Various definitions can made for urban sprawl from different perspectives. Sprawl everyday we wander through our meticulously designed network of highways and we watch the landscape evolve from commercial and city buildings to midtown housing developments to outer suburbia where. There is little consensus about how urban sprawl affects everything from housing affordability to open space preservation to racial segregation 1. Measuring sprawl and its impact is the product of three years of research. Urban sprawl or the built environment is an emerg ing issue that has recently been. Defining sprawl and smart growth community and regional. Commercial logging, urban sprawl, livestock ranching, and other activities are likewise of considerable importance, but lie beyond the scope of this paper. From cambridge english corpus comasina has been eaten up by the urban sprawl and is no longer a peripheral area in the same sense. Definition of urban sprawl from the collins english dictionary.
Urban sprawl, fuelled by powerful market forces, is unlikely to be controlled by macroscale regional plans or by comprehensive reforms of the local government map. The effects of urban sprawl on spatial fragmentation and. Learn more about the causes and impacts of urban sprawl. The direct implication of such sprawl is change in land use and land cover of the. Urban sprawl refers to the expansion of poorly planned and autodependant development which spreads out over a very large area of lands creating huge distances between residential and commercial uses. Creating and improving the knowledge base remains one of the strategic developments for the implementation of the eu strategy on green infrastructure. This paper emphasises two mechanisms that determine the rules of the game of local development and public regulation of urban sprawl.
What density doesnt tell us about sprawl access magazine. Density measured in different ways tells divergent tales about urban form. Critique of the relation between the optimum urban. It does not allow for a straightforward assessment of the different impacts of urban sprawl. Although there is no formal definition of decentralization, urban areas today are highly. National longitudinal land use survey nllus urban data. The same can be said for urban sprawl, a concept that for some is just as offensive and equally hard to explain, mostly because everyone seems to have a different definition for the term. For hemson the durban local state was an instrument of capital, and class struggle was the essential dynamic of the citys. Population growth and suburban sprawl a complex relationship policies fuels haphazard growth. The authors wish to acknowledge numerous individuals who generated or processed data upon which our sprawl and outcome measures are based. In addition to describing a particular form of urbanization, the term also relates to the social and environmental consequences associated with this development. Beyond that, in many but not all regions, rapid population growth further fuels sprawl. Lowdensity sprawl is the highly consumptive use of land for urban purposes along the margins of existing metropolitan areas.
Uncertainty on definitions and explanations of urban sprawl hamper the design of policy measures. Sprawl development consists of three basic spatial forms. The proposed sprawl repair provides maximum flexibility, a mix of uses, and a full range of human environments from rural to urban. The urbanization of the developing world began to accelerate in late twentieth century timberlake, 1987, although there was no clear trend in overall urban growth in less developed countries due to inconsistent definition of urban and the lack of quality in their census data. The amount of space the theme of urban sprawl is an urgent contemporary problem on the agenda of national and european institutions. Urban green infrastructure green infrastructure will play a key role in achieving eu policy objectives, especially when using nature based solutions to preserve natural capital. Urban sprawl, the rapid expansion of the geographic extent of cities and towns, often characterized by lowdensity residential housing, singleuse zoning, and increased reliance on the private automobile for transportation. Urban sprawl definition of urban sprawl by the free. Introduction urban sprawl is often discussed without any associated definition in planning literature harvey and clark, 1965. Urban sprawl or suburban sprawl mainly refers to the unrestricted growth in many urban areas of housing, commercial development, and roads over large expanses of land, with little concern for urban planning. Urban sprawl is identified by a variety of names the. Urban sprawl definition is the spreading of urban developments such as houses and shopping centers on undeveloped land near a city.
Rethinking urban sprawl moving towards sustainable. Dynamics of urban sprawl and sustainable development in. Urban sprawl definition, the uncontrolled spread of urban development into neighboring regions. In general, the definition of urban sprawl is described in two aspects. Urban sprawl is, pejoratively, any urban development pattern which is undesirable knaap et al. Urban sprawl definition in the cambridge english dictionary. However, some different opinions exist in academic fields on urban sprawl. This report provides a new perspective to the nature of urban sprawl and its causes and environmental, social and economic consequences. This paper reports on a study of the concept of urban. In 2003 and 2019 it included the top 50 most populous cbsas. The policy watch section of the national association of home builders quarterly magazine featured our new article on sprawl repair. Urbanization and urban sprawl issues in city structure. Urban sprawl in europe european environment agency europa eu. His discourse thus far suggests that he regards any extension of urban space to be ipso facto urban sprawl.
