Is sprawl outsmarting “smart growth”?
Southerners are building a new kind of city, the semi-rustic megalopolis, hundreds of miles long. Researchers have found this startling land-use pattern spreading across the Carolinas and other southern states where bits and pieces of sprawl blend together along major freeways. We ve become aware of development that is not really urbanization in the traditional sense, says Ralph Heimlich, an agricultural economist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Particularly in the South, you re seeing growth and development that has no center. The South, in fact, has become a trendsetter in the deconcentration of American life the scattering of people, homes, and businesses across the landscape. Until 1950, the typical American city included a dense urban core dominated by factories and tall commercial buildings built around seaports and river landings and railroad depots. The urban core was ringed by tightly knit suburbs, which in turn were surrounded by open countryside. After World
