Wrestling Sprawl to the Ground: Defining and measuring an elusive concept

Galster, George; Hanson, Royce; Ratcliffe, Michael R.; Wolman, Harold; Coleman, Stephen; Freihage, Jason

doi:10.1080/10511482.2001.9521426

Cited by 1,046 publications

(844 citation statements)

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“…Metropolitan-level sprawl indices have been developed by many sources, including USA Today, Sierra Club, and independent researchers (for example, Galster et al). 25 This paper adopts the sprawl index developed by Ewing et al for 83 US metropolitan areas because Ewing's index is the most recent and comprehensive effort of measuring sprawl, 26 incorporating various density, land use mix, centrality, and street connectivity dimensions. Ewing's sprawl index is a metropolitan-level factor extracted from six variables through principle component analysis: (1) gross population density (persons per square mile); (2) percentage of population living at low suburban densities; (3) percentage of population living at moderate to high urban densities; (4) net density in urban areas; (5) average block size; and (6) percentage of blocks with areas less than 1/100 square mile.…”

Section: Data and Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Sprawl Associated with a Widening Urban–Suburban Mortality Gap?

Fan

Song

2009

J Urban Health

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This paper examines whether sprawl, featured by low development density, segregated land uses, lack of significant centers, and poor street connectivity, contributes to a widening mortality gap between urban and suburban residents. We employ two mortality datasets, including a national cross-sectional dataset examining the impact of metropolitanlevel sprawl on urban-suburban mortality gaps and a longitudinal dataset from Portland examining changes in urban-suburban mortality gaps over time. The national and Portland studies provide the only evidence to date that (1) across metropolitan areas, the size of urban-suburban mortality gaps varies by the extent of sprawl: in sprawling metropolitan areas, urban residents have significant excess mortality risks than suburban residents, while in compact metropolitan areas, urbanicity-related excess mortality becomes insignificant; (2) the Portland metropolitan area not only experienced net decreases in mortality rates but also a narrowing urban-suburban mortality gap since its adoption of smart growth regime in the past decade; and (3) the existence of excess mortality among urban residents in US sprawling metropolitan areas, as well as the net mortality decreases and narrowing urban-suburban mortality gap in the Portland metropolitan area, is not attributable to sociodemographic variations. These findings suggest that health threats imposed by sprawl affect urban residents disproportionately compared to suburban residents and that efforts curbing sprawl may mitigate urban-suburban health disparities.

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Section: Data and Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Sprawl Associated with a Widening Urban–Suburban Mortality Gap?

Fan

Song

2009

J Urban Health

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“…Urban growth has to go somewhere. Cities must expand or fill-in to entertain growth and sprawl is one such accommodation (Burchell et al 1998;Galster et al 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Assumption of decentralization from a central core to the urban periphery is often fundamental to sprawl's characterization (Ewing et al 2002;Galster et al 2001). Sprawl is commonly linked to economic suburbanization, with an assertion that jobs and development follow population to the fringe and that businesses chase perceived discounts in development costs and greater access to highways there.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2001). There is also disagreement regarding the scale of observation that should be used: all land (gross density) (Ewing et al 2002), urban area (Ewing et al 2002;Pendall 1999), developable area (Galster et al 2001), urban fringe (Burchell et al 1998;Lang 2003), or smaller subsets, say all area save that in which people could not possibly reside (net density).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Toolkit for Measuring Sprawl

Torrens

2008

Appl. Spatial Analysis

195

163

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Debate regarding suburban sprawl in urban studies is contentious. It is fair to say that the phenomenon is not fully understood to satisfaction in the academic, policy, or planning communities and there are a host of reasons why this may be the case. Characterization of sprawl in the literature is often narrative and subjective. Measurement is piecemeal and largely data-driven. Existing studies yield contrary results for the same cities in many cases. The partial appreciation for the intricacies of sprawl is problematic. In practice, city planning agencies and citizen advocacy groups are scrambling to suggest and develop "smart growth" strategies to curb sprawl, without a strong empirical basis for measuring the phenomenon. Yet, sprawl is extremely popular with consumers. In this paper, we develop an innovative approach to diagnosing sprawl, looking across the full range of its characteristic attributes in a comprehensive fashion that is robust to some well-known challenges. This proves to be very useful in sweeping the parameter space of the phenomenon, enabling the visualization and valuation of sprawl surfaces across attributes, allowing us to check the pulse of a developing city. We apply the work to Austin, TX, a controversial exemplar of American sprawl, with the surprising result that sprawl and "smart growth" are found to co-exist and co-evolve. This raises questions about relationships between the two, with consequences for planning and public policy.

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“…The types of outcomes measured (at least to date) has varied widely to include: effects on property market systems (Carruthers, 2002a); state 3 expenditures and building permit approval rates -before and after program implementation (Lewis et al, 2009); changes in travel behavior (Rodriguez et al, 2006); and many others. The most common criterion for measuring the success of a growth management program however, has been the policy's impact on sprawl (see e.g., Nelson, 1999;Galster et al, 2001;Anthony, 2004), and the most widely used measure of sprawl has been density.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parsing density changes: an outcome-oriented growth management policy analysis

Kim

Deal

Chakraborty

2012

J Hous and the Built Environ

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Although a considerable number of studies have examined the effectiveness of growth management programs in curbing sprawl and increasing aggregate densities, less attention has been paid to understanding how these noted density improvements are realized. In this paper, we assess the mechanisms that underlie changes in aggregate population densities and empirically examine detailed density changes under various growth management regimes in the U.S. Our county-level statistical analysis using recent U.S. Census products and land use change data sets, finds that: a) states with proactive growth management programs do tend to experience relative density gains, but not in jurisdictions with restrictive local land use regulations and b) the marginal density gains appear to be attributable in large part to smaller housing vacancy rates and housing price escalations. Not surprisingly, our findings suggest that local structures are critical for achieving desired outcomes. Given the critical role of local action, the realization of compact development requires a tightly woven and integrated policy that not only makes logical sense at state levels, but can be followed and implemented at the local level.

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Wrestling Sprawl to the Ground: Defining and measuring an elusive concept

Cited by 1,046 publications

References 9 publications

Is Sprawl Associated with a Widening Urban–Suburban Mortality Gap?

Is Sprawl Associated with a Widening Urban–Suburban Mortality Gap?

A Toolkit for Measuring Sprawl

Parsing density changes: an outcome-oriented growth management policy analysis

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