Sprawl: A Compact History

METRANS Seminar - Seminars are held on Wednesdays, over the lunch hour, in Lewis Hall. Bring your lunch if you like. Robert BruegmannProfessor of Art History, Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Illinois at ChicagoWednesday, January 10, 2007,
12:00pm - 1:30pm,
Lewis Hall (RGL)Room 215Abstract: Most "right-minded" individuals today seem to believe that urban sprawl is a post-World War II American phenomenon and one largely driven by a rising tide of automobile use. They also believe that economically, socially, environmentally and aesthetically it is bad and must be stopped. Robert Bruegmann argues that sprawl is actually as old as cities and has flourished whenever affluence has allowed a new class of people to move outward from the central city. He further argues that the complaints about sprawl are greatly over-rated and the benefits of sprawl largely neglected. Finally, he says, attempts to stop sprawl as often as not have either been ineffective or have produced unintended consequences worse than the sprawl itself. A good example can be found in campaigns in affluent cities of the Western World to push up urban densities to the point where significant numbers of people will abandon their automobiles and use rail transport.
This kind of policy is hinderi ng efforts to increase mobility, particularly for the least affluent members of society.Biography:Robert Bruegmann is an historian of architecture, landscape and the built environment.He received his BA from Principia College in 1970 and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976 with a dissertation on late 18th and early 19th century European hospitals and other institutions. In 1977 he became assistant professor in the Art History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he is currently Professor and Chair of the department with appointments in the School of Architecture and the Program in Urban Planning and Policy. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of the Arts, MIT and Columbia University.
He has also worked for the Historic American Buildings Survey and Historic American Engineering Record of the National Park Service.His fields of research and teaching are architectural, urban, landscape, and planning history and historic preservation. He has received scholarships and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Graham Foundation, the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University and the Institute for the Humanities and the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicagohttp://www.robertbruegmann.com/*******For more information, please contact Hossein Ataei (ataei@usc.edu).

Location: Ralph And Goldy Lewis Hall (RGL) - 215

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Georgia Lum