This is the NY Times blog Schott’s Vocab on my word “spurb,” which I coined for “The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome” to describe a centerless, sprawling urban area virtually unconnected to a central city.
October 23, 2009, 4:00 am
Spurb
John F. Wasik’s term for “sprawling, unwalkable urban-suburban areas that have no connection to public transportation and central cities.”
Commenting on Mr. Wasik’s book, “The Cul-De-Sac Syndrome,” in The Daily Herald, a local paper in the Chicago area, Anna Marie Kukec wrote:
Still, Wasik draws much on his suburban roots for his books and has even touched on his own neighborhood in “Cul-De-Sac.” That book examines what caused the housing meltdown, how sprawl and tax breaks contributed to unaffordable homes and what could happen next.
As part of his examination, he even coined the term, “spurb,” or the sprawling urban area that’s not conveniently located near anything, like suburbs that seemingly spring out from the middle of a corn field, he said.
Writing for the Huffington Post in June, Mr. Waskik argued:
The spurb’s time has long past. Future energy demands from the rest of the world mean higher energy prices down the road. We need homes where there are jobs, infrastructure and transportation.
From Schott’s Vocab
1. October 23, 2009 7:22 am Link
Out on long island there are spurbs a plenty but there probably won’t be s’more anytime soon
— karen lyons kalmenson
2. October 23, 2009 10:36 am Link
I read Wasik’s Huffington Post article just now.
A good article about neighborhoods that can’t be walked in because too many highways flow through them. You have to be in your car. A suburb afflicted with sprawl. He describes his own term, spurb, as an “ugly word.” A n ugly word for a not too pretty thing.
He describes the ideal town as something like Barcelona, where he and his wife found they could walk from their hotel through the downtown for miles, stopping at stores and cafes, and ending up at the beach. He also cites some Northeast U.S. cities as having walkable neighborhoods.
He likes Seattle for walkability. Dallas, not so, too spurby, too Jetsonesque with its tangle of highways-thru-suburbs, plus many new suburb that aren’t organically developed close to shops and viable neighborhoods.
— Michael Dennis Mooney, Albany
3.
3. October 23, 2009 11:55 am Link
A “spurb” also implies a state of mind. To me, it’s a place where there was little or no planning. The landscape is dominated by mega-stores and strip malls and no consideration was paid to mixed-use zoning, where you could actually walk or bike (or take public transportation) to retail or commercial areas.
From my research, spurbs really got out of control because land, energy and building costs per square foot were much cheaper than urban or inner-suburban locales. Simple economics dictated that these places sprout up in former farm fields or deserts.
But there was little foresight in planning for resource use and future property taxes in spurbia. The people who moved 50 miles or more from job and urban centers did so to pursue the American Dream and were willing to do anything to get a more affordable version of it.
When mortgage rates rose on their adjustable-rate loans, property taxes climbed and energy prices soared, spurbia was — and still is — in deep trouble. So there was a reason why desert subdivisions in Arizona, California and Nevada became foreclosure gulches. These spurbs are cautionary tales that we ignore at our peril.
— John F. Wasik
Tags: Schott's Vocab, spurb