Harry Potter's Message About Sprawl

3 December 2001 - 9:00am

Behind the potions and magical creatures, there is a subtle message about urban sprawl in Harry Potter.

"Harry’s mean-spirited and middle-class adopted family, the Dursley’s, live at number four Privet Drive. The Dursley’s, however, don’t live in the heart of London, or in a middle-class urban neighborhood. Nope, they live in decidedly suburban England, in a townhouse attached to four or five other homes of the same style. Their cluster is buffered by a few trees in the background, and separated from the next cluster by small amounts of grass."

Source: Reason Public Policy Institute, November 27, 2001
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New Suburbanism is not a new design paradigm that seeks to compete with or discredit principles of New Urbanism. Instead, our perspective represents a broad-based attempt to find the best, most practical ways to develop and redevelop suburban communities.