Costs of urban sprawl
- Environmental costs. One of the most obvious environmental effects of widespread building construction is the...
- Economic costs. Although the phenomenon of urban sprawl contributes greatly to various sectors of the economies of...
- Community costs. Many authorities argue that urban sprawl diminishes the local character of the community. Ubiquitous...
What are the economic effects of urban sprawl?
Chemicals present on pavement at the time of rain are often carried with runoff as water pollution, reducing water quality and threatening aquatic ecosystems downstream. Although the phenomenon of urban sprawl contributes greatly to various sectors of the economies of developed countries, there are several economic costs.
What is urban sprawl AP Human Geography?
Urban sprawl. Written By: Urban sprawl, also called sprawl or suburban sprawl, the rapid expansion of the geographic extent of cities and towns, often characterized by low-density residential housing, single-use zoning, and increased reliance on the private automobile for transportation.
What is another name for urban sprawl?
Alternative Titles: sprawl, suburban sprawl. Urban sprawl, also called sprawl or suburban sprawl, the rapid expansion of the geographic extent of cities and towns, often characterized by low-density residential housing, single-use zoning, and increased reliance on the private automobile for transportation.
Can a metro area grow without sprawl?
Since we confine our definition of sprawl to instances in which increases in urban land use exceed population demand, a metro area can grow considerably through infill of the spaces between developed sites, without sprawling a bit.
What are the costs of sprawl?
The upshot is that sprawl costs America an astounding $4,500 annually per capita. Of those costs, about $2,500 are borne by consumers — like car maintenance or higher tax bills. Another $2,000 or so is external — costs to society — like increased air pollution, or reduced economic mobility.
What are the costs of suburban sprawl?
In a 2015 report for the Victoria Transport Policy Institute and London School of Economics, transportation scholar Todd Litman analyzed the total cost of suburban sprawl in the United States. The topline figure: $1 trillion per year.
What are 3 negatives of urban sprawl?
Urban sprawl has many negative consequences for residents and the environment, water and air pollution, increased traffic and traffic jams, increased car dependency, parking, etc.).
What are the consequences of urban sprawl?
Urban sprawl can reduce water quality by increasing the amount of surface runoff, which channels oil and other pollutants into streams and rivers. Poor water quality is associated with a variety of negative health outcomes, including diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, kidney disease, and cancer.
Why is urban sprawl bad for the economy?
Sprawl has two primary impacts: it increases per capita land consumption, which displaces other land uses, and it increases the distances between activities, which increases per capita infrastructure requirements and the distances service providers, people and businesses must travel to reach destinations.
What is urban sprawl and why is it a problem?
Urban sprawl, a particular form of urban development, is a driver of several major challenges facing cities. These challenges include greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, road congestion and lack of affordable housing. Urban sprawl is a complex phenomenon, which goes beyond average population density.
What are at least 4 issues with suburban sprawl?
For years, scientists have argued that sprawling urban and suburban development patterns are creating negative impacts including habitat fragmentation, water and air pollution, increased infrastructure costs, inequality, and social homogeneity (Ewing 1997; Squires 2002).
What is negative consequences of urban growth?
Threats. Intensive urban growth can lead to greater poverty, with local governments unable to provide services for all people. Concentrated energy use leads to greater air pollution with significant impact on human health. Automobile exhaust produces elevated lead levels in urban air.
How does urban sprawl cause pollution?
Sprawl increases air pollution, which mixes with rain to become water pollution. In addition, urban activities create water pollution directly, through land run-off of construction site erosion, fuel spills, oil leaks, paint spills, lawn chemicals, pet wastes, etc.
What are 6 problems sprawl can cause?
Although some would argue that urban sprawl has its benefits, such as creating local economic growth, urban sprawl has many negative consequences for residents and the environment, such as higher water and air pollution, increased traffic fatalities and jams, loss of agricultural capacity, increased car dependency, ...
What are 2 consequences of urban sprawl to human health and the air quality?
