Book Reviews

U rban Sprawl : Causes, Conseq uences, & Policy Responses

Edited by Gregory D. Squires
(Urban Institute Press, 2002)

Reviewed by Lao Deng

Is urban sprawl, the low-density, auto-oriented, exclusionary
new development on the fringe of settled areas, a disturbing
phenomenon that needs governmental attention? No, some economists
may argue, since urban sprawl (and suburbanization in general) has
been in process since the nineteenth century and is now international in
scope. Sprawl is driven by three fundamental economic forces: a
growing population, rising incomes, and falling transportation costs.
Therefore, some assert that the current development pattern of U . S .
metropolitan areas is a result o f consumers ' free choices and cannot be
faulted as socially undesirable (see, for example, Black 1 997 and
Gordon and Richardson 1 998).
However, reality isn't so straightforward. A clear message has
is conveyed in Urban Sprmrl: Causes, Consequences & Policy
Responses, edited by Gregory D. Squires, that urban sprawl is neither
shaped by pure market mechanisms nor the free choice of every U . S .
resident, as many of them don't have the capacity t o choose. Therefore,
this book argues that it would be both morally wrong and economically
inefficient to let this trend continue. Nevertheless, judging the
legitimacy of urban sprawl is not the end of this work. As a book that is
not just satisfying academic curiosities, it also proceeds to discuss
alternative remedies to urban sprawl, their political possibilities, and
the struggle of some pioneer states in adopting them. By providing
important policy guidance, this is also a valuable book for urban
practitioners.
In examining the causes of urban sprawl, few people could
deny the significant impacts of U . S . government policies, although
their magnitudes may be debatable compared with the aforementioned
fundamental econom ic forces. There are policy failures as well as
market failures in the history of urban development. Considering the
federal government 's contributions, such as favorable tax policies on
home mortgages and subsidized infrastructure investment, if s not
surprising that H. V. Savitch could argue in this book that "[m]ore
often than not, Washington has been an exuberant sponsor, though at

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times it has proceeded with greater caution ( Chapter 6, p. 1 46)." In

addition, thanks to the "voting with your feet" behavior prevail ing
under a fragmented government structure, many local governments
have been motivated to pave the way for the sprawl machine by
building homogeneous communities and subsidizing tax surplus
developments in greenfield areas.
Urban sprawl not only reduces open space and agricultural
land, but also severely influences the efficiency and fairness of urban
production and consumption processes. Four essays have been
collected in this book (chapters 2-5) to discuss these issues. While
acknowledging its environmental impacts and infrastructure costs to
local governments, what makes this book unique is how it links urban
sprawl with inner city decline, the concentration of poverty, and the
persistence of racial inequality . Paul Jargowky states that "sprawl is
related to poverty and inequality mainly because sprawl creates a
greater degree of separation between the income classes" (Chapter 3, p.
5 1 ). Sprawl has not just fragmented urban space but has also
fragmented American society . For low income and racial minority
populations, the lost development opportunities are across generations.
As urban sprawl goes on, more and more people are paying the
price. According to Gregory Squires, "even many of the apparent
winners in the process of sprawl and uneven development, however,
are starting to experience severe costs. Families of inner-ring suburbs
who thought they had escaped the woes of the city now find that they
incur some of the same costs as development spins further outward"
(Chapter I , p. 1 3 ). The anti-sprawl coalition has broadened and some
state and local governments have been able to take actions to rein in the
unlimited sprawl. Five chapters in this book are devoted to examining
these actions, including the well-established urban growth boundary in
Portland, Oregon, the tax revenue sharing system in Minneapolis-St.
Paul, the incentive based smart growth initiatives in Maryland, as well
as some embryonic regional cooperative efforts in Atlanta and Chicago
where sprawl has been long-standing and endemic. These essays are
nicely written and illustrate well the power and politics in the sprawl
debate, as every action being taken to curb sprawl would inevitably
require some reforming of existing metropol itan institutions. However,
despite the high political momentum of growth control in Oregon and
Maryland, the general picture depicted in this book is still bleak: the
resistance remains strong and the effectiveness of these government
actions is stil l under debate.

