History
Following the Industrial Revolution, ribbon development became prevalent along railway lines: predominantly in Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A good example of this was the deliberate promotion of Metroland along London's Metropolitan Railway. Similar evidence can be found from Long Island (where Frederick W Dunton bought much real estate to encourage New Yorkers to settle along the Long Island Railroad lines), Boston and across the American mid-west.
Such expansion of human settlement is now seen as positively helpful in the fight against environmental destruction caused by building along roads.
It can also occur along ridge lines, canals and coastlines, the latter especially occurring as people seeking seachange lifestyles build their houses where they can get the best view.
The resulting towns and cities are often difficult to service efficiently. Often, the first problems noticed by residents is traffic congestion as people compete to move along the narrow urban corridor while ever more people join the ribbon further along the corridor. Urban consolidation is often a solution to encourage growth towards a more compact urban form.
Ribbon development can also be compared with a linear village which is a village that grew along a transportation route, not as part of a city's expansion.
Read more about this topic: Ribbon Development
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s nice to be a part of history but people should get it right. I may not be perfect, but I’m bloody close.”
—John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)