A Review of Roxanne Warren's The Urban Oasis: Guideways and Greenways in the Human Environment

Mark Dempsey • Saturday March 10, 2007

“It takes a village to raise a child” is the saying, but we don’t build villages any more, we build suburbs. Considering just the amount of land consumed, suburbanization is enormously wasteful. When Los Angeles’ population increased 40%, for example, its land area increased 300%. This is the consequence of low-density (few homes per acre) building. The costs imposed on suburbanites by such expansions—especially on the poor—are enormous. They include increased commute distances, pollution, and the “tax” of having to own and drive cars. These costs remain one of our time’s most poignant tragedies.

For those concerned about town planning, and the alternatives to low-density building, Roxanne Warren’s The Urban Oasis is an invaluable resource. As she says: “The unmet and pressing needs of our cities, and our mandate to conserve the earth’s resources-apparently divergent areas of concern—are in fact opposite sides of the same coin. When people abandon cities to settle in suburbs…they may be finding solutions for their own households, and for their own generation. However, without effective land use planning, today’s small-town refuge in the Rockies will become tomorrow’s Los Angeles, complete with traffic, smog, and destruction of the habitat. To flee the problem is not to solve it.”

Warren goes on to debunk the myth that higher density building-cities-are necessarily poorer or higher in crime. The startling truth is that sprawl towns like Los Angeles and Phoenix have higher per-capita crime rates than Manhattan. >>Continue Reading This Article>>