Spersopolis

Abstract

A distinctive pattern of dispersed settlement along highways has evolved in parts of the Southeast since World War II. Everyone is familiar with this new pattern, but it has developed so gradually and incrementally that most people have simply taken it for granted. Few scholars have tried to describe and analyze it, even though it might well represent the ideal populist American city. We have neither the data nor the techniques to quantify and map its distribution, but we invoke Gödel's Theorem to justify our attempt to describe it. The new settlement system seems to be most highly developed on the Piedmont of the Carolinas and Georgia and in the Great Valley of eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia. We have dubbed this region Spersopolis for want of any better vernacular name. Although we cannot map the extent of the new pattern directly, it seems to be closely associated with such surrogate variables as dense rural nonfarm population, large numbers of inter-county commuters, large numbers of workers employed in manufacturing, and heavy reliance on mobile homes, all of which attain their apogee in Spersopolis.