Urban Sprawl: Diagnosis and Remedies

Abstract

This article argues that urban spatial expansion results mainly from three powerful forces: a growing population, rising incomes, and falling commuting costs. Urban growth occurring purely in response to these fundamental forces cannot be faulted as socially undesirable, but three market failures may distort their operation, upsetting the allocation of land between agricultural and urban uses and justifying criticism of urban sprawl. These are the failure to account for the benefits of open space, excessive commuting because of a failure to account for the social costs of congestion, and failure to make new development pay for the infrastructure costs it generates. Precise remedies for these market failures are two types of development taxes and congestion tolls levied on commuters. Each of these remedies leads to a reduction in the spatial size of the city.

Land markets and land market regulation: progress towards understanding

“…There is a more informal political economy type of work, drawing on classical welfare economics without much formal modelling. Evans (1999) provides an overview of this branch of work although it does not include an important recent contribution of the leading US representative, Fischel (2001) nor Brueckner's (2000) synthesis of the arguments. This body of work, going back at least to Bailey (1959), deals with a complex world in which there is a range of types of externality associated with land use and its occupation as well as a range of quasi-public goods associated with land consumption.…”

A spatial econometric analysis of land use efficiency in large and small municipalities

“…Studies documented also the effects on the ecological equilibrium (Alberti, 2005) and the potential for rural development, primarily through the direct effects on farmland loss 2 and indirect effects on farmland prices (Delbecq et al, 2014;Guiling et al, 2009;Karlsson and Nilsson, 2014;Livanis et al, 2006). Urban economists traditionally mitigated this strong negative sentiment against urban expansion upholding a rational justification for it, connected to the increased demand for housing generated by higher income, growing population, and the decline in transport cost (Brueckner, 2000). Grounding on the Mills-Muth theory of monocentric urban development (Mills, 1972;Muth, 1969), the economists' view advocates the predominant role of market forces in determining the optimal allocation of land across alternative uses, which benefits the households to the largest extent.…”

“…Congestion likewise causes negative externalities that the commuters are not asked to pay for in the cost of their trip. In theory, the cost of externalities could be internalised, as suggested by Brueckner (2000), but in fact, the use of a system of fiscal incentives as a remedy to market failures can be very difficult to implement and to manage in the case of land use (Knaap et al, 2007). As a partial result of market inefficiency, urban spatial expansion occurred even in circumstances of declining population and number of households (Haase et al, 2013).…”

“…Others refer more specifically to the fragmentation of the built-up area (Oueslati et al, 2015). In contrast, economists define sprawl as a land take that is excessive with respect to the optimal amount of urbanised area, and specifically to housing demand (Brueckner, 2000). In line with this approach, the OECD suggests measuring sprawl as the growth in built-up area adjusted for the growth of population (OECD, 2013).…”

Social interaction and urban sprawl

“…In appraising the attack on sprawl, Brueckner (2000Brueckner ( , 2001 argues that criticism of urban spatial expansion is only justified in the presence of market failures or other distortions, which bias the normal expansionary effects of population and income growth in an upward direction.…”