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- Info
Reining in urban sprawl: What can be done to tackle this growing problem?
| Author: |
Stoel, Thomas B., Jr. |
| Date: |
1999 |
| Periodical: |
Environment |
| Abstract: |
Urban sprawl's environmental consequences often have been overlooked by environmentalists amid concerns about other problems. Yet conditions in metropolitan areas in the United States may be the best indicator of the environmental quality of our lives. Many U.S. residents believe that those conditions are deteriorating in important respects, including loss of green spaces, added runoff of pollutants into waterways, increased traffic that causes congestion and air pollution, and a less pleasing landscape. As a result, there has been a surge of actions aimed at limiting sprawl, including a host of measures approved by voters in November 1998. People care about urban sprawl because, from an everyday perspective, life in the United States is a metropolitan life. Officially designated metro areas now account for 19 percent of our nation's vast land area, compared with just 9 percent in 1960.1 Four out of five U.S. citizens live in a metro area and more than half live in an area with more than one million people. These are the places where many of us spend most of our lives. |
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