Urban Sprawl in Western Europe and the United States

Though to date American and European suburbs have not begun to merge at the outer edges, problems with urban sprawl are said here to be much more common to both sides of the Atlantic than is generally thought as US planners work to curtail excessive sprawl of earlier decades and Europe begins dealing with recent urban creep. City planners, geographers, economists, and other professionals met in Missillac, Brittany in July 2002 to share views on the matter. The 18 papers that emerged explore such aspects as whether reducing sprawl and delivering an urban renaissance in England is possible given current attitudes to urban living, urban sprawl in France from 1990 to 1999, and experiences with several approaches to local innovations in controlling sprawl in the Seattle Urban Region. There is no index. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Harry W. Richardson holds the James Irvine Chair of Urban and Regional Planning at the School of Policy, Planning and Development, University of Southern California, USA. Dr Chang-Hee Christine Bae is Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Washington, USA.