Suburbanisation and landscape change in Connecticut: Repetition of the patterns in Estonia and Elsewhere in Central Europe?

This paper provides an overview of suburbanisation in USA and Connecticut, with the intent of posing it as a possible model of future development in Estonia. Existing literature is analysed including the suburb/exurb debate and factors affecting suburbanisation. Related data are presented. Connecticut as a state especially impacted by suburbanisation is taken under closer consideration. Patterns of suburbanisation and the impact of it on the landscape are discussed as well as some views on the likelihood that Connecticut's, and more generally the USA's, suburban experience foretells similar trends in now rapidly developing areas of Central Europe, exemplified here in particular by Estonia. Trends in Estonian land use and population distribution are presented together with necessary background information. According to scenarios for Estonia’s future it is pointed out how Estonia could achieve a sustainable economy and settlement pattern, likely one that is technologically advanced and characterised by a fairly dispersed, suburbanised population, much the way Connecticut looks today. Two figures on urban growth and the spatial distribution of population derived using satellite imagery are also presented....the United States, in terms, of where its people live and work, has been a decidedly suburban nation for the past three decades. In essence, the American city has turned inside out since about 1970, thereby constituting the most profound social and economic transformation in its history. (Muller48, p. 45)