Fight Sprawl, Or Learn To Live With It

2 December 2002 - 10:00am

Curtis P. Stiles and Joseph Anthony Perez provide a citizen's primer on recognizing and fighting sprawl in Ventura County, California.

"Above all, modern sprawl is dependent upon the automobile for mobility and antiquated zoning laws that are absolutely elegant in their ability to maintain separation and segregation of uses and making of us strangers without any sense of community or social continuity.How does sprawl happen, and what causes it to happen? Just 50 years ago, we departed from crafting our settlement patterns in exchange for mass production to address the housing crisis created by growing families at the end of World War II. As we begin the 21st century, we still use those techniques initiated as answers to the Baby Boom during the '50s and '60s, and we still have a housing crisis."

Source: Ventura County Star, December 1, 2002
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Its very unsuitability for an urban center justifies its current usage as a suburban or ex-urban pattern.