Changing Metropolitian Form wk 7

Changes have occured throught the use of trucks and automobiles

1. Suburban infill, as automobiles began to compete with transit systems (1920-1945)
2. Suburban sprawl and economic decentralization, after automobiles became the dominant form of transportation, served by new roads and freeways
3. Splintering urbanism(1973-present), consisting of a highly fragmented matrix of lower-density land uses, a product of the limitations of automobiles, and the possibilities of new communications technologies.
   
   Suburban Infill: Urban Form of the Early Fordist City (1920 – 1945)
   Fordism
   Mass Production and Mass Consumption
   Took place at a national and macro level
   National corporate-monopoly firms used strategies of:
   • Lowering costs with mass production
   • Making higher profits by keeping prices relatively high, but still affordable

The Great Depression and Housing
Residential construction fell by 95% between 1928 and 1933, and over 1 million families lost their homes through foreclosure. In 1933, 49% of home mortgage debt was in default
New Deal legislation focused on three areas
• Bailing out banking industry
• Restructuring banking
• Creating jobs by creating demand
All had major impacts on housing and urban form.

What is "sprawl"? What causes it?

Sprawl is also known as suburban sprawl and it is the spreading out of a city and its
suburbs over rural land at the fringe of an urban area. (wikipedia.org)
The people who live in these neighborhoods are normally single-family and use vehicles
to and from work. You would tend to be able to pick out a sprawling neighborhood if
there were little options of transportation and "pedestrian friendly." According to
Wikipedia, Sprawl is also linked with increased obesity since walking and bicycling are
not viable options for commuting.
Sprawl is actually rather controversial. What it does is increase the amount of people
who have to drive thus increasing traffic and poluting land areas. So environmentalists
are up in arms over what sprawl causes. Sprawl does spread out an area thus giving
people more land, but the environmental issues are still one of the biggest problems
caused by urban sprawl