Urban sprawl directly impacts traffic congestion, high oil consumption, and many other transportation issues. It is evident that urban sprawl has negative impacts on both air quality and public health, which affects the human condition. This results in health issues for inner-city residents and air pollution.
How does urban sprawl affect climate change?
These impacts threaten both the natural and rural environments, raising greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, and elevated air and noise pollution levels which often exceed the agreed human safety limits. Thus, urban sprawl produces many adverse impacts that have direct effects on the quality of life.
Why is urban sprawl costly?
Sprawl increases the costs of roads, housing, schools, and utilities. Three major national research investigations found that smart growth development can lower the construction costs for roads, utilities and schools by up to 25%. Sprawl also results in higher operational costs for these.
What is an example of suburban sprawl?
For example, an abandoned shopping mall can be turned into a medium-density housing development without the need for new water pipes, road access, or sewage lines. Support mixed-use development. People like to live in close proximity to where they can shop, recreate, and send their kids to school.
What are two contributing factors to sprawl?
The author presents nine important causes of sprawl that include: the rent gradient; demographic changes; growing affluence; car ownership; different levels of government services in suburbs and cities; racial discrimination; land assembly issues; federal income tax policy; and land use regulations.
What are the causes of urban sprawl?
Causes of Urban SprawlLower Land Rates. ... Improved Infrastructure. ... The Rise in Standard of Living. ... Lack of Urban Planning. ... Lack of Proper Laws that can Regulate Urban Planning. ... Lower House Tax Rates. ... The Rise in Population Growth. ... Consumer Preferences.
What are the effects of urban sprawl?
Because the effects of urban sprawl include duplicating more and more the most popular floor plan from the last development, we are left with fewer choices ultimately. One of the effects of urban sprawl that I find really distasteful is the homogenous nature of the housing stock we're leaving for our children.
How does urban sprawl affect people?
The effects of urban sprawl increase as the physical distance between the haves and the have-nots becomes greater and greater. Probably that's correlated to social distance. Social isolation for a group of folks in poverty not only robs them of positive role models, but also feeds the sense of hopelessness.
How does urban sprawl affect transportation?
However, some of the most important effects of urban sprawl are directly related to monetary costs. A sprawling pattern means that the road transportation system has to be lengthy, miles driven and delays due to traffic congestion are high, and transit becomes cost-ineffective because overall density is low.
What is a micropolitan area?
(A "micropolitan" area is one with a core city of at least 10,000 people, but fewer than 50,000. So if you live a mile outside a town of 12,000 folks, you live in a micropolitan area.)
What are the effects of low density residential patterns?
The low density residential patterns typically appearing as one of the effects of urban sprawl increase the demand for road building, and the need for spending money on new schools, public services, utilities, waste disposal, and water and sewer infrastructure follow.
Why is urban sprawl masked?
The inefficiency of these effects of urban sprawl to the public sector--and therefore to you, the taxpayers--tends to be masked because the municipality building the new infrastructure tends to be different from the central city.
Why is rural land important?
In many instances the rural land is critical to your groundwater restoration. With help from your state, you can evaluate exactly what the effects of urban sprawl are likely to be on your surrounding rural areas.
What are the factors that contribute to urban sprawl?
In many cases, urban sprawl has occurred in areas experiencing population declines, and some areas with rising populations experience little urban sprawl, especially in developing countries. Economic growth and globalization are often cited as the principal macroeconomic drivers of urban sprawl; however, increased affluence, attractive land and housing prices, and the desire for larger homes with more amenities (such as yards, household appliances, storage space, and privacy) play significant roles at the level of the individual. Many experts also believe that weak planning laws and single-use zoning also contribute to urban sprawl.
What is the construction of a suburban area?
The construction of houses, utilities, and roads in the suburbs, along with the delivery of resources to suburban residents and workers, are integralcomponents of the gross national productof developed countries. Because much of the growth in a metropolitan area occurs at the fringes, large amounts of resources and services are directed there. Construction at the “urban fringe” is increasingly characterized by a standardization of design. Many suburban housing tracts contain similar or identical models that sit on parcels with identical or nearly identical specifications. Standardization reduces costs, since materials (which often come from sources overseas) can be ordered in bulk, and quickens the pace of construction. Some urban planners and social scientists have linked this trend toward design standardization to the rising influence of globalization.
