Despite efforts to make automobiles more energy efficient and to use cleaner, less polluting gasoline, the increased use of motor vehicles reduces the benefits of these efforts. Motor vehicles are a major source of air pollution, particularly in the sprawling metropolitan communities. They account for most of the carbon monoxide and many of the hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides in major urban areas. These pollutants have serious effects on human health. Among the diseases known to be related to motor vehicle pollution are asthma, bronchitis, upper respiratory tract infections, and various types of cancer. Automobiles and light trucks are responsible for about 20 percent of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions, the gas that causes global warming.

The dependency on the automobile also affects people's quality of life. The length of time that people must travel to get to work has increased from 22 minutes in 1980 to 25 minutes in 2000. This increase adds 25 hours a year to the average commuter's travel time, raising the total time spent commuting to about 208 hours per year. Because other services, including schools, shopping, and recreational centers, tend to be more spread out in sprawl communities, families spend more time in cars than do families in more densely developed areas. The increased use of the automobile leads to further traffic congestion, which exacerbates environmental damage.

Considerable research documents the increased cost of service in sprawled communities. When sprawl occurs, new schools, roads, water and sewer lines, and other physical infrastructure must be added. The sprawling communities must add police, fire, and other personnel to provide the necessary services. The distance between developments in these communities makes providing these services more costly than in higher density areas. While the private developers of these new areas frequently pay a fee to cover some of these new expenses, the fees do not cover the full costs of the projects. Residents in the new areas, both the new and long-term residents, frequently experience significant tax increases to cover these costs. Because much of the infrastructural support is paid by state and federal agencies, taxpayers outside the area also support these sprawled developments.

It is ironic that city residents are among those who pay state and federal taxes that support the development of sprawling communities. As cities lose residents to the new communities, the cities are left with a smaller tax base. The vitality of downtown areas is diminished as cities lose their population and jobs as well as their retail, entertainment, and corporate presence to the new suburbs and their malls and office parks. Houses and buildings in the city are abandoned and public services decline.

Cities are also harmed by sprawl because those who move from the city to these new developments tend to be from upper- and middle-class households. City residents who are left behind are disproportionately poor and minority. Thus, cities are left to serve needier populations with less revenue than in earlier decades when they had more revenues and wealthier populations. The degree of economic segregation has increased because the sprawling communities tend to offer housing that is accessible only to wealthier households. The economic segregation is now reinforced by the physical separation of the social classes. The withdrawal of the wealthier groups from the city saps the neighborhood and civic groups, churches, community centers, and other cultural, social, and recreational organizations of the social and financial capital that once maintained them.

Broader changes in the economy combine with the phenomenon of sprawl to aggravate the challenges of the inner-city poor. The significant loss of manufacturing jobs in cities after 1960 and the increase of jobs in the higher-end service sector, including the information exchange and high technology areas, have a dramatic effect on those without higher levels of education. A spatial mismatch developed, such that the less-educated populations live in the less expensive housing of the central city while the growth of lower-end service sector jobs, including retail, restaurants, maintenance, and landscaping that service the middle and upper classes, has occurred in the outer suburbs. Many city residents have difficulty reaching the suburban jobs because they do not own cars and public transportation systems are absent or inadequate.

Across the nation and in particular cities, numerous efforts are under way to address urban sprawl and it related problems. The smart growth movement consists of planners, developers, community and environmental activists, nonprofit groups, and political leaders. The movement encourages a range of development and design patterns, including a mix of land uses, viable public transportation systems, preservation of open space and farmland, the creation of walkable communities and communities with a strong sense of place, greater regional cooperation in planning and revenue sharing, the revitalization of central cities to make them more desirable places to live and work, and policies to ensure that development decisions are fair to all parties and cost-effective.

References:

1) Burchell, Robert W., Anthony Downs, Barbara McCann, and Sahan Kukherji, eds. 2005. Sprawl Costs: Economic Impacts of Unchecked Development. Washington, DC: Island Press.

2) Orfield, Myron W. 1997. Metropolitics: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

3) Squires, Gregory D., ed. 2002. Urban Sprawl: Causes, Consequences and Policy Responses. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.

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