|
The Specter of Sprawl
by Charles Schmidtreprinted with permission of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
Urban sprawl is endemic throughout the United States, and
there is widespread concern over its potential environmental
and public health impacts. Many of the nation's cities are
consuming land faster than their populations are growing,
pushing the specter of urban and suburban pollution farther
into rural corridors. Chicago and Los Angeles, for example,
have over the last 20 years increased their land area more
than 10 times faster than their populations. In a particularly
striking example of sprawl, Phoenix, Arizona, is encroaching
upon the desert at a rate of one acre per hour, leading
Michael Fifield, head of the architecture department at
the University of Oregon in Eugene, to comment that "the
only thing stopping Phoenix is Tucson."
Unchecked urban growth is linked to many environmental problems,
including increased automobile emissions, deterioration
of air and water quality, loss of rural lands, and a declining
sense of community. The emerging consensus among citizens,
planners, government officials, and environmental groups
is that sprawl is unsustainable, and coordinated land use
planning strategies are needed to check its growth.
What is Sprawl?   return to top of page
Because there is no clear-cut distinction between sprawl
and suburbanization, simple definitions for sprawl are hard
to come by. Reid Ewing, an associate professor in the College
of Engineering and Design at Florida International University
in Miami, says that "like obscenity, you may not know exactly
how to describe [sprawl], but you know it when you see it.
It's a matter of degree. It's hard to say exactly where
sprawl begins and ends." Reid has nonetheless come up with
a widely referenced definition for sprawl, which he describes
as random development characterized by poor accessibility
of related land uses such as housing, jobs, and services
like schools and hospitals. Among these undesirable land
use patterns he includes commercial strip development, low-density
residential developments, and scattered, isolated developments
that leapfrog over the landscape.
According to Ewing, one thing all of these land use patterns
have in common (in addition to automobile dependency) is
a lack of open, functional space. For some people, this
sense of isolation from the natural environment is a health
threat in and of itself. In one study, published in the
November 1991 issue of the Journal of Environmental
Psychology , Roger Ulrich, a professor of architecture
and urban planning at Texas A&M University in College
Station, linked the visual clutter of sprawl developments
to a variety of stress-related effects, such as elevated
blood pressure and increased muscle tension. Based on the
results of his research, Ulrich questioned whether "roadside
blight and strip 'sprawlscapes' may be in some respects
a public health issue, because they are the stuff of experience
for tens of millions of people."
Causes of Sprawl return to top of page
The historical basis for sprawl may well lie in the decentralization
of employment. The host of government policies that have
subsidized development, built new roads and highways at
the expense of public transit, and paid for the "external"
costs of the automobile (such as pollution and commuter
parking) have allowed suburban employment centers to gain
footholds outside of cities, and to draw large numbers of
middle-class workers from the urban core. According to Harriet
Tregoning, director the Urban and Economic Development Division
at the EPA, community officials sometimes contribute to
the problem by giving tax breaks and other incentives to
industrial employers looking to develop in suburban areas.
| The
expanding number of suburban jobs has enabled greater
numbers of middle-class workers to leave the city and
build homes on the outskirts of town. This phenomenon
has caused a number of planners to suggest that sprawl
is the United States' development pattern of choice,
a logical fulfillment of the "American dream" of a house
in the suburbs, a lawn, and a two-car garage. Richard
Morrill, a professor of geography and environmental
studies at the University of Washington in Seattle,
writes in his book Our Changing Cities that
as many as 80% of surveyed U.S. citizens indicate that
they would prefer to live in low-density, single-family
housing, if given the choice. |
 |
| Click
on the map above to see three maps based on U.S.
Census data and a report by the Triangle Transit Authority
show a pattern of suburban growth and development for
the Durham/Wake/Orange counties, North Carolina, area. |
Unfortunately, the flight to the suburbs has often left
a crumbling and disinvested urban environment in its wake.
The effect is sometimes circular--as residents leave the
city, the economy of the urban environment declines, causing
more people to leave. In some areas, for example Kansas
City, Missouri, where the urban edge is moving beyond downtown
at a rate of 2 miles per decade, the result is a "golden
ring" of expensive houses that surrounds the city, but within
which lies a landscape of boarded-up shopping centers, vacant
lots, and unsold properties.
