Details

Preface xi <p>Introduction: The Foundation Cracks 1</p> <p><b>PART 1 A Dream Gone Bad 15</b></p> <p>1 False Economics: American Dreamers in the Sunshine State 17</p> <p>2 Origins of a Dream 27</p> <p>3 How Debt Addiction Fed a Housing Crisis 39</p> <p>4 Cul-de-Sac Nation: Symptoms of a Syndrome 55</p> <p>5 The Spurbing of National Health 67</p> <p><b>PART 2 Reinventing Home and Community 75</b></p> <p>6 Toward Sustainable Dreams 77</p> <p>7 Building Smarter 93</p> <p>8 The Near Death of a Suburb 111</p> <p>9 Reclaiming the Inner City 123</p> <p>10 Sustainability and Development: Bridging the Gap 139</p> <p>11 The Bill Comes Due: Which Places Will Prosper? 153</p> <p>Epilogue: Cleaning Up, Moving On 171</p> <p>Notes 175</p> <p>Index 194</p>

“Wasik’s focuses much of the blame on the ‘spurb,’ his term for automobile-dependent sprawling suburbs whose only connections to cities are multi-lane highways. He shows how the American dream of moving further from a city to buy a bigger house and find better schools was a costly proposition, which was an underlying cause of the crisis. For me, it was a totally new look at the American dream and its costs.”<br /> —Larry Swedroe, moneywatch.com, February 2011

<b>John F. Wasik</b> is a personal finance columnist for Reuters and the author of twelve other books including The Audacity of Help: Obama's Economic Plan and the Remaking of America. He has won eighteen awards for his writing, speaks all over North America, and has appeared on NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, Bloomberg TV/Radio, PBS, NPR, and radio stations from Australia to Boston. <p>For more information, visit www.culdesacsyndrome.com</p>

"John Wasik's The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome offers enough to chew on for three sets of teeth, enough to digest for three stomachs, and then alerts the mind faster than an approaching siren."<br /> —RALPH NADER, consumer advocate <p>"Get ready for a totally original look at the American dream. Wasik delivers the first truly multidisciplinary examination—using planning, law, architecture, and history to focus on working solutions that keep the dream alive. This is a winner!"<br /> —PAUL B. FARRELL, JD, PhD, columnist, MarketWatch.com, and author of The Millionaire Code</p> <p>"This excellent book takes a ground-level look at the causes of our housing crisis and offers myriad ideas on reinventing the concepts of home and community."<br /> —ILYCE R. GLINK, syndicated real estate columnist and author of 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask</p> <p>"A genuine kick to the head, showing how our individual quests for the biggest house on the hill are destroying our environment, the economy, and our health. But The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome is no dead end. It offers a green, urbanized 'promised land' with real community, more free time, and a higher living standard. It's a masterful blueprint to unpave paradise and restore the world we cherish."<br /> — AURENCE KOTLIKOFF, author of Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World's Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking</p>

US