Cool pictures! Though I'm always wary of people discussing "sprawl" as it's usually a classed pejorative used to inveigh against the urbanite bogeyman of suburbia. When I lived in Washington people crusading against sprawl would invoke Mt. St. Helens and the Columbia River Gorge as naturalist icons of things that needed protection from the (/shiver) Suburbs, but in reality it usually ended up being a way for local governments to use zoning to limit construction and drive up property prices.
Looking at the NYT pictures I'm reminded of the images people used in Washington to crusade against sprawl:
What the NYT pics erase is a lot of visual context because they zoom in so closely on the housing developments. Unlike the Pacific Northwest, I don't think Arizona and Nevada have the same "natural beauty" arguments to be made against sprawl. If the cameras zoomed out some, what impact would it have to see that these rows of houses were propped up in the middle of a barren wasteland? The narrative would probably shift.
Cool pictures! Though I'm always wary of people discussing "sprawl" as it's usually a classed pejorative used to inveigh against the urbanite bogeyman of suburbia. When I lived in Washington people crusading against sprawl would invoke Mt. St. Helens and the Columbia River Gorge as naturalist icons of things that needed protection from the (/shiver) Suburbs, but in reality it usually ended up being a way for local governments to use zoning to limit construction and drive up property prices.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the NYT pictures I'm reminded of the images people used in Washington to crusade against sprawl:
http://craigwolf.com/news/uploaded_images/Columbia_River_Gorge-738628.jpg
http://www.geology.um.maine.edu/geodynamics/analogwebsite/UndergradProjects2007/morgan%20ers%20416%202007/pictures/mount%20saint%20helens.jpg
What the NYT pics erase is a lot of visual context because they zoom in so closely on the housing developments. Unlike the Pacific Northwest, I don't think Arizona and Nevada have the same "natural beauty" arguments to be made against sprawl. If the cameras zoomed out some, what impact would it have to see that these rows of houses were propped up in the middle of a barren wasteland? The narrative would probably shift.