Growth Management and Urban Sprawl
With the surge in national awareness of problems generated by sprawl, many governmental and private organizations now devote significant attention to Smart Growth.
Check them out:
National Home Builders Association
On the other hand, is sprawl so bad? And even if it is bad, do the solutions to sprawl present other, more troubling problems? Read Gregg Easterbrook writing for the New Republic on The Case for Sprawl. He says the U.S. has a lot of land it isn't using, so what's the worry. He also observes that "sprawl is caused by affluence and population growth,[and asks] which of these, exactly, do we propose to prohibit?"
The Sierra Club lists the following most threatened cities (see the Club's map for more detail).
30 most sprawl-threatened large
cities with a population of
1 million or more:
1 Atlanta
2 St. Louis
3 Washington, D.C.
4 Cincinnati
5 Kansas City
6 Denver
7 Seattle
8 Minneapolis-St.
Paul
9 Ft. Lauderdale
10 Chicago
11. Detroit
12. Baltimore
13. Cleveland
14. Tampa
15. Dallas
16. Hampton Roads,
VA
17. Pittsburgh
18. Miami
19. San Antonio
20. Riverside/San
Bernardino, CA
Dishonorable mentions
1
Los Angeles
2 San Diego
3 Phoenix
Five most sprawl-threatened medium
cities (population: 500,000 -1
million)
1
Orlando
2 Austin
3 Las Vegas
4 West Palm Beach
5 Akron
5 Most
sprawl-threatened small cities (population: 200,000 - 500,000)
1 McAllen, TX
2 Raleigh, NC
3 Pensacola, FL
4 Daytona Beach, FL
5 Little Rock, AR
Control over Utility Extensions to Manage Growth
Boulder, Colorado tried it in the early 1960s with a so-called "spokes of the wheel" plan. Click here to see how it worked.