What is urban fringe?
Construction at the “urban fringe” is increasingly characterized by a standardization of design. Many suburban housing tracts contain similar or identical models that sit on parcels with identical or nearly identical specifications.
Why is standardization important in suburban housing?
Standardization reduces costs, since materials (which often come from sources overseas) can be ordered in bulk, and quickens the pace of construction.
When did Euclidean zoning become single use?
After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of zoning regulations in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Company (1926), the practice was largely adopted by American municipalities. As a result of the court decision , the term Euclidean zoning became synonymous with single-use zoning.
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Abstract
A large national sample from the US 1977 Nationwide Personal Transportation Study is analyzed in order to test the transport economies that may result from the dispersion of work trip-ends.
How much does sprawl cost?
This analysis indicates that sprawl imposes more than $400 billion dollars in external costs and $625 billion in internal costs annually in the U.S.
Is suburban development subsidized?
In fact, much of the cost of suburban development is in the road system, and it is subsidized by the Federal governments on both sides of the border. Roads are mostly "are free to use, but they aren’t cheap to build or maintain.". The fuel taxes and license fees don't begin to cover the costs, and the subsidies for road transport are greater ...
Is sprawl attractive?
And sprawl can be very attractive ; one can see why people move to the suburbs. Unfortunately the cycle of sprawl and automobile dependency is self-reinforcing and hard to break. Our cities are being degraded, their infrastructure rotting while new pipes and roads are being built in the suburbs.
Do new schools go up in sprawlville?
New schools go up in sprawlville while the city schools fall apart. Everything from federal and state investment to mortgage interest deductibility favors the suburban homeowner. There are things that could be done; there are many factors that could be considered when looking at new developments.
What is urban sprawl?
Urban sprawl can be defined as unrestricted growth in urban areas. Although there are many different approaches on how to measure urban sprawl, the common opinion is that urban sprawl can have many adverse effects, including social and economic issues.
Why is urban sprawl a problem?
Another cause for urban sprawl can be religion. Since people are often discriminated against because of their belief systems, minorities may decide to leave the cities and settle in rural areas in communities where they are free to live their beliefs.
How can urban sprawl be mitigated?
Urban sprawl could also be mitigated by raising the price of fuel. This could be accomplished by setting higher tax rates. Through the increased price of fuel, people would have an incentive to reduce commuting. This in turn would mean that it becomes more attractive for people to stay in or move to cities instead of living in suburbs.
How does stricter housing limits affect urban sprawl?
If these limits are quite strict, they lead to a significant reduction in urban sprawl since people are simply not able to build their homes in restricted areas.
How does urban sprawl affect society?
Urban sprawl can also cause changes in our daily social lives . Since outside of cities, the settlement density usually is much lower than in cities, the interaction between people may be reduced because of that.
How effective is local planning?
This means that municipalities take efforts that people stay in cities and do not settle down in suburbs or rural areas.
What are some ways to reduce sprawl?
Financial incentives. Financial incentives may be another effective measure for fighting sprawl. These incentives can come in several ways. For example, financial incentives can mean that people who live in the cities may be paid higher wages by companies than people in suburbs to cover the higher living costs.
The High Costs of Automobile-Dependent Transportation
Disinvestment Downtown and in The Inner Suburbs
Lack of Choice of Housing Types
Concentration of Poverty Is One of The Major Effects of Urban Sprawl
Sprawl and Health
Increased Costs For Communities and Taxpayers
- The low density residential patterns typically appearing as one of the effects of urban sprawl increase the demand for road building, and the need for spending money on new schools, public services, utilities, waste disposal, and water and sewer infrastructure follow. Police, fire, and emergency medical services must be provided immediately, but th...
Loss of Rural Heritage and Open Space
Summary of The Major Effects of Urban Sprawl