By designing the structure and location of buildings in certain ways we can reduce urban sprawl while improving the quality of life for people.

Here are some ideas that would reduce urban sprawl while improving the quality of life for people: Buildings should be large and should combine apartments, shopping, and offices in one building. This allows people, if they so choose, the option of living, working, and shopping within the same walls. This provides the advantage of allowing people to perform their daily routine without using cars, totally opposite to what is common in America today. The proposed buildings should be surrounded by gardens and trees. This allows people the option of contact with the natural world. This is one of the attractions of owning an individual home and something that need not be lost by living in a larger complex. The building should have many meeting rooms spread throughout. This allows convenient social contact at special events such as seminar, classes, business meetings, clubs, Bible studies, etc. The building should have convenient transportation services (busses, subway, etc.). A building as described here would have a "critical mass" in size, if it is too small there would not be enough people to make shops profitable and therefore less attractive for people to live in. More Information: • New Urban News • CarFree.com: Introduction • Active Community Environments - from the CDC • Sustainable Architecture, Building and Culture • PreserveNet: Stopping Suburban Sprawl • Yahoo! Urban Sprawl

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Reader Comments: "I think that urban sprawl is wrong. We need to quit building on AG land, and just use what has houses on it. Just rebuild the old ones instead of building new ones. we need the AG land so everybody can have food on their tables." Stina, 2000-03-30 © 1998 http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7119/architecture.html Article created 1998-08-07, updated 1999-06-09.

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