Reaction to Class Presentations

On Thursday in class we all presented our chapters on urban sprawl of cities and their affect on the populations which live in them. Although our cities were spread out across the United States they all had some very similar themes in how they were growing and how the population was reacting to this urban sprawl. In Nashville, the city that I studied, the growth was outward and the land usage of Nashville was off the charts. The city was using its land at an alarming pace as people migrated from the city of Nashville to the surrounding suburban counties. Not only was the actual growth of the city concerning, the way that people were migrating was also alarming. It was clear that in Nashville the richer, mostly white residents, were the ones expanding the suburbs and leaving the city, This left the poorer, mostly African American residents in the city where environmental policy had lapsed along with the school systems and public transportation policy. Unfortunately, this scenario where the more wealthy and mostly white citizens of a city have left for the suburbs, leaving the mostly African American, poorer citizens to deal with lapses in policy and education was a common theme throughout our presentations.