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Berkeley Planning Journal 1 7 (2004)

What makes reform so hard? The last, but also the most
important chapter in my view, provides us with an answer. By
reviewing public choice theory, Jeffrey Heing points out that the
resistance to anti-sprawl measures and metropolitan reforms not only
comes from "those with a direct and material stake in fighting specific
proposals," but also "is rooted in adherence to ideas and theories that
defend fragmentation and localism as the cornerstones of democracy,
free markets and individual enterprise" (Chapter 1 2, p. 333). To
metropolitan reformers, both theoretical and empirical challenges are
big, but the price of not fighting is even higher. As a result, a muddling
through approach is suggested by Heing. He advocates a "shift from
directly challenging existing institutions to fmding ways to exploit and
redirect the power of institutions to defme interests" (Chapter 1 2, p.
333). This is not only the most practical approach, but might also be
the only choice. Let ' s hope that in the process of compromise, the
demands of the underprivileged and politically w1organized do not get
lost.

References
Black, J. Thomas. 1 997. The Pros and Cons of the Current Pattern of
Growth and Development in Metropolitan Areas. In UL/ on the
Future: Creating More Livable Metropolitan A reas. Washington,
D.C.: The Urban Land Institute.
Gordon, Peter and Harry Richardson. 1 997. Are Compact Cities a
Desirable Planning Goal? Journal of the American Planning
Association 63( I ) : 95- 1 06.

Asset Building and Com m unity Development

Gary Paul Green and Anna Heines
(Sage Publications, 2002)

Reviewed by Jane Rongerude

As a theoretically ambiguous sub-area of the discipline of
planning, community development ca1; be approached in three ways:
through community studies, poverty theory, or theories of
development. Each of these approaches raises issues important to the
task of theorizing community development, such as the meaning and
value of community . the causes of poverty and inequality, the potential

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 Book Reviews

of state intervention and regulation, the limits of public interest, and,

fundamentally, the meaning of citizenship and place. They help us ask
who we are, how we live together, and why the places where we live
provide us with meaning, identity, and sometimes opportunity . Sadly,
most texts on the subject take a fourth approach, bypassing theoretical
discussions for insular stories of successful neighborhood struggles and
step-by-step prescriptions for locally based interventions. As a result, it
is much easier to find information about how to do community
development than it is to learn what exactly community development is
or why it should be practiced at all.
Gary Paul Green and Anna Heines ' s book, Asset Building and
Community Development follows in the fourth tradition. In the Preface,
the authors introduce their intention for the book:

'"There are numerous examples where residents have improved their _

quality of life by providing affordable housing. job training. and
financing for local businesses. Yet there continues to be skepticism
about the ability of communities to overcome problems of
concentrated poverty in the inner city. underdevelopment in rural
areas, and social isolation in many of our communities today. In this
book. we examine the promise, and limits. of community
development."

Green and Haines promise to show how community-based,

non-governmental efforts can change the qual ity of life of local
residents. Their approach is general, optimistic, and easily digested. It
is not limited to low-income communities or urban communities. It is
not based on m!!rket dynamics or government interventions. Instead,
the approach is based on the belief that interventions such as
microdevelopment enterprise programs or neighborhood strategic
pl anning can help build community assets, in tum materially
improving the quality of life for residents . Community development is
about people engaging locally in the practices of democracy . The
promise is that skills learned vis-a-vis this engagement will transfer "to
other walks of life."
The book is divided into three sections . The first provides a
brief history of community development in the United States and its
organizational context. It also sets the basic defmitions upon which the
rest of the text is built, including community, development, and
community development. Part two examines five forms of community

