Road to Ruin: An Introduction to Sprawl and How to Cure It

By Dom Nozzi

What causes sprawl, and are there sensible solutions to its aggravating problems? Nozzi delivers an easy-to-follow introduction to sprawl's causes and offers common-sense solutions available to communities. The time is ripe for resurrecting the tradition of designing that makes people, not cars, happy.

Since the end of World War II, America has been obsessed with a desire to improve conditions for cars, not people, primarily through enormous subsidies for road widening and construction of free parking. Not only does this obsession worsen conditions for motorists (at great public expense), it traps communities in a vicious cycle that delivers a declining, sprawling, financially bankrupting future--regardless of the quality of regulations, plans, planners, or elected officials.

Nozzi delivers an easy-to-follow introduction to sprawl's causes and offers common-sense solutions available to communities. The time is ripe for resurrecting the tradition of designing that makes people, not cars, happy. The key is returning to modest, human-scaled streets, parking, land use, and development regulations. Design principles encouraging walking, bicycling, and mass transit in conjunction with automobile travel are essential to creating livable cities once again. A professional city planner for over 15 years, Nozzi has firsthand knowledge of what works, what doesn't, and what real-world obstacles are faced when dealing with sprawl. Aimed at people who want an insider's introduction to our road, traffic, and land-use problems, this book is a useful guide to both professional planners and citizens concerned about the future of their own communities.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0275981290
• ISBN13: 9780275981297
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

zesty little polemic

Although Nozzi covers some of the same ground covered by other anti-sprawl polemics, he does cover one issue especially well: street design. While other sprawl critics focus on aesthetic or environmental issues, Nozzi zeroes in on the importance of street design for good urbanism, discussing such issues as cul-de-sacs, street width, and curb radii. For example, Nozzi asserts that street width is a more significant cause of auto-oriented sprawl than zoning or planning, because when a road is widened, it becomes less convenient for pedestrians, thus generating additional high-speed traffic. Because many people don't want to live on the same street as speeding cars, such streets become unsuitable for housing. So even if such a street is zoned for mixed use, the road widening essentially turns it into a commercial zone. As a result, zoning and planning are unlikely to change an already built-out area; instead they just codify the status quo. There are a couple of things that could have used improvement. Sometimes Nozzi's discussion of "big picture" issues (e.g. what's wrong with sprawl) is a bit one-sided. Although Nozzi cites plenty of statistics, defenders of the status quo have their own statistics, and Nozzi doesn't really grapple with them; this book is more a short statement of the case against sprawl than a detailed weighing of both sides' arguments. His discussion of congestion might seem unclear to less knowledgeable readers. On the one hand, he points out that regions that have invested heavily in new and widened roads have not built their way out of congestion (p. 20). On the other hand, he writes that "Congestion has gotten a bad rap." (p. 21). I think I understand his point (i.e. that anti-congestion measures typically work in the short run but fail in the long run) but am not sure that casual readers would see what he's getting at. Although this book may not be the ultimate guide to sprawl, this book is masterful for what it is: a short, detailed explanation of how American street design favors cars over people.