Urban Sprawl - Examples

Examples

According to the National Resources Inventory (NRI), about 8,900 square kilometres (2.2 million acres) of land in the United States was developed between 1992 and 2002. Presently, the NRI classifies approximately 100,000 more square kilometres (40,000 square miles) (an area approximately the size of Kentucky) as developed than the Census Bureau classifies as urban. The difference in the NRI classification is that it includes rural development, which by definition cannot be considered to be "urban" sprawl. Currently, according to the 2000 Census, approximately 2.6 percent of the U.S. land area is urban. Approximately 0.8 percent of the nation's land is in the 37 urbanized areas with more than 1,000,000 population. In 2002, these 37 urbanized areas supported around 40% of the total American population.

Nonetheless, some urban areas have expanded geographically even while losing population. But it was not just urbanized areas in the U.S. that lost population and sprawled substantially. According to data in "Cities and Automobile Dependence" by Kenworthy and Laube (1999), urbanized area population losses occurred while there was an expansion of sprawl between 1970 and 1990 in Brussels, Belgium; Copenhagen, Denmark; Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich, Germany; and Zurich, Switzerland, albeit without the wholesale dismantling of public transit systems that occurred in the United States.

At the same time, the urban cores of these and nearly all other major cities in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan that did not annex new territory experienced the related phenomena of falling household size and, particularly in the U.S., "white flight", sustaining population losses. This trend has slowed somewhat in recent years, as more people have regained an interest in urban living.

Los Angeles was one of the world's first low density urbanized areas, resulting from its large geographic metropolitan area. Today, the area's near universal car ownership makes it a prominent example of sprawl. However, Los Angeles has become more dense over the past half-century, principally due to small lot zoning and a high demand for housing due to population growth. The city of Los Angeles has increased its density rate up to approximately 7,000 people per square mile in the year 2000, however that is still substantially less than New York City's 27,000 average, San Francisco's 17,000 average, and Chicago's 12,000 average.

Urban sprawl is not limited to developed countries, and may be more prevalent in developing countries. For example, there is considerable land consumed by urban sprawl in Mexico City, in Beijing, in Antananarivo (the capital of Madagascar), in Johannesburg, and in eastern parts of South Africa.