What are the qualities ascribed to a building someone calls 'sprawling' in American English? Is it neutral, negative? Does it depend on the context?
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After looking up sprawl/ing in the dictionary what questions do you have on how to apply that to a building?– JimDec 12, 2014 at 19:17
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"to spread or develop in an uneven or uncontrolled way" is a definition I found in a dictionary. But that doesn't give me an idea what kind of building an native speaker imagines exactly when they hear "sprawling building".– snflurryDec 12, 2014 at 19:19
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1Here's an image of what I think of when I hear a sprawling building: masonholden.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/nissan_factory-2.jpg– JimDec 12, 2014 at 19:32
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1No, on it's own it does not have any negative connotations. It takes context for that. Here sprawling is a good thing: "Hey, let's go hide in the Nissan factory. It sprawls all over, they'll never find us!" Here it's bad: "Make sure you get to the Nissan plant early, it's such a sprawling monstrosity even if you're on time in the parking lot, you could be 30 mins late getting to the factory floor."– JimDec 12, 2014 at 19:39
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1In itself, it is neither positive nor negative. It really only says it 'takes up a lot of land area' Edit It is also the architectural opposite of perhaps 'monolithic' which would imply a single, gigantic structure over a relatively small land area.– DoneWithThis.Dec 12, 2014 at 19:40
2 Answers
When used of a single building or non-residential building complex, "sprawling" has a neutral or slightly positive connotation of "I envy how they've grown so quickly", or "they have so much to do, they need that much space to do it in."
When used of a city or residential area, "sprawling" has the negative connotations of "urban sprawl". Many people who use the term "urban sprawl" resent:
- how spreading cities destroy forests, farmland, and other ecologies;
- how "suburban" car-centric societies allocate half of the land and a quarter of the buildings for use of cars;
- that about half of the population cannot drive (either due to youth, age, disability, or inability to afford a car);
- that pedestrians are subject to a de facto death penalty for darting in front of moving cars;
- that sprawling cities mean long commutes, and people spending more time away from their families;
- how many cities pollute(d) their environments, (especially before the implementation of smokestack filters, tailpipe scrubbers, natural gas heat, and sewage treatment plants).
As you can see, these are some strongly negative connotations.
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1+1 for a great synopsis of urban sprawl. Just one quice note of clarification for the learner: one sprawling building doesn't make urban sprawl. So sprawl applied to one building is often neutral, but sprawl applied to an entire suburb is often tinted negatively.– J.R. ♦Dec 12, 2014 at 21:23
Sprawling is a sense of 'area covered' in seemingly haphazard manner.
Think of a spider - it sprawls over more area that its volume would suggest
A building can sprawl in the same way, neither 'good' nor 'bad'
[left is the Palace of Versailles, right is a Nissan car plant]
It doesn't even have to be just a single building, a housing estate can sprawl too
This is not to be confused with simply being 'massive', 'monolithic', 'huge', 'enormous' [& please, whatever you do don't use 'enormity' as a synonym for merely very large]
The Empire State Building is all about size, but it doesn't sprawl at all…