Rethinking Sprawl

The concept of "urban sprawl" is often likened to Justice Stewart's take on obscenity: hard to define, easy to recognize. Sprawl is in the headlines a lot these days, making the cover of National Geographic's July issue and as the subject of a report on New Community Design by the National Governors Association. Those who claim to "know it when they see it" often point to certain common denominators as both the causes and consequences of sprawl: dependence on the automobile, inefficient use of natural resources, and the strict separation of residential and commercial areas. Recently, however, researchers have begun to challenge much of the conventional wisdom about the forces that fuel sprawl.

Thanks to Joanna Mareth