What’s wrong with urban sprawl?

One of my complaints about Auckland is its urban sprawl. But Auckland is not alone in possessing this, there are many other cities in the world with this characteristic flaw, like my home town of Brisbane, and I am equally critical of those places. I disklike urban sprawl and in this blog post, I will explain why.

What is urban sprawl? Urban sprawl is the expansion of cities into outlying areas forming lower density suburbs. As the city becomes larger and larger geographically, transport by car becomes more and more necessary and pollution and traffic increases as a direct result.

There is a fair amount in the scholarly literature about the effects of urban sprawl on health. People who live in sprawling cities drive more while people who live in compact cities, walk more. An American study – Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl –  found a direct relationship between urban sprawl and obesity and chronic disease.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information also has something to say about health and urban sprawl in an article on Urban Sprawl and Public Health. In their words:

Low levels of physical activity threaten health both directly and indirectly. A sedentary lifestyle is a well-established risk factor for cardiovascular disease, stroke, and all-cause mortality, whereas physical activity prolongs life.

There’s an article in this week’s New Scientist, Exercise is the best Medicine, which suggests that exercise has the potential to reverse diabetes and obesity and prevent cancer as well as lower the risk of dementia and improve one’s memory. The same article also declares that being overweight and fit is better than being lean and unfit.

I don’t think anyone can argue with the idea that exercise is a good thing. But how does that relate to urban sprawl? Urban sprawl forces car dependency and limits the amount of walking we do on a day-to-day basis. Sure you can take out a gym membership and get some exercise that way, but it’s much nicer when exercise just happens as a consequence of getting from A to B rather than having to inject it into our daily routine as an afterthought. When you need to exercise to get to work or school everyday, it already is routine.

I am speaking partly from personal experience here. I lived in Cambridge, UK for almost 3 years. Cambridge is a very walkable, compact city. I walked and cycled everywhere. Ever since my time there, I have been trying to recreate the lifestyle that I had, but without success. The closest I got was in Christchurch, New Zealand. I get grumpy when I don’t get enough exercise so it must have an impact on our moods and outlook in life.

Urban sprawl is also directly related to traffic fatalities and pedestrian fatalities. Sprawl has been implicated in lowering water quality, loss of valuable farmland and reducing air quality. There’s also a social cost because time spent in a car = less time spent interacting with people and community.

Compact, walkable cities offer a much better lifestyle for people living in them than do large, sprawling suburbs which create health problems, traffic, pollution, social isolation and the lurid shopping mall. But I’ll leave the shopping mall horror for another blog post.