Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

Sprawl cannot be compared to any example of historical types of urbanity. We only have marginal access to sprawl and can never really perceive it as a whole. We are forced to see it from inside automobiles or on screens with Google Earth and GPS. This paper enhances the awareness of what we are not seeing. We see sprawl superficially because it is too big for our urban eyes. There is no collective memory of sprawl, nor immediate way to imagine it. Theorists tend to dismiss it as chaotic or generic. And it is usually considered in comparison to the central city and thus loaded with prejudices. It is easy to say what sprawl is not, rather than what it is. Yet, it is very hard to ignore, because we all live in sprawl or have some relation to it. Sprawl is part of our daily lives and it will be much more so in the future; yet, we don’t have critical tools to observe, understand, and explain it. There is no common ground to start with. The paper explores ways to reconsider the missing common ground. It represents my search for a new way to understand and hypothesise new meanings for a deeper awareness of the process in which sprawl materialises. I have introduced an alternative term “Sprawlification” to replace “urbanisation.” Sprawlification is a process like urbanisation, but does not focus on bringing order to everything. It doesn’t resemble the development and growth of built-up environments, but rather reveals sprawl as it is, a phenomenon on its own. Using sprawlification, distances us from conventional comparisons with the city and the urban realm. It helps us to use new terminologies outside of our current disciplinary syntax (architecture, urbanism, or planning).