Dead end : suburban sprawl and the rebirth of American urbanism / Benjamin Ross.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"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 urbanists, it will serve as a primer for anyone interested in how Americans actually live"-- Provided by publisher.

"A witty, readable, and highly original tour through the history of America's suburbs and cities to uncover the human impulses that keep sprawl spreading"-- Provided by publisher.

Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction - Escape from the suburbs -- Part I - Getting Hooked -- Chapter 1 - The strange birth of suburbia -- Chapter 2 - Planners and embalmers -- Chapter 3 - Government-sponsored sprawl -- Chapter 4 - Ticky-tacky boxes -- Chapter 5 - Jane Jacobs vs. the planners -- Chapter 6 - Saving the city -- Chapter 7 - The age of the nimby -- Part II - The Sprawl Addiction -- Chapter 8 - Spreading like cancer -- Chapter 9 - The war of greed against snobbery -- Chapter 10 - A new thirst for city life -- Chapter 11 - Backlash from the right -- Chapter 12 - The language of land use -- Part III - How to Kick the Habit -- Chapter 13 - Struggles for smart growth -- Chapter 14 - Democratic urbanism -- Chapter 15 - Affordable housing in an ownership economy -- Chapter 16 - On track toward livable cities -- Afterword.