But because the short-term economic benefits brought on
by the flow of construction dollars accrue immediately,
planning officials are often tempted to overlook the imminent
downside of inadequately planned development. Developers,
banks, and municipal officials are often all too pleased
to accommodate new homeowners as they open their checkbooks
and stimulate local outlying economies. The problems come
later, once the boon from construction is over, and residents
begin to demand services such as roads, schools, sewer lines,
and emergency services in excess of what the primarily residential
tax base can afford. The inevitable result is higher taxes.
The alternative to higher taxes is sometimes a reduction
in the number--or quality--of the services provided, a potentially
perilous state of affairs. The American Farmland Trust (AFT),
a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization, recently
disclosed in their 1998 report Living
on the Edge: The Costs and Risks of Scatter Development
that response times for police, ambulance, and fire
departments to outlying houses and subdevelopments often
exceed national standards, potentially putting residents
that live in these areas at increased risk to their health
and safety.
Government subsidies also finance consumer use of the automobile,
without which low-density developments could never exist.
The former White House Office of Technology Assistance (OTA),
in its 1995 report The Technological Reshaping of Metropolitan
America , found that automobile drivers only pay around
73-88% of the monetary costs of auto use. If nonmonetary
costs such as air pollution are included, then the cost
paid by users decreases to a range of 53-69%. The OTA report
goes on to add that a 1991 study conducted by the World
Resources Institute estimated that if the hidden costs of
air pollution, congestion, and parking were internalized
and paid for by drivers themselves, the price of gasoline
would rise to approximately $7 per gallon. As it is, the
cost of gasoline in the United States, when adjusted for
inflation, has actually decreased since the early 1970s,
and U.S. consumers pay as little as one-fourth of what consumers
pay in most other countries.
Finally, government subsidies have paid for the new roads,
highways, and bridges that make sprawl possible. Don Chen,
research manager at the Surface
Transportation Policy Project, a Washington, DC, nonprofit
organization, comments that estimated on a per-capita basis,
urban and densely populated suburban areas receive roughly
half as much government financing for road construction
and maintenance as rural areas. What surprised Chen was
that these findings came in spite of the stated goals of
the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of
1991, which called for increased spending on maintenance
of existing road systems and less funding for new systems.
Urban Sprawl and the Automobile
return to top of page
The keystone to the suburbs is the automobile, and with
urban sprawl has come a dramatic rise in automobile use.
According to the latest figures published in the Federal
Highway Administration report Highway Statistics
, total vehicle miles of travel (VMT) in the United States
increased by 59% from 1980 to 1995. Most of this increase
is attributed to increasing trip and commuter distances,
reflecting an increasing segregation between jobs and housing.
This is a particularly vexing problem because many primary
air pollutants are increasingly linked to vehicle emissions
rather than stationary industrial sources. "We're at a point
now where the opportunity to further limit emissions from
large stationary sources is small," says Tregoning. "Small
discrete sources like cars, which are less amenable to standard
regulatory practices, are now a major source of air pollution
with VMT continuing to increase very steadily. It's an enormous
threat to air quality, and something that EPA is not entirely
certain how to deal with."
According to estimates provided by Mark Delucchi, an associate
research ecologist with the Institute of Transportation
Standards at the University of California at Davis, in his
1995 report Health Effects of Motor Vehicle Air Pollution
, vehicle-related air pollutants are responsible for
20,000-40,000 annual cases of chronic respiratory illness,
and 50-70 million respiratory-related restricted activity
days per year. In many areas, vehicles are the single largest
source of many air pollutants. In particular, vehicles are
the major source of ground-level ozone, the most serious
air pollution problem in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic
states. Ozone is formed by the reaction of oxygen radicals
with precursors such as volatile organic compounds, and
nitrogen oxides, common components of car exhaust. Altogether,
more than 60 urban areas around the country, including most
of the nation's largest cities, are currently not in attainment
for EPA standards for carbon monoxide or ground-level ozone.
A road to nowhere . A major source of adverse environmental
and health effects of urban sprawl is air pollution caused
by ever-growing numbers of cars being driven greater numbers
of miles to and from work in cities.
