Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Sprawl

Sprawl and the Cost of Living

By Joe Cortright | Jul 6, 2016 | 67 Comments

Cross-posted from City Observatory. Over the past three weeks, we’ve introduced the “sprawl tax”—showing how much more Americans pay in time and money because of sprawling urban development patterns. We’ve also shown how much higher the sprawl tax is in the US than in other economically prosperous countries, and how sprawl and long commutes impose […]

Introducing the Sprawl Tax

By Daniel Hertz | Jun 2, 2016 | 3 Comments

Crossposted from City Observatory. If you read the news, you’ve probably seen reports about “congestion costs”: how much American commuters pay, in money and time, when they’re stuck in traffic. It’s fair to say that we’ve got some issues with many of these reports—but they’re popular nonetheless, perhaps because they help quantify a frustration that […]

Will Cleveland Finally Get Serious About Confronting Sprawl?

By Angie Schmitt | Apr 22, 2016 | 2 Comments

The Cleveland region has been struggling with sprawl for a long time. Since the 1970s, the regional population has shrunk while housing and jobs have spread outward — a combination that has devastated urban areas in particular. Transportation policy is a big part of the problem. Northeast Ohio keeps widening highways, facilitating quick suburban commutes and fueling sprawl. This weakens the places that are […]

Calgary Tackles the “Sprawl Subsidy”

By Angie Schmitt | Mar 23, 2016 | 1 Comment

As of last month, it costs more to buy a home on the sprawling edges of Canada’s third-largest city. Under a new rule, Calgary assesses a higher water fee on developers building homes in greenfield locations than on new homes in developed areas, to reflect the higher cost of providing infrastructure in spread-out locations. Mayor Naheed Nenshi and the City […]

Subsidizing Uber for the “Last Mile”? An Orlando Suburb Is Trying It

By Daniel Hertz | Mar 16, 2016 | 2 Comments

In a January 2015 paper, the Yale Law professor David Schleicher and Yale Law student Daniel Rauch published a paper on how local governments might regulate “sharing economy” companies, such as Uber, in the future. Among their more startling predictions, perhaps, was that the very cities that have been battling to regulate startups like Uber — which […]

Study: Upward Mobility Much Higher in Regions With Less Sprawl

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 28, 2016 | 1 Comment

Living in a sprawling area, like Atlanta, or a compact one, like Boston, doesn’t just affect how you get around. A new study published in the Journal of Landscape and Urban Planning suggests it may also have a significant impact on your chances to escape poverty. The study by Reid Ewing at the University of Utah compared upward […]

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