Social Sustainability
Urban Sprawl
Low-density, car-dependent, land-hungry urban expansion — the development pattern sustainability planning exists to reverse.
Definition
Urban sprawl is the expansion of urban areas through low-density, segregated-use, disconnected development at the fringe — subdivisions, strip retail and business parks reachable only by car. Measured by density, decentralisation and land consumption per capita (OECD indicators), sprawl drives the core urban sustainability failures: rising transport emissions, infrastructure costs that grow faster than population, farmland and habitat loss, and social isolation; urban land cover grows far faster than urban population globally.
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