Suburbs and the Suburban Sprawl

Suburbs and the Suburban Sprawl
A suburban sprawl, which refers to the appearance of the effects of the uncontrolled and unplanned growth of suburban areas, has for a long time been a big issue in major cities of the world. In history, big cities like New York and Boston experienced a suburban sprawl when middle-income families preferred to inhabit the less populated areas of the cities. Wealthier people in society prefer these suburbs because they have just enough connection with urban life, yet so much less congested than the urban areas. The water and air are usually purer than they are in urban centers.  As more and more of these families moved to the suburbs, a conflict emerged between the families that were moving to these areas because it was less congested and those that originally inhabited the areas and practiced farming and ran industries among other things (Freilich & Peshoff, 2007).

    In recent times, sprawls have been promoted by the need to convert inutile land to a useful resource.  As the urban centers continue to become more and more congested, people feel the need to move away from the city, provided transportation allows them to get to the urban centers when they please. People are comfortable going as far away from the cities as possible, provided when they need to get to the cities they can do so as conveniently as possible. Governments have also made it easier for people to move to suburban areas by making them conveniently accessible and promoting the purchase and building of suburban homes affordable in a bid to decentralize most cities (Duany, Plater-Zyberk, & Speck, 2001).
    In my view, allowing more and more people to move to the suburbs had more negative effects than positive ones. The poorer people in the suburbs are forced to comply with the demands of the wealthier people, being left with very little land and resources to promote their development. The suburb dwellers that had moved from the city were well protected. Another negative effect of these suburban sprawls is that with the translocation of wealthy people to these suburbs, the poorer people are forced to lead expensive lifestyles because the cost of living usually has to go up because most wealthy people can afford the expensive lifestyle. Further, in trying to move the different amenities closer to the wealthier people who have the disposable income to afford them, pollution and congestion slowly creep into the suburbs. The few positive effects that have been noted from the suburban sprawl includes a sharp increase in the security of the area as well as development regarding social amenities in such areas. It had also led to population increase in these areas as most of them were not originally highly populated (Gordon & Richardson, 2008).
    The suburban sprawl has indeed been costly to the entire society at large. The cost of the infrastructure that facilitates life in the suburbs is incurred by taxpayers of the country. Businesses also have to move to tap into the populations that settle in these suburbs and thus have to incur costs due to this sprawl. Further, suburb dwellers have to incur much more costs in transport and basic needs due to their proximity to cities and other facilities. Farmers who had originally inhabited these areas in most cases have to lose their farmland to pave the way for the erection of these suburb dwellings. The environment is also greatly affected due to the carbon emissions obtained from transportation of goods and people into and out of suburbs (Gordon & Richardson, 2008).
    The fact that the suburban sprawl is extremely costly to the society resonates to the conclusion that they are unsustainable. More sprawls, in my opinion, will lead to incurring bigger and bigger costs, in more ways than financially. For instance, the natural biodiversity that existed before the beginning of these sprawls will never be recovered, yet people continue to move further and further from congestion. With time, more people will move to the existing suburbs, causing some to move to newer and less congested suburbs. Suburban sprawls are therefore unsustainable, and still extremely costly, regardless of how appealing they appear to be in the short term (Freilich & Peshoff, 2007).