The Effects of Urban Sprawl on America's Largest Cities

The third listing for the definition of sprawl in the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary is as follows: “to spread or develop irregularly”. Unfortunately, this is the pattern, or lack thereof, with which America’s development is following. Every single day the world population rises, and these new babies have to live somewhere. Due to the fact that the birth rate is larger than that of the death rate in America (http://www.bartleby.com/151/a24.html), new homes and communities must be developed to accommodate all of the incoming people. This fundamental concept is coupled by another very powerful driving force prompting people to live in the suburbs of America, and that is greed. The economy makes

In Robert Bruegmann article “How Sprawl Got a Bad Name,” he is the odd man out and is for sprawling. One of his reasons throughout is that all the architectures plan for preventing the problem has failed. Bruegmann shows his argument that the economy has these set of expectations for today’s society. The citizens are not really thinking realistically when it comes to those modern expectations. He backs up his point by stating a big crisis of traffic in Los Angeles and how it is not the congestion it is that the programs sit in place are outdated. One of the more convincing reasons of why Bruegmann is supporting sprawl is “that growing numbers of people have discovered that it is the surest way to obtain the rich, satisfying

This paper is a review of past and current research based on the cause and effect of urban sprawl in the United States with a case analysis of Fairfax County, Virginia. The motivation for this review is to shed light on issues that surround urban sprawl in large metropolitan areas and to discuss recommendations for research and ways to improve various effects of sprawl. The second motivation for this research is to show that there needs to be uniformity among researchers and urban planners, better data and analysis should be done to combat sprawl. My goal with this literature review is to define urban sprawl, define classic patterns in the United States, how we measure sprawl, the cause and effect of sprawl in the United States, give detailed background information on Fairfax County, future trends and implications of sprawl in Fairfax County, how to combat sprawl in the United States as well as in Fairfax County and key priorities in future research.

Cars consist of being the number one way of travel throughout the United States. We rely on them to transport us to work, activities and necessary destinations. With this constant use of vehicles, it has had a negative impact on the environment. Although cars were invented almost a century ago to make life easier with getting around, car pollution has been our number one source of air pollution and has significantly impacted our environment due to how accessible they are. Arising problems such as air pollution, global warming, and health issues of americans, we have to come to the understanding that our environment is at risk if the amount of car pollution continues to increase.

Pamela Blais’s book called Perverse Cities is based on the drawbacks of urban sprawl within a city. The book focuses on multiple cities within North American (Canada and USA) and discusses the factors that make the notion of sprawl the least sustainable and livable for several reasons. For example, the increased use of transit causes pollution and effects the influence on public health, affordability and its relation to subsidized planning services. “Urban sprawl – low-density subdivisions and business parks, big box stores and mega malls [to maximize space] have increasingly come to define city growth despite decades of planning and policy,” Blais argues that multiple things affect sprawl in cities and could be beneficial through cost from

Aforementioned the main research objective is to demonstrate that urban sprawl policies are more prominent in metropolitan cities with a lesser emphasis on secondary cities, as well as to determine comprehendible definitions of urban and rural areas within policies. Although substantial research is available, again the problems emerge as secondary cities apparently do not receive any focus. In the literature section of this research study, the scoping review methods were used, these types of reviews provide a preliminary assessment of the potential size and scope of available research literature. It aims to identify the nature and extent of research evidence (usually including on-going research).

Since Henry Ford’s invention of the moving assembly line to mass produce civilian automobiles in 1913, the environment and air that we breathe every day is being ruined and polluted. Though people drive cars around every day with no worries, they still are damaging the world around them with every mile. Car emissions are causing multiple issues with the air and water sources. Harmful gases are being emitted from the cars and are messing up the natural gases already present in our atmosphere. These gases consist of sulfur-based substances and are polluting and contaminating the already present nitrogen oxide and other greenhouse gases up in the atmosphere. These harmful emissions then seep into our blue seas and clear lakes, poisoning the waters and killing the

Urban sprawl is the rapid expansion of a city toward low-density surrounding areas. It occurs when rural land is developed faster than necessary to support population growth. When urban sprawl occurs farmland and natural habitats disappear, while developed, areas are abandoned. This unplanned sprawl harms the environment because it results in the wasteful consumption of natural resources and other harmful consequences.

