Overview

Sprawl is one of those elusive ideas - an analogy to this would be when an architecture review board in any community must consider the fate an "ugly" building -- they can't define what an ugly building looks like, but they know one when they see one. When asked, most people define or describe sprawl in aesthetic terms.

The definition of sprawl varies based on what part of the country is described as well as what organization is doing the describing. As with most ideas, there are two or more sides to the idea. In this short paper, two approaches, environmental and market, will be used to present definitions of sprawl. While there is no common definition of sprawl, in general some have referred to sprawl as the city's "hollowing out" experience - where people and businesses leave the inner city for the outer rings of the suburbs.

What is Sprawl?

The Sierra Club (environmental approach) defines sprawl as irresponsible, poorly planned development that destroys green space, increases traffic and air pollution, crowds schools, and drives up taxes. According to the Sierra Club, sprawl's negative impacts are well documented in the literature.

According to Anthony Downs of The Brookings Institution (market approach), sprawl is a particular form of suburban growth. Downs reviewed the literature and found ten characteristics that caused the criticisms of sprawl. These characteristics are:

• Unlimited outward extension of development
• Low-density residential and commercial settlements
• Leapfrog development
• Fragmentation of powers over land use among many small localities
• Dominance of transportation by private automotive vehicles
• Lack of centralized planning or control of land uses
• Widespread strip commercial development
• Great fiscal disparities among localities
• Segregation of types of land use in different zones and
• Reliance mainly on the trickle-down or filtering process to provide housing to low-income households.

Downs points out, that these characteristics have dominated American metropolitan growth for 50 years but because sprawl is the buzzword, most people think that the growth process and sprawl are the same. According to Downs, part of the problem is that analysis of sprawl only deals with one or two of these characteristics and oversimplifies the problems concerning growth.

Sprawl's Negative Impacts

The Sierra Club has on its website a list of facts concerning the negative impacts of sprawl. It lists traffic congestion as the most aggravating result of people moving to the suburbs. According to the Sierra Club, the reason sprawl increases traffic congestion is because it increases traffic, plain and simple; we have to drive everywhere. Sprawl means that the average American driver will spend an equivalent of 55 eight-hour workdays behind the wheel of the car.

According to Downs, sprawl contributes to two sets of economic and social problems. The first set affects those living in sprawl areas. These include the usual list of traffic congestion, air pollution, large scale absorption of open space, extensive use of energy for operating a private automobile, inability of the locality to provide adequate infrastructure and a shortage of affordable housing for those working in the new suburban retail and commercial businesses.

The second set of problems that sprawl contributes to, according to Downs, concerns the concentration of poor households in certain high poverty inner-city neighborhoods. These neighborhoods become high-crime areas, have poor quality schools, dysfunctional big-city bureaucracies, and lack the fiscal resources to correct the problems.

This becomes a continued cycle, as more Americans are able to move. They are moving further out to find low crime areas, better schools, and affordable housing on large parcels of land. So called "livability issues" are of growing importance in many metropolitan and rural areas across the country. These very issues continue sprawl. People living in the inner city want to find safer, more spacious neighborhoods, better schools, and less traffic in the suburbs. As people leave the city, those left are those who can not afford to move and neighborhoods decay. As the suburbs gradually fill with more people, they bring the problems of the city with them - increased traffic, noise, over crowded, crumbling schools. The suburbanites again look for rural locations further out to escape the problems and the cycle continues.

Unplanned growth and continued sprawl, however, are not the only alternatives to growth. Many localities are using a new set of tools under the umbrella of "smart growth" to help control the unwanted aspects of sprawl.

What is Smart Growth?

As with sprawl, smart growth has no absolute definition. The features that distinguish smart growth in a community vary from place to place because there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution. What smart growth does is recognize the connections between development and the quality of life.

Smart growth is a term that describes the efforts of communities to manage and direct growth in a way that minimizes damage to the environment, and promotes a balanced mix of land uses and transportation systems.

The Urban Land Institute has compiled a list of common characteristics of smart growth:

• Development is economically viable and preserves open space and natural resources.
• Land use planning is comprehensive, integrated, and regional.
• Public, private and nonprofit sectors collaborate on growth and development issues to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.
• Infrastructure is maintained and enhanced to serve existing and new residents.
• Redevelopment of infill housing, brownfield sites, and obsolete buildings are actively pursued.
• Urban centers and neighborhoods are integral components of a healthy regional economy.
• Development on the urban fringe integrates a mix of land uses, preserves open space, is fiscally responsible, and provides transportation options.

Spurring the smart growth movement are shifts in demographics, concern for the environment, fiscal shortfalls, and the public's negative views of growth. However, smart growth is not just rules to stop growth or sprawl. The basic goals of smart growth are to determine how to direct where the locality will grow to improve the quality of life for all residents by finding ways to revitalize cities and inner-ring suburbs, preserve environmental assets, and find new businesses for areas that are losing jobs, people, and tax revenues. Smart growth is creating sustainable development so that all share in social equity and well being.

References and Sources of Information on Sprawl:

American Planning Association

Brookings Institution

Cato Institute

Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Coalition for Smarter Growth

Council of State Governments

Downs, Anthony. 1999. Some Realities about Sprawl and Urban Decline. Housing Policy Debate 10(4): 955-974.

Environmental Protection Agency

Local Government Commission

Natural Resources Defense Council

O'Neill, David. 1999. Smart Growth: Myth and Fact. Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute.

Postrel, Virginia.1999. The Pleasantville Solution: The war on "sprawl" promises "livability" but delivers repression, intolerance--and more traffic. Reason, March 1999.

Planners Web

REASON On Line

Rural Heritage Program

Sierra Club

Smart Growth Network

Sprawl Net

Sprawl Watch Clearinghouse

Staley, Sam. 2001. Room to Grow: What's so Bad about the Suburbs? Reason February 2001.