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Berkeley Planning Journal 1 7 (2004)

capital : human, social, physical, financial, and environmental. Each

chapter begins with a discussion of the limits of individual or state
efforts to improve community capital in this area, moves through an
overview of the theory in this area, and ends with key actors,
institutions, and strategies. The third section addresses topics that are
more sweeping and more timely : community sustainability,
international community development and globalization, emerging
uses of technology and the future of community development.
Like many introductory texts, the ideas are simplified and
controversy is omitted. Phrases such as "community residents need
space to permit social interaction" and "The United States relies very
heavily on a market approach to matching workers to jobs" abound.
These phrases are too simplistic to be controversial or even very
interesting. In an effort to provide an introduction to the broad range of
topics associated with community development, much of the substance
is removed. For example, the authors take less than a page to cover the
question of whether the regional or local scale is most appropriate for
practicing economic development. Their conclusion is that regional
strategies are not a replacement for local strategies, but that "they
represent a recognition of the linkages between communities and their
regions." One would expect that an approach based on local
participation would favor local strategies over regional ones, but this
conclusion has little substance to challenge and, providing these
recognitions are important, even less to operationalize.
Graphically, the book is well-laid out and easy to follow.
lllustrative case studies or graphic representations of core ideas are
emphasized in individual text boxes. Every chapter ends with key
concepts, questions, exercises, references and additional suggested
readings that include relevant websites. The references are thorough
and include the most important texts for each topic. However, be
warned that the material in this text is especially basic. For example, in
the physical capital chapter, a box titled "Information Sources" lists ten
bullet points which include local libraries, building inspector and
commissions, planning departments, the US Bureau of the Census, and
private data providers. The list is so general that "Books" or
"Websites" could have been included as bullet points. In addition, the
material is broad and not specific to any one locality. After learning
that local libraries or private data providers are potential sources of
information, it is up to the reader to identify individual institutions.

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 Book Reviews

Asset Building and Community Development is an introductory

text for the student or practitioner new to the community development
field. Community development is presented here much as it exists in
the literature: broad, vague, optimistic, and with a little something for
everyone. Everything from the five fonns of capital to the history of
the Social Security Act to indicators for sustainable development are
included. The thorough bibliographies at the end of each section as
wel l as the summaries of debates for each topic make this book a
useful reference tool for more experienced students and practitioners.
However, those anxious to engage in a much needed discourse about
the meaning and purpose of community development will not find
what they are looking for in this book; and those looking for theory
that challenges the loose assumptions and tepid promises of the status
quo will have to wait. That work remains undone.

Tbe Prospect of Cities

John Friedmann
(University of Minnesota Press, 2002)

Reviewed by Gerardo Sandoval

"The City is Dead." - John Friedmann.

John Friedmann ' s ambitious work, The Prospects of Cities,

argues for a new nonnative view of city development. Although there
are implicit dangers in normative theories, Friedmann ' s call for the
"good city" inspires a utopian thinking in which planning theorists and
practitioners can build the foundations and root their discipline in the
structural transformation of cities. Theorizing about planning has this
inherent tension between theory and practice built into its intel lectual
foundations, and Friedmann plays with this tension as he fonnulates
his nonnative theory and at the same time discusses his personal
development as both a planning practitioner and theorist. The
Prospects of Cities is a controversial book as many planners will
contest the nonnative theory developed by Friedmann and, in many
respects, this is the point of Friedmann ' s efforts.
Before postulating his proposal of "The Good City,"
Friedmann discusses the current shape of cities and the dire problems

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they are facing. His analysis critiques the current processes of

economic development (especially in developing countries) and of
transnational migration, arguing for the reformulation of the concept of
citizenship. Being one of the founders of UCLA ' s planning program,
it is not surprising that Friedmann begins with the account of the City­
Region as the current spatial representation of political, economic and
cultural power. He argues that cities are dead and that City-Regions
serve as hubs, linked and interconnected to a global mosaic of
transnational capital flows of labor, communication systems, and
cultural images. He critiques the present conditions of the economic
development process, yet acknowledges opportunities for developing
countries to benefit in this global mosaic of production flows.
Friedmann advises developing countries to reach out to global capital
flows while concurrently developing their endogenous resource
complexes: human, social, cultural, intellectual and environntental
resources. He presents the ''Eurocities Network" - an intercity
network that is both competitive and collaborative and which has
gained much success linking more than 60 European cities with
populations over 250,000 - as an example of an economic
development strategy available for developing countries.
Friedmann continues his analysis of current geopolitical
pressures on cities by placing transnational migration and the re­
conception of citizenship at the forefront of urban theory . This is a
timely discussion. Transnational migration places new constraints on
cities which need to be substantially researched and debated.
Friedmann does not treat this issue in a superficial manner but uses
Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field to portray the complex
cultural challenges that face migrants when coming to a large city from
predominantly rural environments. The transnationalization of City­
Regions directly challenges conventional notions of citizenship
construction and, in fact, Friedmann sees these contradictions in
citizenship as an opportunity to develop what he calls "insurgent
citizenship." Insurgent citizenship is "a fonn of active participation in
social movements or as we may also call them, communities of
political discourse and practice, that aim at either. or both. the defense
of existing democratic principles and rights and the crimping of new
rights that, if enacted, would lead to an expansion of the spaces of
democracy. regardless of where these struggles take place.'' Insurgent
democracy is central, because it provides the political agency to bring
The Good City into both planning theory and practice.