Here our goal is to give a little more dimension to the explanation by showing some nuances to the definition of urban sprawl. Other subtleties about the definition of urban sprawl. However, the existing literature provides little guidance for policy makers on how to reverse sprawl. The term sprawl, as used by land developers, planners and governmental institutions, critically describes a pattern of lowdensity, often unsightly, automobile dependent development that has been a common form of growth outside of urban areas since at least world war ii.
Nationwide, land consumed for building far outpaces population growth. Urban sprawl is one of the distinctive phenomena in cities undergoing rapid urbanization processes 1,2,3. According to wassmer 2002, the term, urban sprawl, was first used in 1937 by earle draper of the. Many studies have shown that urban sprawl is associated with more driving and less public transit use, said dr holian. In 1994, the survey included the 25 most populous corebased statistical areas cbsas in the us. How can cities reverse urban sprawl, increase transit use. Measuring sprawl and its impact smart growth america. Anti sprawl definition is opposing or restricting urban sprawl. Urban sprawl, definitions, data, methods of measurement, environmental consequences, sustainability education.
The hallmarks include bad traffic, a flurry of strip malls and an out, not up development strategy, but ultimately sprawl is in the eye of the beholder. Department of agricultures natural resources conservation service nrcs is a major data source for agricultural land. Urban sprawl and growth management drivers, impacts and. Florida planner reid ewing, one of the architects of floridas statewide growth management plan, believes that sprawl. Urban sprawl affects the environment due to the migration of the people from very crowded towns and cities to the outskirts of the city or in rural areas. Understanding smart growth savings victoria transport policy institute 3 defining smart growth and sprawl smart growth is a general term for policies that result in more compact, accessible, multimodal development, in contrast to sprawl, which refers to dispersed, urban fringe, automobiledependent development, as indicated in table 1.
Urban growth management has become a common term to circumscribe strategies and tools to regulate urban land use in metropolitan areas. We discuss recent challenges of urban growth in 6 european and 2 us american cityregions. Typical things associated with sprawl are megastores, identical housing, large yards, and 8lane roads. By separating places where people live, work, and play and limiting direct connections between these activities, sprawl most often renders driving as the only rational travel option. Rethinking urban expansion in a rapidly urbanizing world, cities are expanding up, out or in both directions. Urban sprawl and the challenges for urban planning 1011 i. Information on the environment for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating environmental policy, and also the general public. Urban growth and sprawl is a pertinent topic for analysis and assessment. Urban sprawl article about urban sprawl by the free. This rapid increase of population is causing urban sprawl especially in. A case study on the mitigation of sprawl in omaha, ne and portland, or william matthew semple an introduction to sprawl. The national longitudinal land use survey nllus was administered in 1994, 2003, and 2019.
The 90page report is available for free pdf download. Antisprawl definition of antisprawl by merriamwebster. Urban sprawl definition of urban sprawl by merriamwebster. Today, there is no generally accepted definition of this term. Research paper quantitative analysis of urban form. Survey respondents are land use planning officials in local governments with land use and zoning authority, which varies from place to place. Urban sprawl definition european environment agency. Urban sprawl meaning in the cambridge english dictionary.
Urban sprawl definition and meaning collins english. Explaining the apartheid city 21 examples is david hemsons doctoral thesis on the durban dockworkers, written in the 1970s at a time when such an approach had currency. Urban sprawl causes and effects alternative energy. It is particularly used to counteract negative impacts of urban sprawl but also to frame future urban development. By devon haynie assistant managing editor, cities feb. The term to describe unplanned and rampant suburban and urban growth because of the way it eats up the landscape and sprawls out the extent of a metropolitan area. Most definitions indicate sprawl is a phenomenon involving. Download our english dictionary apps available for both ios and android. Although accurate definition of urban sprawl is debated, a general consensus is that urban sprawl is characterized by unplanned and uneven pattern of growth, driven by multitude of processes and leading to inefficient resource utilization. Many people, however, tend to think of sprawling cities as places where people make most of their trips by car, and nonsprawling cities as places where people are more likely to walk, cycle, or take. Studies on the driving forces of urban sprawl provide profound insights in sustainable management of urban changes that alter the cities structure and pattern 1,2,3. Sprawl is a singleuse, lowdensity, disconnected approach to community design.