Ozone is a critical air pollutant. Peak ambient ozone concentrations
in a number of areas are sufficient to elicit measurable
transient changes in pulmonary function, and can cause a
variety of respiratory symptoms in healthy individuals engaging
in normal exercise and outdoor activities. The situation
for people who may be particularly sensitive to ozone toxicity,
such as children (who breath more air per unit of body weight
than do adults), the elderly, and asthmatics is even worse.
A number of researchers, including Peter Gordon, a professor
of planning and economics in the department of economics
at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles,
are not convinced that increasing VMT is contributing directly
to poor air quality. Their arguments hinge on a number of
factors. For example, while sprawl does result in increased
VMT, much of the mileage accrues on highways--and vehicular
pollution decreases with increasing speed (up to about 45
miles per hour).
Furthermore, urban airsheds are limited relative to the
density of their populations, and are thus less able to
absorb pollutants than airsheds in lower-density suburban
environments. If viewed from the perspective of exposure,
many more people are affected by poor air quality in the
cities than in the suburbs.
Finally, an estimated 50% of all vehicle-related pollutants
are released during two critical periods: upon ignition
(cold starts) and during the so-called hot-soak period that
occurs as the car cools down. The more relevant relationship
may be not so much between air quality and increased VMT,
but rather between air quality and the number of individual
vehicle trips. The effect of more vehicle trips is a subject
of continuing study.
Even with the increase in VMT, the EPA Office of Air Quality
Planning and Standards' report National Air Pollutant
Emission Trends, 1900-1995 states that overall the
United States' air quality continues to improve. Says Gordon,
a vocal critic of the anti-sprawl movement, "The data are
clear about what we have: better, though far from perfect,
air. The projections are the usual doomsday forecasts. Internal
combustion engines are ever better and cleaner. This explains
the paradox of better air but more VMT."
The EPA is holding its ground, however. Citing data gathered
by the same EPA trends report from the previous year, Tregoning
makes the point that, although it is true that the country
appears to be enjoying improved air quality, pollutants
given off by increased VMT will eventually reverse this
trend by the year 2005. "This is in spite of advances in
engine design, and the use of reformulated fuel," she says.
Ironically, the use of catalytic converters to reduce vehicle
emissions is inadvertently increasing emissions of nitrous
oxide (N 2 O). This is because catalytic converters
get so hot during their normal use that they facilitate
the oxidation of nitrogen in the air. According to the draft
EPA report 1998 Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions
and Sinks (1990-1996) , N 2 O emissions
increased 44% from 1990 to 1996, primarily due to the rates
of emission in new vehicles. These emissions impact directly
on public health. Like other nitrogen oxides, N 2
O molecules react with volatile organic compounds
in the atmosphere to form smog, which can cause breathing
difficulty for asthmatics, coughs in children, and general
respiratory illnesses. Additionally, like a number of other
vehicle-related pollutants, especially carbon dioxide (CO
2 ), N 2 O plays a major role
in the greenhouse effect. Although its emissions are much
lower than those of CO 2 , N 2
O is approximately 310 times as powerful when it comes to
trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere.
According to the same EPA report, all greenhouse gas emissions
have been increasing in the United States over the last
decade. Much of the increases are due to rising VMT, although
emissions from stationary sources, particularly power utilities,
are also important. There is now a near-consensus in the
scientific community that greenhouse gas emissions are causing
global climate change, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
The United States is the world's largest producer of CO
2 , and transportation is gradually assuming
an increasing share of the total output.
In an innovative twist on regulatory policy, Tregoning and
her colleagues, in cooperation with the EPA's Office of
Air and Radiation, are exploring ways to use the agency's
authority under the Clean Air Act (CAA) to allow metropolitan
areas to count urban policies that reduce emissions towards
the state's attainment of clean air standards. Their goal
is to reward local urban zoning policies that reduce vehicle
travel while encouraging and enhancing urban redevelopment.
Proposed measures include zoning that encourages greater
density around existing mass transit facilities, incentives
to increase mass transit ridership, and elimination of zoning
requirements that, among other things, prevent mixed use
neighborhoods in urban areas. "These proposals have been
well-received," says Tregoning. "We want to make this a
real option for a state developing a State Implementation
Plan under the CAA. It's a pilot project, but it's very
promising."
