A Smart Growth Bibliography:

Sprawl

PLEASE NOTE: Some of the documents listed in this bibliography are provided as files that
you may download. To read "PDF" files, Acrobat software is required, available free from Adobe.

Divided We Sprawl: Kansas City's Flight From The Core Leaves In Its Wake a Fractured Community and a Faded Sense of Spirit. The Kansas City Star. December 17, 1995 (Reprint Dec 17 through Dec. 22, 1995).
Summary: Six part story that examines the character and cost of sprawl. Newspaper article (20 pages).

Audirac, Ivonne, Anne H. Shermyen, and Marc T. Smith. Ideal Urban Form and Visions of the Good Life - Florida's Growth Management Dilemma. APA Journal, Autumn 1990.
Summary: The paper contends that the notion of a fiscally efficient and livable compact urban form is part of a nostalgic urban imagery which runs counter to residential preference for low density lifestyles. The authors argue that there is too little empirical evidence to substantiate claims of economic and fiscal benefit of compact form. Paper (13 pages).

Audirac, Ivonne, and Maria Zifou. Urban Development Issues: What is Controversial in Urban Sprawl? An Annotated Bibliography of Often Overlooked Sources. CPL Bibliography 247. Chicago, IL: Council of Planning Librarians.
Summary: The bibliography contains an often-overlooked literature which the authors believe to be indispensable for a more objective and critical appraisal of the thinking surrounding the concept of urban sprawl and the policies designed to contain it. Bibliography with 4 pages of introduction.

Bank of America, Greenbelt Alliance, California Resources Agency, and Low Income Housing Fund . Beyond Sprawl: New Patterns of Growth to Fit the New California, 1995.
Summary: The report discusses phenomenon of sprawl in California, as well as its causes and its costs. It is meant to make a meaningful contribution to the public dialogue about the quality and direction of California's growth in the 21st century, and is a call for California to move beyond sprawl and rethink the way it will grow in the future. Descriptive report (11 pages).

Binger, Gary and Janet McBride. Beyond Polemics: A Discussion of 'The Case for Suburban Development' and 'Beyond Sprawl: New Patterns of Growth to Fit the New California,' Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), May 1996.
Summary: The paper outlines the competing conclusions from two reports: The Case for Suburban Development and Beyond Sprawl: New Patterns of Growth to Fit the New California. It considers whether current ABAG policies and initiatives should be abandoned or revisited in the light of the findings particularly of the Case report. The authors conclude that the Case report does not make a compelling case to abandon either advocacy of ABAG's adopted policies, or of its approach to collaborative subregional planning. Paper (7 pages).

Breslaw, Jon A. Density and Urban Sprawl: Comment, Land Economics, Vol. 66, No.43, November 1990.
Summary: This paper is a response to Richard Peiser's study Density and Urban Sprawl. The paper demonstrates that Peiser's conclusion that policies which restrict discontinuous development may reduce efficiency in the land market and lead to lower, rather than higher, overall urban density is not true. Paper (5 pages).

Building Industry Association of Northern California. Striking at the Heart of Beyond Sprawl, BIA News, Volume 5, No. 1, March 1996.
Summary: The article summarizes the findings of Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson's paper The Case for Suburban Development. It examines some of the crucial claims of the 1995 Beyond Sprawl Report and compares them to the findings of the work by Gordon and Richardson. Article (10 pages).

Ewing, Reid H. Characteristics, Causes, and Effects of Sprawl: A Literature Review, Environmental and Urban Issues, Winter 1994, FAU/FIU Joint Center.
Summary: The study reviews the literature on the dimensions, causes, and costs of sprawl between 1957 and 1994. (15 pages).

Fitts, Michael D. and John Holtzclaw. Response to 'The Case for Suburban Development,' Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), May 1996.
Summary: The paper is a response to Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson's report The Case for Suburban Development. The authors state that the report's conclusions ignore scientific opinion on key issues and selectively disregard essential variables. The paper further contends that the Case report assumes away the problem of suburban growth and fails to articulate a vision of how California's cities should accommodate the anticipated population increase of the next 45 years. Paper (17 pages).

Gersh, Jeff. The Rocky Mountain West at Risk, Urban Land, March 1995.
Summary: The article provides an overview of the demographics of the Rocky Mountain West's new boom, its major socioeconomic and environmental implications, and an alternative to sprawl. Descriptive article (4 pages).

Gordon, Peter and Harry W. Richardson. The Case for Suburban Development, Report prepared for the Building Industry Association of Northern California and the Home Ownership Advancement Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, March 1996.
Summary: The paper, commissioned by the Building Industry Association of Northern Californiato review issues raised by Beyond Sprawl: New Patterns of Growth to Fit the New California, examines several issues that help to evaluate whether or not the promotion of compact development is a worthwhile planning goal. The conclusion is that an evaluation of the examined issues does not establish the case for promoting compact cities, and that pejorative descriptions of suburban development as sprawl are unjustified and perhaps unfair. Paper (23 pages).

Moe, Richard. Growing Wiser: Finding Alternatives to Sprawl, Speech prepared for the Alternatives to Sprawl Conference, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Lincoln Land Institute, 22 March 1995.
Summary: This speech discusses sprawl in the context of historic preservation. Moe touches upon federal and state subsidies of sprawl, its social costs, the types of spaces created in sprawl, and the fact that communities have choices when it comes to development. He discusses instruments to fight sprawl, including tax policy, urban growth boundaries, smart growth, and zoning.

