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Urban form

Suburbia and sprawl

Suburbia is the low-density residential periphery of detached houses and streets without shops that depends on the car for everything. Sprawl is its sum: extensive growth that consumes land, lengthens trips and makes every public service dearer per inhabitant.

The model was born in the United States after 1945 out of federal mortgages, motorways and zoning, and was exported. Its costs —time, emissions, isolation, infrastructure nobody can maintain— have been known since the 1970s. Alternatives range from densifying existing suburbs to setting urban growth boundaries.

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