Mitigating the Environmental Footprint of Sprawl

“Currently, the sprawling outer areas of US cities are environmentally unsustainable and a wasteful use of land,” begins a provocative article by Dana Cuff, a professor of architecture and urban design at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Among the complaints about the U.S. suburban proclivity, Cuff lists “ social stratification and an unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity,” greenhouse gas emissions, long commute times, congestion, high infrastructure costs, and high housing costs.

“But even US suburbs are not beyond redemption,” writes Cuff to switch to a more optimistic note about the potential for suburban redemption.

Promoting ideas explored by over a decade of work at cityLAB, a urban-design research center at UCLA, to solve the problems of sprawl in Southern California. Among the prescriptions offered here are a call to change the rules about what can be built and where (“Three-quarters of residential areas in US cities are designated as ‘single family’, meaning that just one house can be built on each plot”) as well as parking requirements.

Cuff also argues for the use of state law to preempt local zoning regulations, writing: “My research indicates that well-designed state laws on land use can boost public benefits while allowing local jurisdictions to adjust projects to local needs. For example, cities with relatively large houses or small plots could customize laws to allow secondary units to be carved out of existing homes.”

The source article, linked below, concludes with a series of questions recommended by Cuff to begin to address the poor environmental outcomes of suburbia.