sprawl

a sense of place

Places of appealing character and distinctiveness draw us to them and away from sprawl; as they do, they become more sustainable, in a quite literal sense.[read more]

midwest flooding

The response for more resilience to severe weather events should include better planning for growth patterns that reduce pavement, and green infrastructure to absorb more rainwater before it becomes runoff.[read more]

transport in India

Building more roads is not the answer. Indian cities will need to invest in public transport, with a priority on city bus services integrated with other transit modes, as well as pedestrian and cycling networks.[read more]

sprawling development

The places in America where sprawl remains the predominant building pattern are not the spread-out icons of Phoenix, etc. Instead, they are small and medium-size regions in South Atlantic states, Texas and the southern Rockies.[read more]

sprawl/shutterstock

The problem, as I see it, is the normative embrace of certain land use patterns. Sprawl is bad. Density is good. You are either with Kotkin or Florida. Choose a side, now.[read more]

Phoenix light-rail

Phoenix, Arizona is infamous for its sprawl, its little stucco boxes, and its dominant car culture. An ambitious project aims to change the way Phoenix’s light rail is developed.[read more]

urban growth boundary

Because Central Floridian cities like Orlando exist on a plane field, they easily fall victim to sprawl. One answer is to create an urban growth boundary through land protection.[read more]

Beyond the environmental implications of rapid urbanization, there are also social implications. One-third of all urban residents (more than a billion people) now live in slums.[read more]

Toronto's suburbs are a textbook case of sprawl, a vast expanse of industrial parks, generic box stores and strip malls, and bland subdivisions with identical-looking tract homes. The landscape is spread out and car dependent, with imposing multi-lane thoroughfares that discourage walking.[read more]

Daniel Nairn's November 2009 post on sprawl and EMS delays cites a paper written in late 2009 by Dr. Matthew Trobridge and some of his colleagues in which they claim that they are the first to find a statistically significant link between sprawl and EMS response delays.  In the video link in Mr....[read more]

    When you look at the official US drought monitor map, you immediately see that many American cities may be in the wrong places for long-term water sustainability.  In particullar, note the presence of “long-term,” severe-to-extreme drought conditions across most of Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and...[read more]

Via Atlantic Cities, an interesting film from 1959 exploring the implications for sprawl... from the National Association of Home Builders and the Urban Land Institute.  I particularly like the diagrams of the monocentric city towards polycentric city form in post WWII United States. The solutions include planned unit...[read more]