An anatomy of sprawl: planning and politics in Britain

摘要

This is an interesting book, but the title is a little misleading. Phelps does not dissect patterns of sprawl, nor does he provide any comprehensive explanation of the socioeconomic processes that drive sprawl. However, what he does is to provide a perceptive evaluation of strategic planning and the control of urbanisation in a subregion of the United Kingdom: fast-growing South Hampshire on the south coast of England. The area today is characterised by a rather inefficient patchwork of recent urbanisation. "This book is the story of the failures of planning that brought this about" (page 2).