Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Sprawl

Is Atlanta Done With Sprawl?

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 7, 2013 | 1 Comment

The sprawling-est city in the Southeast — Atlanta — is entering a whole new phase, according to a new report from Christopher Leinberger at the George Washington University School of Business. Since 2009, the bulk of for-profit development in the region has been located in walkable regional destinations that account for just 1 percent of region’s […]

Crawlable Urbanism: Cities Are for Kids, Too

By Tanya Snyder | Aug 13, 2013 | 143 Comments

All of a sudden, I feel like all anyone is talking about is whether it’s a good idea to raise kids in the city. I’m raising a kid in the city. I feel great about it when she has a blast on the back of the bike, or makes friends on the bus, or gets […]

Paul Krugman Links Sprawl to Persistent Social Inequality

By Tanya Snyder | Jul 29, 2013 | 25 Comments

Is sprawl holding back social mobility in America? Paul Krugman didn’t mince words yesterday in a follow-up to a post he wrote soon after the Detroit bankruptcy was announced. In that initial blog post, he compared Detroit to Pittsburgh and concluded that it wasn’t just the loss of manufacturing jobs that hurt Detroit — it was […]

A Post-Housing-Bust Prescription for Federal Real Estate Programs

By Angie Schmitt | Jul 25, 2013 | No Comments

The federal government subsidizes housing and real estate to the tune of about $450 billion a year. Roughly 50 uncoordinated programs influence the housing market, often in unintended and insidious ways. The Federal Housing Administration’s Single-Family Loan Program, for instance, decreases the relative attractiveness of building multi-family housing — which is more energy efficient and […]

How Sprawl Got Detroit Into This Mess

By Angie Schmitt | Jul 22, 2013 | 63 Comments

It wasn’t de-industrialization that bankrupted Detroit, wrote Paul Krugman in a New York Times column yesterday. If that was all there is to it, then how do you explain the fact that Pittsburgh, once so dependent on the steel industry, is now recovering? No, what brought Detroit to this low point, more than the loss […]

Strong Towns’ Chuck Marohn: Why Suburban Growth Is a Ponzi Scheme

By Clarence Eckerson Jr. | Jul 22, 2013 | No Comments

Chuck Marohn cofounded the non-profit Strong Towns in 2009. Since then he has steadily built an audience for his message about the financial folly of car-centric planning and growth. The suburban development pattern that has prevailed since the end of World War II has resulted in what Marohn calls “the growth Ponzi scheme” — a system that […]

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