war.

- Others have defended sprawl on its own terms. Architectural historian Reyner Banham wrote the seminal Los Angeles: City of the Four Ecologies in 1972. Excited by its unapologetic modernity, Banham argued that the sprawling quality of LA offered “radical alternatives” to, not deviations from, what was accepted wisdom in urbanism. This refrain was taken up by Jonathan Meades in his 2012 series On France, where he noted sprawl’s prevalence, and mounted a muted defence: “It is not vilified. It is nothing to be ashamed of. Nor is pride taken in it as pride is taken in conventionally elegant towns and orthodoxly pretty villages. Sprawl is accepted, it’s there.”

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Suburban Atlanta … a sprawling city according to Demographia and Smart Growth America. Photograph: Alamy







Cape Coral in Florida sports the sprawling ranch-style homes and spacious yards indicative of mid 20th-century American suburbia. Photograph: Planet







The Griffith Observatory with Los Angeles sprawling beyond, in 1964. Photograph: Bettmann Archive


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