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The Sprawling of America
Matthew Clark
The Sprawling of America
Produced by Christopher M. Cook
Great Lakes Television Consortium, 2002
"By the time this video is over, twenty acres will have been
developed in Greater Grand Rapids," warns Michigan mayor John
Logie during the opening minutes of this quite excellent documentary.
It provides some amazing insight into the wild and wacky world of
suburbia, how it came to be, and why it is considered in many learned
circles to be the third sign of the Apocalypse. The racial and social
issues that stimulated suburban sprawl are justly given more attention
than the environmental repercussions of our never-ending development.
The filmmakers' goals in producing this project are to educate people
on what's going on, explain how things came to this in the first place,
and then show what we can do to turn it all around. A wide spectrum
of people is pulled together for interviews, from scholars to urban
designers, governors to administrative assistants. As this project
hails from the University of Michigan the film focuses largely on
Detroit, the birthplace of such treasures to our nation as the monoxide-addicted
automobile and Eminem. As we are told early on, "the story of
Detroit is the story of many American cities."
The documentary begins just before World War II, when America was
just coming out of the Depression and things were so downtrodden that
B-roll was still shot in black and white. With so much of the workforce
overseas, employers were scrambling to fill their factories, and the
great and mighty Ford was no exception. Contrary to Hank's rather
small-minded reputation, the company actively sought out black workers
to balance out production and African-Americans flocked to Detroit.
During the forties black culture thrived, as a community akin to New
York's Harlem developed on the north side of city called Black Bottom.
With businesses, a hospital, newspapers, and even a five-star resort,
the citizens of Black Bottom lived in a semi-charmed neighborhood
of geniality.
Once the war ended and the GIs returned, however, housing became nearly
impossible to find in the cities. That's what we have a government
for, of course, and with the GI Bill these young soldiers were guaranteed
a place to live at less than it would even cost to rent. The one condition,
however, was that the bill favored new housing; remodeling existing
city homes was out. Thus the Burbs were born. With the white workers
went many jobs, and so began the ever-widening development out and
out and out from a nearly vacant city. Detroit has lost 8% of its
population in recent years, yet it has grown 30% in land area. As
Douglas Kelbaugh of University of Michigan points out, "Why do
we keep expanding with ring after ring of suburb when we have these
empty hollowed out urban cores? … It doesn't make social, economic,
environmental sense to keep expanding."
When compared to the thriving cities of Europe, it becomes clear that
"we've opted for mobility, they've opted for place." We're
behind Europe? Those people haven't even discovered soap yet!
"We've created a life fully dependent on the automobile,"
points out Special Assistant to Maryland governor John Frece, and
indeed we have. Tax dollars that could once go to support "vertical"
infrastructures such as schools and city halls are now being funneled
off by the "horizontal" infrastructures of highways and
sewers. The new norm of American life has given birth to the Soccermom,
the parent who must play chauffer to children unable to walk to a
field to play a pickup game on their own. Under the lead of Andres
Duany, however, many urban planners are subscribing to the principles
of "New Urbanism," a "groundbreaking" school of
thought that in actuality is a simple regression to pre-WWII development,
when the walk-ability of a neighborhood was key.
There definitely is hope. Duany tells us:
"The cities are being rediscovered by a younger generation
for whom the promise of suburbia was not delivered, these are the
kids that grew up in suburbia, the Generation Xers, who are saying,
'What's so great about a three-car garage? It's a drag!' …These
people who know the suburbs too well."
This Philadelphia-based writer cannot wait. We have so much land
and housing and space available to us now, we could easily go for
a generation without having to dam up another swamp and not be want
for elbowroom. Besides, those suburban street vendor stands don't
got a thing on a city-fresh cart dog. "The Sprawling of America"
turned out to be far more enlightening and interesting than even this
creative brain could imagine. But hey, don't just take my word for
it; see it yourself!
For more information be sure to drop by http://www.gltv.org.
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