Causes of Sprawl: A Portrait from Space

From the research abstract by Marcy Burchfield, Henry G. Overman, Diego Puga and Matthew A. Turner: "We study the extent to which U.S. urban development is sprawling and what determines the differenecs in sprawl across space. Using remote-sensing data to track the evolution of land use on a grid of 8.7 billion 30x30 meter cells, we measure sprawl as the amount of undeveloped land surrounding an average urban dwelling. The extent of sprawl remained roughly unchanged between 1976 and 1992, although it varied dramatically across metropolitan areas. Ground water availability, temperate climate, rugged terrain, decentralized employment, early public transport infrastructure, uncertainty about metropolitan growth and unincorporated land in the urban fringe all increase sprawl."

From the paper:

"...1.9 percent of the land area of the United States was developed by 1992. Two thirds of this developed land was already in urban use around 1976, while the remaining one third was developed subsequently. Our main findings are concerned with whether development is sprawling or compact. We measure sprawl as the amount of undeveloped land surrounding an average urban dwelling. By this measure, commercial development has become somewhat more sprawling during the study period but the extent of residential sprawl has remained roughly unchanged between 1976 and 1992. In contrast to this stability over time, the extent of sprawl does vary dramatically across metropolitan areas."

[Editor's note: Although the first link below is to The Quarterly Journal of Economics, which charges a fee to access the article, the second link is to the resarcher's own website, which features a PDF version of the article.]

Thanks to Peter Gordon