Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Sprawl

Miami Mayor’s Economic Fix: Build America’s Biggest, Tackiest Mall

By Angie Schmitt | Mar 6, 2015 | 20 Comments

Forget what you’ve heard about the death of American shopping malls. Yesterday, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez unveiled plans for a 200-acre megamall complete with “submarines, a Legoland, sea lions and an artificial ski slope.” “American Dream Miami,” as they call it, would be the largest mall in America, according to the Miami Herald. The corporation behind the plan […]

Sprawl Costs the Public More Than Twice as Much as Compact Development

By Angie Schmitt | Mar 5, 2015 | 42 Comments

How much more does it cost the public to build infrastructure and provide services for sprawling development compared to more compact neighborhoods? A lot more, according to this handy summary from the Canadian environmental think tank Sustainable Prosperity. To create this graphic, the organization synthesized a study by the Halifax Regional Municipality [PDF] in Nova Scotia, […]

Two Graphs That Illustrate America’s Dysfunctional Housing Market

By Angie Schmitt | Feb 5, 2015 | 12 Comments

Jed Kolko, chief economist at real estate information giant Trulia, recently shared these two graphs that give us an interesting glimpse into what’s happening in the American housing market. This first graph shows that housing development is growing fastest in the suburbs. To be precise, the most sprawling, suburban of suburbs. But that’s only part […]

The Suburbs Aren’t Dying — They’re Growing Differently

By Tony Dutzik | Jan 26, 2015 | 12 Comments

Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. Sommer Mathis said much of what needed to be said about the recent round of “the suburbs are back, baby!” stories on housing trends, including this analysis from Jed Kolko, housing economist at Trulia.com, and the related commentary from Matt Yglesias at Vox. Mathis argues that the concept of a battle for supremacy between cities and […]

Here’s Why No One Shoots Engagement Photos in the Suburbs

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 14, 2014 | 65 Comments

Nothing says unbridled passion like a treeless cul-de-sac, right? That’s what Nathaniel Hood, who writes for Streets.mn and Strong Towns, and his new bride-to-be were thinking when they shot these engagement photos as a gag. Hood said on his website: Engagement photos are either urban or rural. They are either a former factory or a […]

Peak Sprawl? The Fringes of the New York Region Are Shrinking

By Stephen Miller | Oct 2, 2014 | No Comments

A new report out of Rutgers University [PDF] reveals that since 2010, the fringes of the New York region have lost population as the core has grown, a reversal of the sprawling pattern that predominated starting in 1950, when the suburbs grew and the city shrank. The report compares regional growth between 1950 and 1980 […]

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