A Field Guide To Sprawl
Posted by: Alan in Book Reviews, Books, Non-Fiction, PhotographyToday’s Harry Potter debut at work was a bit anti-climactic. An e-mail last night advised that 175 copies were received at library hq at 4:30pm and were quickly stamped, stickered, cataloged and put on the trucks for this morning’s delivery. I will confess to sneaking a quick peek at the last chapter, though I was 368th on the waiting list so it will be awhile before I can check it out and read it. (After the first copies were allocated to the earliest holds I moved up to 198th in line, so my best guesstimate is 4–6 weeks.) Fearing that some patrons might help themselves if we put the books out on the usual self-service shelves for holds, we kept them on a special cart in the back room. And by the time I left at 2pm only one patron had come in and claimed a copy. I am hoping to avoid reading any spoilers until I can read the book, but that may prove difficult.
Today’s most interesting check in was A Field Guide To Sprawl, a pictorial dictionary that uses aerial photographs to illustrate several dozen concepts associated with sprawl– the phenomenon of scattered low-density development outside the boundaries of established and often declining urban areas. Concepts such as "ball-pork"– sports stadia constructed with tax payer funds for the benefit of rich team owners, "ducks"– buildings which serve as advertisements for the products sold within, "leap-frogging"– when development skips over vacant raw land and continues further out and "pods"– single use zones off a major roadway not interconnected to any larger street grid are explained in concise, readable terms and illustrated with excellent photographs. I was familiar with some of the concepts from reading Joel Garreau’s Edge City back in 1992 and enjoyed learning more.
Hope this finds your weekend going well.
Tags: A Field Guide To Sprawl, Book Reviews, Books, Dolores Hayden, Jim Wark, Non-Fiction, Photography, urban planning
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July 22nd, 2007 at 8:24 am
I got my copy of Deathly Hallows yesterday afternoon at the local B&N. It was no big deal… they had 000’s of copies stacked up all over the store.
But I am a fan and I’ll be useless (or even more useless than usual) for the rest of the day!
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Amazon delivered my copy to me Saturday morning. I had it finished by Sunday afternoon. (Reading the ending doesn’t help, I don’t think!)
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:45 am
I have been fighting the temptation just to go buy the damn thing instead of waiting for my turn to come up for a library copy, but Ron is firmly opposed, on the grounds that our budget does not extend to buying books (and he’s right it doesn’t)
Obviously I will have to read it to know if the impression I got from my brief glimpse at the ending is correct, but I am really hoping that it does end with harry and ginny’s offspring heading off to hogwarts twenty years later….