The environmental think tank environmental Sustainable Prosperity has created a handy infographic describing the benefits of dense urban development compared to sprawl.
Angie Schmitt shares the work of the Sustainable Prosperity think tank in capturing a comparison of costs in infrastructure and services between sprawling development and compact neighborhoods. The study itsel is nearly ten years old, but worth a look for a well illustrated encapsulation of the concepts described by the study.
The think tank produced an infographic after studying the Halifax Regional Municipality [pdf] in Nova Scotia, which contains neighborhoods with one house per 2.5-acre lot on one end of the spectrum and 92 people per acre on the other. In Halifax, according to Schmitt, "the cost of administering services varied directly in proportion to how far apart homes were spaced."
Some of the findings the study, as described by Schmitt: "The most sprawling areas impose three times the annual cost per household as the most compact areas. For hard infrastructure like water, sewers, and roads, the high cost of sprawl is even more stark — 'ten times the cost of other patterns' over the lifecycle of the investment, according to the authors."
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