Decreased air quality is only one potential health threat
from increased automobile use, however. According to the
1997 report Mean
Streets: Pedestrian Safety and Reform of the Nation's Transportation
Law, issued by the Surface Transportation Policy
Project, over half of the United States' 6,000 annual pedestrian
fatalities occur on neighborhood streets. The report issued
a finding that the most dangerous metropolitan areas are
the "newer sprawling southern [and] western communities,
where transportation systems are biased toward the car at
the expense of other transportation options."
Impacts to Rural Areas return to top of page
Among sprawl's more paradoxical features is that its greatest
impacts are on the extremes of the land use continuum. As
sprawl drains jobs, people, and infrastructure out of the
urban center, it is moving them into the small towns and
farms of the rural United States. The AFT has been watching
this demographic change closely, and states in its report
that the United States' best farmland is being lost at an
ever more rapid pace. "The best farmland is flat, well-drained,
has few trees, basically exactly what the developers ordered,"
says Ann Sorensen, director of the AFT's Center for Agriculture
and Environment. Using the most recent data compiled by
the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resource Inventory,
the AFT estimates that nearly 50 acres of prime farmland
in the United States are being lost every hour of every
day, primarily due to "scattered and fragmented urban development
near major metropolitan areas."
Standing water . Large areas of paved surfaces
in suburban developments mean less water is absorbed,
resulting in flooding and toxic runoff entering rural
water sources.
The environmental consequences of farmland loss are complicated
and frequently debated. There seems to be a general consensus
among land use experts that the United States has more than
enough land to provide food for both domestic consumption
and export. Gordon, for example, suggests that the country
has a surplus of agricultural produce and arable farmland,
and that even a doubling of urban land uses wouldn't seriously
affect agricultural output. However, according to Sorensen,
the problem is not so much the amount of farmland left behind
as sprawl continues to encroach on rural areas, but its
quality. "What we're losing is the best farmland we have,"
she says. "It's irreplaceable." In his paper Alternative
Views of Sprawl: Is Los Angeles Style Sprawl Desirable?
, published in the Winter 1997 issue of the Journal
of the American Planning Association , Ewing also counters
that declining fisheries, unfulfilled hopes for increased
crop yields from biotechnology, and aquifer depletion in
certain regions may place additional pressure on agricultural
lands, leading to grain shortages by the year 2030.
Ground giving way . New uses of land in sprawl
developments can mean the loss of productive farmland and
soil erosion due to fewer trees.
Sprawl has also been linked to deteriorating water quality
in previously rural areas. This is not to say that rural
uses--particularly farming--are entirely benign. An EPA
report entitled National Water Quality Inventory--1992
Report to Congress confirmed that agriculture is the
largest source of nutrient pollution to rivers and lakes,
and the third most important source for estuaries. Even
so, urban runoff still constitutes a major source of pollutants
to surface water bodies. The 1994 version of the same EPA
report indicated that 12-50% of all surface water pollution
originates with urban runoff. Additionally, whereas agricultural
runoff tends to be limited to nutrients, runoff from roads
and parking lots contains a wide variety of additional pollutants
including oils, road salts, nutrients, and sediments, as
well as hazardous and solid wastes.
The extent to which urban sprawl contributes to surface
water degradation is frequently analyzed in terms of the
percentage of impervious (i.e., paved) surface in the watershed.
When more than 10% of the surface is impervious, most watersheds
show signs of degradation. At rates of 25% and above, watersheds
are seriously degraded and unable to provide adequate habitat
for sensitive species. Interestingly, low-density sprawl
developments actually contribute more urban runoff per unit
area than do urban environments. Thomas Schueller, a researcher
with the Center for Watershed Protection in Silver Spring,
Maryland, indicates in his 1995 report Site Planning
for Urban Stream Protection that sprawl development,
with its wide streets and large parking lots, can lead to
storm runoff at a rate over 50% higher than the more compact
development found in cities.
| A
place of our own
. The trend toward spread-out single-family homes can
actually lead to a sense of isolation and loss of the
community that is found in small towns and urban areas.
|
|
This analysis was experimentally validated in a study conducted
by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental
Control, which compared the extent of urban runoff in a
hypothetical "traditional" town configuration, which blended
residential and commercial uses, with a typical sprawl configuration.
Both were matched for numbers of buildings and potential
residents. The researchers found that urban runoff associated
with sprawl development was 43% higher than that of the
compact development. Their results were presented in the
Fall 1997 issue of the South Carolina Conservation League
Land Development Bulletin.
