To find books and magazines on sprawl, visit the Challenge to Sprawl Bibiologrpahy.
General Sprawl Articles
Surprise Coalition: Big Labor For "Smart Growth" by Neal Peirce
If We Don't Like Sprawl, Why Do We Go On Sprawling? by Donella H. Meadows
So What Can We Do -- Really Do -- About Sprawl? by Donella H. Meadows
Beyond Sprawl: New Patterns of Growth to Fit the New California sponsored by Bank of America
CNN Special: Where We Live - Atlanta confronts urban realities of unprecedented growth.
Alternatives Journal - Summer 2000 issue covers urban sprawl and the need to curb it as a first step towards healthy sustainable communities.
Link to Current News on Sprawl
Land Use & Open Space
The Trust for Public Land's 5/17/99 report "The Economic Benefits of Parks and Open Space: How Land Conservation Helps Communities Grow Smart and Protect the Bottom Line."
Sprawl Losses Staggering: New USDA report calculates over 2 million acres lost per year
Costs of Sprawl
"DEVELOPMENTS AND DOLLARS: An Introduction to Fiscal Impact Analysis in Land Use Planning," by the Natural Resources Defense Council - Tools for activists to examine the impacts of development proposals on local taxes and municipal budgets, as well as advice on accounting practices sometimes used to make development appear more attractive to local governments than it really is.
Urban Growth Means Lower Taxes, and Other Myths by Donella H. Meadows
Tax cost of Sprawl
"How Uncontrolled Sprawl Increases Your Property Taxes and Threatens Your Quality of Life" by Brett Hulsey
Cities & Communities
Designing Cities to Reduce Driving and Pollution
The American Planning Association produced two reports looking at planning in each of the states. These reports, "Planning For Smart Growth: 2002 State of the States" and "Planning Communities for the 21st Century," facilitate statutes and statutory reform efforts in the United States.
Sierra Magazine Article May/June 2000: How to Heal our Cities
Transportation
Smart Transportation Emission Reductions
Investigates methods to identify optimal transportation emission reduction strategies. It describes ways to correct current planning bias so mobility management solutions can be implemented to the degree optimal.
How does urban density, shopping, walkability and transit affect driving and global warming?
PowerPoint version
Factsheet for Center for American Progress
Todd Litman's study shows rail transit benefits to cities (PDF)
Induced Travel, or why building more roads will never solve gridlock.
Smart Growth -- As Seen From the Air. John Holtzclaw examines the relationship between urban design, transportation systems, and air pollution. (pdf file, 78K - get the reader.)
A Vision of Energy Efficiency - Smart Growth, Transportation and Energy Efficiency, from 2004 ACEEE conference.
This research is reported in more detail in "Location Efficiency: Neighborhood and Socio-Economic Characteristics Determine Auto Ownership and Use---Studies in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco," by John Holtzclaw, Robert Clear, Hank Dittmar, David Goldstein and Peter Haas, in the March 2002 issue of Transportation Planning and Technology.
Cara Seiderman's "Traveling at the Speed of Life,"
published in the Conservation Law Foundation's Autumn 97 "Conservation Matters."
(pdf file, 189K)
Julian Bond on public
transit, in the June 1997 edition of the Planet
Sierra Club's official transportation policy
Encouraging Bicycling, an article by John Pucher, Charles Komanoff, and Paul Schimek.
Read a Harper's
Magazine article on how AAA lobbies against clean air, bikes,
transit, auto safety, etc.
The costs of driving are even higher than you think. Autos
On Welfare is a quick glimpse at how we subsidize every gallon
of gas.
Study Links Auto Use to Neighborhood Design
New Emissions Assay: Freeway Growth Pollutes; Traffic Calming Cleans
Find out how motor vehicles are subsidized
Is there a density above which people are willing to take transit,walk or bike? How Compact Neighborhoods Affect Modal Choice
Designing Cities to Reduce Driving and Pollution: Studies in Chicago, LA and San Francisco
"Community Characteristics Promoting Transit and Walking", A compilation of what residenial and commercial conditions make transit feasible and how far people will walk to transit.
Exploring Public Transit's Effectiveness In Reducing Driving
Chris Bradshaw presents an interesting approach in The Valuing of Trips
How road and street design impacts road safety
Traffic Fatalities and Injuries: Are Reductions the Result of "Improvements" in Highway Design Standards?
Residential Street Typology and Injury Accident Frequency
Curbing Sprawl to Curb Global Warming
Generated Traffic Implications for Transport Planning. By Todd Litman
Peter Swift and Patrick Siegman show that Narrow Streets Slow Traffic.
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