Hace poco comentaba que la historia del "sprawl" suburbano es más antigua de lo que se piensa y no es un proceso específicamente norteamericano.
Un artículo en The Guardian (All maped out) revisa la re-edición por la London Topographical Society del libro de Charles Booth Descriptive map of London poverty 1889, y da más pistas sobre la historia del "sprawl":
Booth recorrió las calles londinenses a finales del siglo XIX para cartografiar calle a calle y casa a casa la clase social de sus habitantes. Después trasalado sus datos a detallados mapas donde el bienestar se traduijo en un código de colores:
The map itself is a wonderful thing. Booth and his team of assistants compiled it by walking the streets of London between 1886 and 1889 and the "descriptive" aspect of the map comes from Booth's seven-point colour code, which allowed him to assess and display the geographical division of London's wealth. Thus we see the city in all its class-bound 19th-century glory, from black, the lowest class, comprising "semi-criminal elements", through dark blue, light blue, purple, pink and red to yellow, representing the wealthiest members of London society.
El propio Booth al interpretar sus mapas describió claramente el proceso de huída de las clases medias hace las zonas suburbanas:
Booth himself highlighted the middle-class flight from urban areas: "The red and yellow classes are leaving, and the streets which they occupied are becoming pink and pink-barred; whilst the streets which were formerly pink turn to purple and purple to light blue." Over 100 years later we read in the Guardian that "The middle classes are abandoning inner London and other cities for the countryside in a drift that threatens to cause a 'deepening racial and social' divide." Perhaps somebody ought to send John Prescott and Jacques Chirac a copy of Booth's map.
