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Landscape Characterization / Urban Sprawl / Causes & Effects
Causes of sprawl
Sprawl is a form of metropolitan growth that is a response to often bewildering
sets of economic, social, and political forces and to the physical geography of
an area. These forces and factors include:
- Population growth,
- Strong economy,
- Increasing household incomes,
- Fragmented municipal governments,
- Patterns of infrastructure investments:
- Public subsidization of infrastructure:
the construction of roads and the provision of infrastructure using public
money encourages development,
- ‘White flight’ from cities, and
- Topographic barriers and other physical constraints upon development
Effects of sprawl
Social Impacts
Concerns over urban sprawl and its consequences are not new, and this phenomenon as been subject to considerable scrutiny by academics, social critics, and public policy makers since the shift of people and economic activities beyond city cores intensified after 1945.Opinion appears to be divided over the social and economic impacts of sprawl, for the evidence indicates that both social /economic benefits and costs accrue from this phenomenon.
Favorable assessments of sprawl’s social impacts include:
- Reducing the housing gap between blacks and whites;
- Providing housing opportunities for minorities and recent immigrants; and
- Increasing the affordability of housing in both suburbs and cities.
Unfavorable assessments of sprawl’s social impacts include:
- Loss of community spirit and values;
- Less leisure time; traffic congestion and longer commuting times;
- Over-crowded schools;
- Higher taxes,
- Higher costs of providing infrastructure, and adverse fiscal impacts on local governments;
- Ill-health due to air pollution generated by traffic;
- Reduced worker productivity; ugly, monotonous suburban landscapes;
- Loss of a sense of place;
- Marked spatial disparities in wealth between cities and suburbs; and
- Land development patterns making the establishment and use of mass transit systems difficult.
Environmental Impacts
Sprawl’s impacts upon ecosystems and other environmental resources are considerable. Sprawl and associated activities degrade environmental resources such as surface water and groundwater, air quality, and landscape aesthetics, and destroys wildlife habitats.
It restricts or eliminates access to natural resources/raw materials such as timber, fuel minerals, and non-fuel minerals including sand, gravel, and limestone – the materials from which cities are constructed, and results in the lost of prime agricultural lands within and nearby metropolitan areas.
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