Ah, urban sprawl. The essence of our lives. Gotta love it.
Urban sprawl is defined as the uncontrolled expansion of urban areas. Or as Wikipedia more aptly defines it, a multifaceted concept centered around the expansion of auto-oriented, low-density development. With the massive expansion of the suburbs over the past few days, it’s becoming an increasingly common phenomenon throughout the United States, and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is a particularly good example. But is it really such a bad thing? And even if it is, is there really anything we can do about it?
Well, both of those questions are entirely debatable. Critics of urban sprawl say that it increases pollution, reliance of fossil fuels, traffic, delays in emergency services, increased infrastructure and transportation costs, and even increased obesity. Proponents say that many households show a preference for the suburban lifestyle and that urban sprawl doesn’t really increase traffic.
First, let’s look at what causes urban sprawl. First come housing subdivisions. Subdivisions are large tracts of land containing entirely of new residences, and usually have distinct suburban characteristics. Because of the way that these subdivisions are designed, often, only a few places are available to enter or exit the development, leading all of the traffic onto larger collector streets.
Once a certain, perceived population threshold in the suburban communities is passed, usually some sort of commercial development will pop up outside of the suburbia. The first of these new developments will usually consist of strip malls or fast food restaurants, which are widely-regarded as the epitome of urban sprawl. These developments are generally not within a reasonable walking distance from the housing developments, usually requiring a vehicle to get to. Additionally, most jobs may be located a significant distance away from suburbia, requiring daily freeway travel and establishing the basis for urban sprawl. As new suburban developments pop up, such as big-box stores (ahem, Walmart) and shopping malls, the effects just get worse.
And when I say “effects,” I’m generally referring to traffic. If thousands of people have to commute to urban areas from the suburbs, congested freeways and rush hour effects become inevitable. This is in sharp contrast to people living in urban areas, where nearly everything is within walking distance from the residences.
So, what can we do about urban sprawl in areas where it has already occurred? Well, any solutions would consist of a long, arduous process in massive areas such as the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Just for a sense of how bad it truly is here, we can compare DFW to New York City. The population density in the DFW is 634 people per square mile, whereas in New York City, the population density is 27,012.5 people per square mile. That’s a massive difference.
Really the only long-term solution that is possible is to immediately halt development of large, sprawling housing developments and to start to build more mixed-use developments where people don’t have to rely on vehicles. Perhaps a good, notable example of this is Southlake Town Square, which combines retail, office, and residential developments and thus is perfect for pedestrians. Doing this on such a large scale as the metroplex, though, would be a huge undertaking that’s nearly impossible.
Scott, I agree with you. However, I believe urban sprawl is a much bigger problem than you make it seem. Look at Northwest ISD for example. We are the largest district in the state of Texas, and not by population, by acreage. We are huge urban sprawl enablers, and you even live in a partial-subdivison. Think about your life.
Re-evaluate.
Not Jonna Martin, you are so correct. If there’s people going to a certain high school that’s 20 miles away where there’s another school much, much closer, it becomes a problem of quality of life and fuel usage and seriously contributes to urban sprawl.
[...] Last week, I took a look at the growing problem of urban sprawl in the DFW area. The truth is, over recent years, residential preferences of Americans have changed. Some call it the “de-urbanization” of America. No matter what the term, it’s obvious that Americans, specifically North Texans, are moving from big cities and into smaller ones. This is especially alarming for the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, because as people move outward into smaller cities, the metroplex grows, thus creating more congestion on our transportation network which generally wasn’t designed to handle all of the suburban traffic. [...]
[...] weaving into the frontage road. However, the worst problem may be that frontage roads facilitate urban sprawl in more suburban [...]
[...] blessed with too much space in the DFW area. All of this space has caused a ridiculous amount of urban sprawl, which in turn has caused more commuters to drive across the Metroplex, and thus, more [...]
[...] cause of this can probably be explained by the textbook definition of urban sprawl. Millions of commuters live in suburbs and far away from where they work, and thus they always have [...]