Sierra Club warns of damage from sprawl

In an important and long overdue report by a major environmental group on the costs of sprawl, the Sierra Club released “The Dark side of the American Dream: The Costs and Consequences of Suburban Sprawl” on September 9, 1998. “Sprawl is more than just an eyesore across our countryside,” the report says. “Sprawl contributes to increasing costs for public services, the declining health of central cities, environmental degradation and loss of farmland, and a degraded quality of life.” About 400,000 acres of farmland per year are lost to suburban strip shopping centers and residential subdivisions, the Sierra Club says. The report also lists the cities that are most threatened by suburban growth patterns, according to the Sierra Club’s analysis (see table). The Sierra Club defines sprawl as “low-density development beyond the edge of service and employment, which separates where people live from where they shop, work, recreate, and educate — thus requiring cars to move between zones.” In its emphasis on separation of uses, the definition acknowledges the role that community design plays in the creation of sprawl. The solutions proposed by the Sierra Club pay little attention to design, however. The five primary solutions listed by the group focus on containment of sprawl and controlling the location of new development. They are: 1) Purchase land; 2) Establish Urban Growth Boundaries; 3) Revitalize Existing Towns and Cities; 4) Approve funds to purchase Open Space; 5) Mobilize the grassroots. Some or all of these solutions may be endorsed by new urbanists — but the solutions miss the central argument of the New Urbanism that sprawl was created by a poorly conceived community design philosophy that was universally accepted after World War II. Changing to a mixed-use, interconnected system of pedestrian-oriented community design gets little mention in the report. Only in the section titled “More Solutions” is transit-oriented development listed — but it emphasises supporting transit rather than adopting a new system of development as a solution in its own right. The report is at its best in documenting the extent of the damage done by sprawl. St. Louis, for example, is number two on the list of the most threatened large metropolitan areas. The Sierra Club notes that from 1950 to 1990, the metropolitan region grew 10 times faster than population (354 percent more “urbanized” land compared to 35 percent more population). Similar figures can be derived in every U.S. metropolitan region, although St. Louis is perhaps more extreme in its suburbanization than most places. Atlanta, which is ranked number one on Sierra’s suburban sprawl list, has the highest automobile use per capita in the U.S., the report says. Atlanta area residents drive a total of more than 100 million miles daily. “The ever increasing time spent driving is taking time away from families, increasing air pollution and placing growing demands on local and state governments to constantly expand the road system.”