Why worry about
suburban sprawl?

• It's economically and environmentally wasteful to abandon existing urban areas and build new infrastructure in the country. Our society—and our planet—cannot sustain current rates of growth.
• Sprawling development destroys valuable farm land, open space, natural areas and streams.
• Sprawl moves homes, work places and shopping farther apart, so we all have to drive more, burn more fossil fuel, create more air pollution, and waste more time in traffic. Children lose freedom when parents have to drive them everywhere. Low-density development makes mass transit impractical.
• Sprawl exacerbates economic and racial segregation, thus contributing to the dangerous polarization of our society. Suburbanites delude themselves if they think they can escape the social consequences by moving farther out.
• Sprawl unfairly burdens the central city and county with social service costs.
• Decline from loss of population and tax base does not stop in the central cities. It keeps on spreading, ultimately weakening entire regions.
• If we lose central cities, with their public spaces and historic neighborhoods, we begin to lose our sense of place and identity. We lose opportunities to interact with others.

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