Urban sprawl is difficult to define but people usually know it when they see it.
Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is the spreading of a city and its suburbs over rural land at the fringe of an urban area. Residents of sprawling neighborhoods tend to live in single-family homes and commute by automobile to work. Low population density is an indicator of sprawl. Urban planners emphasize the qualitative aspects of sprawl such as the lack of transportation options and pedestrian friendly neighborhoods. Conservationists tend to focus on the actual amount of land that has been urbanized by sprawl.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It all began during the post-war prosperity of the 1950's and 60's, when housing developments popped up across the landscape like mushrooms after a rain. A half-century later, we now understand that many environmental problems accompany the outward spread of cities: fragmenting and destroying wildlife habitat, for example, and discharging polluted runoff water into streams and lakes.
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Know sprawl when you see it! Maybe you've noticed your
community is getting a little bigger. Road construction seems to be everywhere
and traffic is more heavy than it used to be; new strip malls and “big
box” stores are popping up; and land on the outskirts of your town is
being cleared for new housing subdivisions. Your community could be experiencing
urban sprawl, an issue that has affected cities and towns
across the country.
Urban sprawl can be generally defined as wide-spread, low-density development that consists primarily of strip commercial developments, such as malls and large office buildings, and housing subdivisions connected by new, wide roads and boulevards. The subdivisions are set apart from other development and built within a specific price range, and people are dependant on their cars to get them from one place to another. With sprawl, fewer people occupy more land and as the people spread out, so do the buildings, roads and houses. Urban sprawl is difficult to define but people usually know it when they see it. The following maps describe what an urban sprawl suburb might look like (left) compared to the land use plan of a town that avoids sprawl (right).
Graphics: Urban sprawl layout (left) compared to an anti-sprawl urban design (right)
Maps by Gail Dennis, Michigan Land Use Institute
Source: “The Next American Metropolis,” by Peter Calthorpe.
