The Limitless City: A Primer on the Urban Sprawl Debate

by Oliver Gillham. Island Press, Washington, DC, 2002. Paperback, 309 pages, $30.

For readers who may need the groundwork missing from Beatley’s Green Urbanism, The Limitless City, by architect and planner Oliver Gillham, is a good start. Also focused on American development, Gillham’s primer tells the history of sprawl and the search for alternatives, lays out definitions for the often-ambiguous argot, and digs into the density debate Beatley only references. Though not without his own opinions, Gillham presents various arguments and backs them with statistics whenever possible.

Focused more on the problem of sprawl than its solutions, Gillham’s conclusion is bleak: “Suburbanization clearly is something the nation has brought upon itself willingly…. Without the intervention of some crisis event, the nation may simply continue to build more of the same suburban pattern.” But, he concedes, there must be a limit: “Three or four left-hand turn lanes may be nearing the maximum….”

– JB