Who Sprawls Most? Spreading Out More Than Growing
A recent Brookings Institution study on sprawl in US metropolitan areas found that nearly all metro areas are urbanizing land at a much faster rate than their populations are growing. The surprise is that the trend of metropolitan areas becoming less dense - of spreading out more than growing - was most pronounced in the Northeast and Midwest, rather than the faster-growing population areas of the South and West. "Contrary to conventional wisdom, the West is home to some of the densest metropolitan areas in the nation," the report concludes. "By contrast, the Northeast and Midwest are in some ways the nation’s biggest sprawl problems because their metropolitan areas added few new residents, but consumed large amounts of land."
The authors found part of the explanation for higher rates of land consumption in the Northeast in "fragmented local governments," highlighting the need for municipalities to work together to address sprawl-related issues of development, transportation, sewer and water services, etc. The Brookings study found that there is no single problem of sprawl in the country, and therefore no single solution. "Rather," the report recommended, "the problems associated with metropolitan growth throughout the nation are characterized by regional differences and policy responses should be different as well."