Urban Sprawl

Historical Context

The use of the term urban sprawl has increased as people have become more concerned about the environmental and social impacts of urban expansion and are advocating that cities become more sustainable. This is not to say that urban expansion is new. For example, relative to English cities, some American and Australian cities were spread over large areas in the 19th century. Whereas today the expansion of cities is often seen by governments, planners, and many ordinary people as a problem, the spread of the city was understood as being beneficial for health, sunlight, and to reduce the risk of disease. Spreading the city out was one way of overcoming the damp, unhealthy, overcrowded conditions of older European cities. It was also considered part of the moral health of citizens to garden and demonstrate pride in maintaining their dwelling and yard. This way of thinking was also important in England, where one of the common elements of many planned towns in the 19th and early 20th centuries (including Saltaire, Bourneville, Port Sunlight, Letchworth, and Welwyn Garden City) was the provision of space, gardens, and access to sunlight. Importantly, the reduction in urban densities was often accompanied by clear urban boundaries to prevent the city “spilling over” onto other land uses.

Transportation

The spread of cities is closely related to the means of transport, and influenced by factors such as to [Page 1875]pography, population growth, and industrial development. When walking was the only available and affordable means of transport, the urban density was very high. Improvements in transport enabled people to commute over longer distances. The expansion of cities such as Melbourne in the 19th century and Los Angeles in the early 20th century was due largely to the provision and affordability of train and/or tram/streetcar transport. The transport infrastructure in many cities was developed as a way of selling land for residential use. The later arrival of the automobile accelerated this process because it enabled infilling between rail lines and the outward growth of the city beyond the rail lines.

Los Angeles, which was once promoted as the vision of a healthy, wealthy, and uncrowded lifestyle, became associated with terms such as automobile dependence. Los Angeles has become a metaphor for sprawl—the specter of freeway cloverleaf interchanges is raised in many cities as a warning of what could occur if a city was permitted to “sprawl.” Los Angeles is certainly spread out. It extends 131 miles (212 kilometers) along its east-west axis and covers 2,814 square miles (7,287 square kilometers) of land. Whether this spreading of an urban area is seen as positive or, as is implied through the use of the term sprawl, negative, depends on how an individual assesses the economic, sociocultural, and environmental costs and benefits of this form of urban development.

...