The Specter of Sprawl Charles W. Schmidt Abstract
Urban sprawl is endemic throughout the United States, and there is widespread concern over its potential environmental and public health impacts. Many of the nation's cities are consuming land faster than their populations are growing, pushing the specter of urban and suburban pollution farther into rural corridors. Unchecked urban growth is linked to many environmental problems, including increased automobile emissions, deterioration of air and water quality, loss of rural lands, and a declining sense of community. The emerging consensus among citizens, planners, government officials, and environmental groups is that sprawl is unsustainable, and coordinated land use planning strategies are needed to check its growth. Fortunately, however, recognition of sprawl's impacts is gaining ground, and with careful planning, its impacts may slowly begin to be reversed. If there is one thing that most stakeholders working on the sprawl issue seem to agree on, it is that sprawl is essentially a local affair. Just how a community goes about dealing with its growth depends largely on its own environment, culture, and economy. Therefore, government agencies and private organizations working on the sprawl issue are heavily vested in addressing local concerns, even as they recognize sprawl's larger implications.
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