Additionally, because the reduction in porous surfaces affects
natural drainage systems such as streams, wetlands, and
other receiving bodies, road construction can go hand-in-hand
with increased flooding and erosion. The Sierra Club recently
issued a report entitled Floods, Deaths, and Wetlands
Destruction in which they cite dramatically increased
flood deaths from 1993 to 1997, which they link to increasing
wetlands loss caused by sprawl.
Sprawl can also have an opposite effect: in some areas,
road surfaces prevent the filtration of rainfall through
soils that can recharge groundwater supplies. This leads
to a lowering of the water table and other impacts on groundwater
supplies. These effects are sometimes exacerbated by patterns
of residential water consumption. For example, single-family
detached homes use large quantities of water to sustain
their lawns and gardens. According to a 1989 report released
by the EPA entitled Natural Resources for the 21st Century:
An Evaluation of the Effects of Land Use on Environmental
Quality , new urban growth in a number of states was
depleting water supplies at the same time that their populations
were increasing, often at the expense of local farming operations.
Effects on the physical environment are only part of the
consequence of increased development in rural areas, however.
The character of many of the United States' rural towns
is also being strained as parcels of land are subdivided
and sold off for residential development. A number of the
small towns in southern Maine, for example, have seen their
populations increase by as much as 18% in the last three
years, while growth in the urban centers has leveled off.
This rate of growth is resulting in increased taxes and
strained social services, and has antagonized the preexisting
local population. Many in the local communities look with
trepidation at increasing newcomers, fearful of a loss of
community and increased suburban crime.
Solutions return to top of page
If there is one thing that most stakeholders working on
the sprawl issue seem to agree on, it is that sprawl is
essentially a local affair. Just how a community goes about
dealing with its growth depends largely on its own environment,
culture, and economy. Therefore, government agencies and
private organizations working on the sprawl issue are heavily
vested in addressing local concerns, even as they recognize
sprawl's larger implications.
"Traditionally,
land use decisions are made at the local level. We believe
that should continue to be the case," says Keith Laughlin,
head of the Council on Environmental Quality's (CEQ) interagency
task force on urban sprawl. "The question is, how can we
assist those at the local level that want help?" he says.
"The government has information and technical tools that
can assist communities to make the right decisions." At
the request of Vice President Al Gore, the CEQ's interagency
task force is currently holding a series of meetings with
local land use officials, and drafting a set of recommendations
on managing sprawl.
One group that is steadily gaining visibility is the Smart
Growth Network, a growing coalition of stakeholders
currently comprising 100 individual members and 15 partner
organizations including the EPA, the National Resource Defense
Council, and the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a Washington,
DC-based nonprofit organization that focuses on the concerns
of the private sector. The ULI has made smart growth the
centerpiece of its policy agenda for the next two years.
The Smart Growth Network has been holding a series of conferences
around the United States in an attempt to bring together
stakeholders to build local and national land use coalitions
to find progressive ways to deal with growth. Network members
benefit by having access to the combined resources and expertise
of the entire organization. This is useful as they attempt
to apply the principles of smart growth to their own communities.
"Smart
growth encourages more mixed-use and compact development,"
says Tregoning. "You can't rely solely on residences to
make up the tax base because residential development typically
doesn't pay for itself. We're also trying to encourage investments
in the inner cities. We don't imagine we can stop sprawl,
but we think we can encourage better development and more
livable communities." Smart growth also encourages "infill,"
a term used to essentially describe focusing investment
in existing urban centers and older suburbs rather than
in the outlying areas. Federal brownfields projects, which
aim to clean up and reopen abandoned or otherwise inactive
industrial facilities in the inner cities, are also a high
priority.
Maryland is a state that has begun to invest heavily in
smart growth. Maryland, which was the Smart Growth Network's
first partner-state organization, has historically had tremendous
problems with sprawl. Recent estimates by the state's office
of planning predict that central Maryland is on its way
to consuming as much land in the next 23 years as it has
since the state was established. Michael Pawlukiewicz, director
of environment and land use policy at the ULI, says, "Around
20% of Maryland is turf: lawns, highway median strips, and
golf courses that don't grow food or support wildlife."
