Urban Sprawl in Europe

Abstract

The alienated atmosphere, the shallow relationships of the residential suburbs inhabited by the American middle classes and the spatial manifestations of the failure of the American dream and family model are spectacularly presented in Edward Albee’s dramas written in the 1960s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Everything in the Garden, or A Delicate Balance. The problems of some types of European, including French, suburbs such as suburban crime, violence or fear are best illustrated in the context of art cinema by films such as Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (Hate) or Luc Besson’s Banlieue 13 (District B13). Naturally, for us examples from the context of art are not as important as scientific studies indicating the main causes of today’s social problems, which are basically the lifestyle of the middle class, its self-fulfilling confinement and individualism in the American suburbs, and the concentrations of socially disadvantaged classes and social exclusion in Europe. Behind the differences, behind the characteristics of the American and European societies, and the traits of their history, economy and development, the different social structural features of cities are evident. The American middle classes live mostly in suburbs, and more disadvantaged groups are spatially concentrated in inner cities. The European middle classes are located predominantly in the inner city or betteroff suburban areas, while the disadvantaged classes are increasingly concentrated in suburban areas. Although European suburbs are different from their American counterparts, there are visible signs of increasing convergence. Now European cities also have to face tensions which hitherto characterised mainly American urban societies. European cities are also typified by fragmentation, the rise of individualism, and the disintegration of community sense and social cohesion (Cattan p. 1). Slums, which in the past were mainly typical of American cities, are now spreading in European cities as well and segregation is also increasing (Haussermann–Haila 2010, p. 60). The hereto positive features specific to Europe, namely the European welfare state which has played an outstanding role in comparison with America, the relatively limited enforcement of market impacts and public efforts to manage social tensions, have been damaged and needs to be limited (Kazepov 2010, Cities of Europe). It is a fact that the European welfare states are not always able to restrain the various tensions, particularly due to different social structural and economic difficulties and crises, and to the strengthening of European urban sprawl and its sociological impacts. Besides American suburbanisation, which fundamentally has historical relevance to America, European suburbanisation is also gradually spreading (Kazepov 2010, p. 13). Because of global economic interests, metropolitan * This article is the introductory part of the book entitled Urban Sprawl in Europe published by Aula Kiado (Budapest,