Costs of Sprawl

Across the nation, the debate over metropolitan sprawl and its impact has become pivotal to urban planning. A decade ago, Smart Growth America and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sought to raise the level of the debate by sponsoring ground breaking research to quantitatively measure sprawl and its quality-of-life impacts. The resulting measures are widely used in urban research and public health.

In Costs of Sprawl 2015, Reid Ewing and Shima Hamidi update and refine these measures, developing measures for urbanized areas and census tracts, in addition to metropolitan areas. Validating these measures against the travel outcomes that characterize sprawl, they explore the relationship between these and four topical outcomes: life expectancy, housing and transportation affordability, upward mobility and healthy food availability.

The first attempt to measure sprawl longitudinally, this book addresses the costs of sprawl to America, including traffic fatalities, obesity and other chronic diseases. An essential read for researchers, planners, urban designers, policy makers and smart growth advocates in the US and abroad, this book provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of one of the most critical issues in planning today.

Reid Ewing, Ph.D., is a Professor of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, chair of the Department of City and Metropolitan Planning, associate editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association, columnist for Planning magazine, and one the most highly cited academic planners in North America.

Shima Hamidi, Ph.D. is Director of the Institute of Urban Studies and Assistant Professor of Urban Planning. Hamidi is a transportation planner and a smart growth advocate. The results of her research have been cited in more than 100 national newspapers and magazines such as Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and CNN Money.