Suburban Sprawl in Riga Region: the Rise and Fall of “American Dream”

For the last 15 years, the agglomeration of Riga has expanded and one of the most important problems that Riga faces is movement of middle-class people to surrounding municipalities. This tendency is mostly referable to the processes in the USA during the second half of the 20th century. This research has first identified the history and causes of urban sprawl since the earliest times and has compared it with the situation in Riga Region. Planning documents of suburban municipalities of Riga have been reviewed to find out their future vision and to develop a set of planning policy recommendations and directions for future research