Global Suburbs: Urban Sprawl from Rio Grande to Rio de Janeiro

摘要

The book on 'Global Suburbs: Urban sprawl from Rio Grande to Rio de Janeiro' is one of the publications from the 'Cultural Spaces Series'. This documentation on 'global suburbs', especially in the Latin American context, is comprehensive in nature as it addresses social, environmental, ecological and most importantly, global economic driving forces behind suburbanisation. The first half of the book efficiently portrays the evolution and true character of the American suburb, and discusses its (negative) impact on the environment, especially on ecology, public health and community life. The subject of the book is the American suburb of post World War II. Such suburbs were characterised by low-density development, detached homes and connected to the main city by freeways and highways. The author argues that by choosing to live in a suburb, dignified by privacy, exclusivity and security, Americans have willingly given up on their quality leisure time that, for example, Europeans would take for granted as part of their daily life - like walking, biking, and hanging out with neighbours. Here the author introduces 'fast urbanism' and 'slow urbanism' to characterise these two different kinds of livelihood that are built upon later in the book. He argues that suburban living leads to fast urbanism, and slow urbanism would emerge from a combination of physical planning and a 'psychological state' of being more engaged with their surroundings.