Warning: Sprawl is hazardous
to your health

If something as trifling as hot coffee carries a warning, why not something as significant as urban sprawl? The following tongue-in-cheek suggestion comes from Euclid Mayor Paul Oyaski — a proposed warning notice to be displayed on sprawl-causing structures.

WARNING: The new house you have purchased on this site (or the new business you are visiting on this site) has been found and determined to cause urban sprawl, a deleterious regional affliction with some if not all of the following symptoms.

• Disinvestment and loss of property values in older neighborhoods nearby, probably where your parents or grandparents used to live.
• Damage to soil and water resources brought about by building on virgin land or in forested areas in rural watersheds.
• An increase in air pollution brought about by the increased use of automobiles occasioned by this previously remote and undeveloped location.
• The overbuilding of expensive infrastructure so that this property can be reached and serviced, thereby placing this region and this state at a competitive disadvantage by necessitating more taxes to be raised so that more infrastructure can be maintained at a time when the population of this region is decreasing.
• Unjust enrichment to you, the builder and the developer of this site due to the fact that its development and the infrastructure and utilities that serve it were subsidized in large part by the residents of older neighborhoods.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Commuting long distances in gasoline-powered autos has been shown to shorten life expectancy, as well as being wasteful and boring!

It is expected that very soon the development you are currently visiting will, due to the detrimental environment, economic and social consequences it entails, be declared a public nuisance, and there will be Hell to pay to the future resident of the great State of Ohio.

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