During the past 15 years, I have seen my once-rural hometown of Washington Township transform into a maze of single-family housing developments and strip malls. This type of growth has not been gentle on the local economy, especially small businesses. Stores such as the mom and pop hardware store, a local mainstay for many decades, have been forced out of business by the construction of two Home Depots and a Lowe’s within a two-mile radius of the town’s main street. This negative aspect of sprawl has been a trend that has repeated itself nationwide in recent years.

Since the Industrialization, cities attracted large amounts of labor force from rural to urban to engage in industries, which changed the structure of cities by increasing huge population. In addition, changing the structure of cities produces lots of problems, such as traffic congestion causes more serious air pollution, and insufficient housing problem; therefore, central cities began to extend the boundaries to desire better living environment to react the problems. However, urban sprawl is not the only one answer to solve the problems, and sprawling cities worse the problems. Thus, some ideas and critiques came out to analysis and solve sprawl, such as emerging smart growth and sustainable development to achieve a better living environment. Urban sprawl is not only affect the living style, such as commuting longer distance and time between workplace and home, but also influence our economic and government decision, for example, the costs of infrastructure in suburban is higher than the maintenance fee of existing infrastructure in city core. As a result, I want to know the history about sprawling, how sprawl affect cities, and how planners and people react to sprawl.

Are there benefits to urban sprawl and urban renewal? Being able to understand what these processes are is key to knowing if they benefit out society, or if they are just further destroying our environment. So what is urban sprawl? It is “the spreading of urban developments (as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city” (merriam-webster.com). Many cities across the United States have implemented regulations to controlling this issue. One of the best examples of urban sprawl control is in Boulder, Colorado. This city that is located about 30 miles from Denver “has developed a national reputation for having dealt creatively with growth management issues. The city has developed a 27,000-acre greenbelt, a system for controlling

Once upon a time, sprawl was a fairly neutral term to describe car dependent, low-density economic growth beyond the bounds of older suburbs. Now it is used almost exclusively to describe the dark side of that growth: unbearable traffic, vanishing open space, increasing levels of air and water pollution, and higher taxes to perpetuate the cycle of new schools, sewers, and roads. And that's just what the residents of older suburbs are feeling. Sprawl is even less attractive to urban residents who are left behind and involuntarily subsidize the outward migration

As a new form of urban development in the United States, edge cities are newly developed commercial, residential and employment centers located in the suburbs of the former commercial centers, which were farmland, villages and residential land 30 years ago. Now these emerging centers clearly provide typical urban functions, such as employment, housing, tourism and transportation,

A metropolitan refers to an area that comprises of a densely populated urban area and sparsely populated surrounding regions that share infrastructures, housing, and industries. The growth of metropolitan areas is essential for the nation and its citizens because they are the key political and economic regions. Metropolitan covers one or more urban areas, towns, satellite cities, and rural regions that are socially and economically joined to the urban areas. Various studies that had been conducted regarding the development of metropolitan areas, particularly in the United States, have found out that various factors have played a crucial role in fostering these developments. Some of these factors include; crime, race, immigration, and design assimilation. It is, therefore, significant to understand the benefits of metropolitan growth, who reaps them, the cost of metropolitan growth, and who is responsible for paying these costs.

Land use development patterns (also called urban form, built environment, community design, spatial development, and urban geography) is referred to as the human use of the earth’s surface, including the location, type and design of infrastructure such as roads and buildings. Land use patterns can have diverse economic, social and environmental impacts and some are more accessible and so reduce transportation costs to businesses and consumers.