Orfield, Myron. Metropolitics: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability, Working Paper.
Summary: The paper argues that the increasing polarization occurring in the Twin Cities region needs a strong, multifaceted, regional response. The author suggests six substantive and one structural reform to stabilize the central cities and older suburbs and prevent metropolitan polarization. These inter-related reforms are: 1) fair housing; 2) property tax-base sharing; 3) reinvestment; 4) land planning/growth control; 5) welfare reform/public works; and 6) transportation/transit reform. In addition a panoply of tax and public finance reforms should occur to overcome incentives for sprawl. Working paper (109 pages).

Peiser, Richard B. Density and Urban Sprawl, Land Economics, Vol. 65, No. 3, August 1989.
Summary: Empirical test of whether sprawl, characterized as "the lack of continuity in expansion", is inefficient. The paper concludes that policies which restrict discontinuous development may reduce efficiency in the land market and lead to lower, rather than higher, overall urban density. Paper - Model (13 pages).

Real Estate Research Corporation. The Costs of Sprawl, Detailed Cost Analysis, Washington, DC; U.S. GPO, 1974.
Summary: The study analyzes prototype development patterns in terms of economic, environmental, natural resource, and social costs. Three community types analyzed are: low density sprawl; combination mix; and high density planned. Study (three volumes).

Richmond, Henry R., The Prospects for Land Use Reform in America: Storm Clouds or Silver Lining? Speech, delivered to the Greenspace Alliance, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, 29 September 1994.
Summary: In this speech, Richmond discusses four issues: trends that drive sprawl, who is affected by sprawl, how reforms will ripple throughout society, and how coalition building is important to combat sprawl. Trends are outmigration, expansion of metro areas, consequent loss of farmland, etc. Autodependency is discussed as a transitprecluding development form. Sprawl's social costs are also covered (air, congestion, energy, water). Richmond notes that we must start dealing with land use as the source of the problem rather than the symptoms. Disinvestment in urban areas is also cited as a problem, and Richmond describes the dilemma that many developers face when deciding where to build projects.

Robinson, Susan K. (ed.). Financing Growth: Who Benefits, Who Pays, and How Much? Chicago: Government Finance Research Center of the Government Finance Officers Association, 1990.
Summary: A volume of papers that emerged from a conference on growth. Several authors discuss the extra burden that growth places on the alreadystrained revenue raising abilities of municipalities. They discuss the financial dimensions, political feasibility of actions, social costs of continued sprawl, and the breakdown of where the greatest burden of costs lie. Growth is addressed generically, not as different archetypes.

South Carolina Coastal Conservation League (SCCCL). "The Other City: Growth on Septic in the Tricounty", SCCCL Land Development Bulletin, Number 7, Fall 1993.
Summary: The article discusses problems resulting from scattered rural residential growth in the Tricounty region and presents the need for a regional solution based on regional coordination. Article (6 pages).

South Carolina Coastal Conservation League (SCCCL). "Rural Lands Under Threat", SCCCL Land Development Bulletin, Number 2, December 1992.
Summary: The article discusses how the Tricounty region must face the issue of how to house and employ the projected 250,000 new residents over the next twenty years without overwhelming the natural environment and the human service systems on which residents depend. The article is part of the Land Development Project designed to study the development patterns likely to emerge in the Tricounty over the next 20 years. Article (5 pages).

South Carolina Coastal Conservation League (SCCCL). "Two Possible Futures: The Choice Is Ours", SCCCL Land Development Bulletin, Number 1, December 1992.
Summary: The article discusses the costs of urban sprawl and the recreation of traditional neighborhoods as a viable alternative to current growth patterns. The article is part of the Land Development Project designed to study the development patterns likely to emerge in the Tricounty over the next 20 years. Article (5 pages).

Steiner, Frederick. Sprawl Can Be Good, Planning, July 1994.
Summary: The article argues that in certain situations, and with good planning, dispersed settlement can actually have beneficial consequences. It includes examples of promising development projects in the Sonoran desert. Descriptive article (4 pages).

U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. The Technological Reshaping of Metropolitan America, OTA-ETI-643, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, September 1995.
Summary: Chapter 8: Discussion of the problem of urban sprawl: Causes, benefits, and costs. Investigation of the nature and extent of the costs and subsidies associated with urban sprawl. (26 pages). Chapter 9: Discussion of mechanisms that account for the problems of the urban core and identification of possible sources of renewal. (14 pages). Chapters from a Report to Congress.

Young, Dwight. Alternatives to Sprawl, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 1995.
Summary: As metropolitan areas across America absorb new residents and haphazardly planned business development spreads from city to suburb to exurb, the result is often the kind of sprawl associated with auto-dependent growth. Some familiar characteristics are traffic congestion, featureless low-density housing tracts, congested retail centers, and the draining of vital resources from older city neighborhoods. Proposed alternative forms of growth that promote clustered housing and transit-oriented development offer promise, but still face stringent tests in the economic and political marketplaces. Paper (31 pages).


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PLEASE NOTE: Some of the documents listed in this bibliography are provided as files that
you may download. To read "PDF" files, Acrobat software is required, available free from Adobe.

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