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 Book Reviews

Friedma1m ' s normative theory of The Good City, is

conceptual ized in four parts: I ) Theoretically, the importance of a
common good is advocated. 2) Human Flourishing is a fundamental
human right, being that "every hwnan being has the right, by nature, to
the ful l development of their innate intellectual, physical, and spiritual
capabilities in the context of their communities." 3) Multipli/city is a
primary good, that is "an autonomous civil life substantially free from
direct supervision and control of the state." Finally, 4) Good
Governance. The material basis of "The Good City" is developed
through the last two concepts: Multipli/city and Good Governance. In
order to reach Friedmann' s concept of Multiplilcity, a solid material
base needs to be developed. Friedmann advocates four pil lars :
socially adequate housing, affordable health care, adequately
remunerated work, and adequate social provision, which working
together will promote a self-organized civil society that encourages a
flourishing civil life. Finally, Friedmann develops a more substantive
account of C ity-Region governance as: inspired political leadership,
public accountability, transparency, and the right to information,
inclusiveness, responsiveness, and last, nonviolent conflict
management. The Good City, therefore, represents a normative theory
of city development which is grounded in political wi ll and directly
challenges many of the structural barriers in which planning theory and
practice is currently trapped.
Friedmann, being both a planning theorist and practitioner
understands the importance of grounding this normative theory with
political agency and directly linking its components to planning
process and outcome. His effort ·is commended as he nicely builds a
thread that links many of the planning problems cities are currently
facing. However, there was ambiguity regarding the
institutionalization of his nonnative theory . Many questions were left
unanswered regarding the relationship between institutions and a self­
organized civil society, which was a central point to both his concepts
of Multipli/city and insurgent citizenship. For example, What is the
role that the planner plays in relation to a self-organized civil society?
The planner seems to not play a strong role in this theory, because as
an agent, her role or contribution is difficult to pin down. A lso, the
concept of insurgent citizenship, although providing political agency
and the power to influence the pillars that would lead to The Good
City, is not adequately developed. What will the struggle look l ike and
who will participate? Again, these concepts place planners in difficult

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situations because insurgent citizenship, being a social movement,

critiques the very institutions through which most planners gain their
legitimacy.
Despite these criticisms, Friedmann' s The Prospect of Cities is
a superb and exceptional piece. Friedmann provides a normative
theory of urban development that adheres to principles of equity and
goes beyond typical basic needs infrastructure development to one
based on social, political, economic, and cultural needs. One of the
most interesting aspects of the book is Friedmann ' s account of his
personal development as a planning practitioner, researcher, and
theorist. He places this account at the end of the book, almost as an
epilogue. However, this account should be in the front. Friedmann· s
fifty years o f thinking, researching, and applying h i s skills to
influencing planning is extremely helpful in better understanding his
theories and why he advocates for a drastic change in urban
development. His life clearly shows the tensions he experienced
dealing with planning praxis. His personal experience nicely matches
the tension in the field of planning between theory and practice and
provides a clear context of Friedmann's thinking for the remainder of
the book. Hence, this mix of personal account and scholarly research
makes The Prospect of Cities a timely work that should have a lasting
impact on both planning theory and practice.

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