A Field Guide to Sprawl

Dolores Hayden
with aerial photographs by Jim Wark

Read the excerpt in ArchitectureWeek

Praise for A Field Guide to Sprawl

‘May well establish Ms. Hayden as the Roger Tory Peterson of Sprawl.’
––The New York Times

‘An eye-popping compendium of 51 ‘built conditions’ and the memorable terms that describe them.’
––The Boston Globe

‘[A]landmark contribution to this literature.’
––The Nation

‘A mere glance through the pages of this book offers a quick education about the excesses of the recently built environment. Hayden…provides a combination of informed but breezy text and 75 large, crisp color images that greatly simplify the task of 'decoding everyday American landscapes.'...This book is a concise guide to not only sprawl itself but to the powerful political and financial forces that sustain it.’
––Publisher's Weekly

‘Americans do not have to tolerate sprawl…but act now, or forever clutch a survivor's copy of 'A Field Guide to Sprawl'.’
––San Diego Union-Tribune

‘Engagingly organized and splendidly photographed.’
––Wall Street Journal

‘Introduces an array of fresh and frequently funny expressions to descrive what's happen to our urban and suburban landscapes.’
––Sarasota Herald-Tribune

‘A wonderful guide to the terrible things being done to the American landscape.’
––Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

‘Novel…a compact, quirky, self-styled 'devil's dictionary'….fascinating color aerial photos.’
––Library Journal

“You have to know what to call something before you can do anything about it. So if you really hate the way urban blight is despoiling virgin landscapes, take a look at this snappy pictorial guide to developer slang, US-style, which could rival Dr Seuss for verbal inventiveness.”
—Civic Focus Magazine

"[T]he images are fascinating and, in many cases, a frightening testament to human impact on the landscape." —Amateur Photographer

"The often beguiling beauty of sprawl photographed from the air.” —Environment & Planning B: Planning & Design

"Educational as well as humorous, this book is loaded with facts and great aerial photographs, and will make a great stocking stuffer for the environmentalist in the family.” —Village Books Newsletter

“A flair for words and a collection of stunning photographs. . . Captivating . . . Hayden packs a lot of information and a wealth of clever coinages into a brief, quick-moving text. The Field Guide will both inform and entertain readers who are disturbed by the wastefulness and disconnection of conventional development.”
—New Urban News

“Hayden argues that, in its vividness, slang fuses description and critique, mobilizing the imagination in a way that expert speech cannot. . . . Once again, Hayden has chosen to look where others had not thought to look, and it is to our benefit. Armed with more knowledge of what came before us and with what stands before us, we are better prepared to take position within the contested landscape of sprawl.”
—Journal of Architectural Education

“In their illustrated 'devil's dictionary' of land development gone amok, Hayden and Wark highlight such blights as the LULU ( a locally unwanted land use, such as a nuclear waste dump) and the TOAD (Temporary, obsolete, abandoned, or derelict site).”
—Discover

“The book's tongue-in-cheek tone makes the weighty subject matter go down easy.”
—Dwell

“With Hayden's informative text and Wark's beautiful photographs, Sprawl is infinitely easier to digest than the actual examples of sprawl presently surrounding us.”
—New York Arts Magazine

“Field guides to plants abound, but where can an amateur (un)naturalist find something to lead him or her through the jungle of terms used in modern land development? A Field Guide to Sprawl provides such a resource.”
—American Scientist

“Zooming alligators! This is a handy introduction to some curious ways of using the land.”
—landartnet.org

Overview

A lexicon of the colorful slang, from alligator investment to zoomburb, that defines sprawl in America today.

Duck, ruburb, tower farm, big box, and pig-in-a-python are among dozens of zany terms invented by real estate developers and designers today to characterize land use practices and the physical elements of sprawl. Sprawl in the environment, based on the metaphor of a person spread out, is hard to define. This concise book engages its meaning, explains common building patterns, and illustrates the visual culture of sprawl. Seventy-five stunning color aerial photographs, each paired with a definition, convey the impact of excessive development and provide verbal and visual vocabulary needed by professionals, public officials, and citizens to critique uncontrolled growth in the American landscape.

About the Author

Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture and American studies at Yale, writes about the politics of design. The author of Redesigning the American Dream, her most recent book is Building Suburbia.

ISBN: 0-393-73125-1
Spring 2004
144 pages, cloth, 75 color illus.