Does Urban Containment Reduce Sprawl?

During the 1990s, the exurban landscape grew faster and added more people than urban, suburban, and rural landscapes. In many respects, exurbanization is the quintessential representation of urban sprawl and the problems it poses.

More than 100 metropolitan areas across the US attempt to manage exurbanization through various forms of urban containment at regional or subregional scales. In this article, authors Arthur C. Nelson and Thomas W. Sanchez assess the extent to which urban containment is effective in managing exurban sprawl in the 35 largest metropolitan areas in the US.

...Leasteffective relative to other forms of containmentwere metropolitan areas withweak containment efforts, principally becausesuch approaches do not substantiallyrestrict development outside containmentboundaries. Strong urban containmentappears to be effective in reigningin exurban sprawl but without apparentlydampening population growth generally.

[Editor's note: The link below is to a 500K PDF document.]

Thanks to Chris Steins