But now, under the state's Initiative on Neighborhood Conservation
and Smart Growth, launched by Governor Parris Glendening
in 1997, citizens, developers, and local officials are carefully
planning for the future, and forecasting where growth ought
to occur over the next several decades. Once the projected
boundaries for these areas are delineated by local government,
the legislature limits funding for infrastructure to those
areas only. This doesn't mean that homeowners can't build
beyond the boundaries if they want to. They can--but they
do so with the understanding that the state government isn't
prepared to supply them with a sewer line or a school. The
smart growth program in Maryland has also established a
rural legacy initiative that will protect targeted rural
greenbelts from sprawl through the purchase of easements
and development rights in areas rich in agriculture, forestry,
and natural and cultural resources. Under the smart growth
program, buffer incentives will be offered to landowners,
who will be provided with grant payments of $300 per acre
to plant forest buffers along streams and watersheds to
help minimize nonpoint pollution to the Chesapeake Bay.
To some extent, the concept of smart growth borrows from
an existing urban planning model known as the urban growth
boundary. Urban growth boundaries were used successfully
to limit sprawl and encourage mixed-use development in Oregon,
a state often held up by land use planners as a model for
growth management. Oregon drew urban growth boundaries around
all of its major cities in the early 1970s, and prohibited
residential development and public transit beyond those
lines.
The city of Portland, Oregon, has also undertaken a number
of additional progressive land planning initiatives to limit
sprawl. These include large investments in mass transit,
a focus on locating development adjacent to mass transit
systems, a mix of inner city residential and business uses
at the pedestrian level, and a limit on downtown commuter
parking. These policies have enabled the city to manage
its growth effectively while maintaining a high quality
of life for its increasing population. More than 50% of
the downtown working population (which has doubled since
1975) commutes via mass transit. The mass transit system
is so popular among urban and suburban residents that there
is very little support for new road construction, and no
additional road capacity has been added to the downtown
area in 20 years. The city has even removed a six-lane expressway
to create room for a downtown riverfront park. According
to a report entitled Why Smart Growth? by the International
City-County Management Association, a Washington, DC-based
nonprofit organization, these policies have also led to
a dramatic improvement in air quality. CAA violations in
Portland have dropped from an average of 100 per year in
the 1970s to none since 1987.
A shared sense of purpose . Planners say that the
use of mass transit will be a key component of stanching
the adverse effects of sprawl.
Says William Schroer, a project manager with Apogee Research
in St. Paul, Minnesota, "Portland has held per-capita VMT
steady over the past three years, an impressive accomplishment
in an economy that is growing at twice the national average.
Among other things, it means that in Portland, increases
in driving are not currently eating into the decreased emissions
benefits that technology has brought."
Oregon's urban growth boundaries were applied statewide.
But more limited uses have also been successful. In Boulder,
Colorado, a citywide urban growth boundary called a "service
area" has successfully contained sprawl since it was implemented
in 1970, and revised in 1978. According to Peter Pollock,
director of the community planning division for the City
of Boulder, the service area has protected Boulder from
development that would have placed infrastructure demands
on the city without supplying the necessary tax base to
pay for them. In his article Controlling Sprawl in Boulder:
Benefits and Pitfalls , published in the January 1988
issue of the Newsletter of the Lincoln Institute of
Land Policy , Pollock comments that the service area
policy has led to a number of distinct benefits for the
city. For example, the boundary has created an identifiable
urban/rural edge that has limited leapfrog development into
the surrounding countryside. Additionally, says Pollock,
"[Boulder] developed an urban form that was conducive to
urban transit, which is probably the toughest nut to crack
from the perspective of getting people to adjust to more
compact development."
Managing urban sprawl may constitute one the biggest environmental
policy challenges facing the United States today. Sprawl
is often the core issue behind many of our most highly visible
environmental problems. But containing development and implementing
coordinated land use programs that restrict how and where
people can live is a delicate proposition, fraught with
myriad social and perceived political consequences. Nonetheless,
land use initiatives such as those implemented in Oregon
and Boulder suggest that limiting sprawl while enhancing
a sense of community and the quality of life for residential
populations is possible. The extent to which sprawl can
be contained in other areas will ultimately depend upon
how these interrelated interests are balanced on a local
level.
|
What
is Sprawl?
