Sprawl Costs: Economic Impacts of Unchecked Development (review)

Robert W. Burchell and his colleagues provide a framework to measure the social, economic, and environmental costs of sprawl, and they compare compact and sprawling growth strategies in terms of savings to individuals and governments. Their book, Sprawl Costs, provides a readable update and overview of how scientists are quantifying the costs and associated issues of sprawl. Moreover, sprawl's perceived benefits are evaluated to determine whether or not such benefits are real or imagined. Finally, the authors present relevant policy strategies to help tackle the ill effects of sprawl. Development planners, scientists, and the general public would enjoy reading this book. For scientists, the book provides a synthesis of hypotheses related to sprawl; for the general public and planners, it characterizes the economic costs of sprawl.

The book is organized into twelve chapters. The first few chapters provide an overview of sprawl in the United States. The authors clearly define sprawl in chapter 2 and outline how sprawl is measured in chapter 3. The maps in chapter 3 succinctly show the difference between compact and sprawling growth. Most importantly, the authors show that compact growth does not always reduce sprawl and it is this type of finding that highlights the authors' unbiased approach in reporting research results.

The ecological costs of sprawl are evaluated in chapter 4 where the authors explain that open space and farmland are threatened by sprawl. However, while the authors argue that converting large farms to residential development is bad for the environment and that the ecosystem function of farms is preferable over residential areas, no evidence is provided for this supposition. Scientists lack extensive comparative studies that address the relative consequence of runoff from agricultural and residential land use. Additionally, ecologists do not understand enough about ecosystem function and the thresholds of an ecosystem's resilience to determine what characteristics should be preserved and how land use alters function and resilience (Cumming et al. 2005). For these reasons it is premature to conclude that converting farms to residences is harmful. These interdisciplinary questions are the most challenging to answer but they reflect our weak understanding of how sprawl influences ecosystems. This chapter also lacked an economic evaluation of ecosystem services, so future work should attempt to measure ecosystem services rather than merely evaluating the cost of land lost or gained under different growth scenarios.

Chapters 5-7 are the most important for promoting institutional change of sprawling patterns of growth as the authors focus on economic savings of more compact growth. Chapter 5 shows that sprawl requires more expensive infrastructure such as roads, sewers, and electricity spread out over a larger area. Chapter 6 shows that compact growth can reduce developers' costs to build residences and the authors provide possible reasons why developers prefer sprawling growth despite compact growth savings. The models in chapter 7 demonstrate that taxes in compact growth areas more often adequately support public services such as police, fire, recreation, and schools.

The social issues analyzed in chapters 8-10 break apart misconceptions about sprawl. These personal issues are important to understand in order to promote compact growth at an individual level. In chapter 8 the authors show that travel costs are higher in sprawl conditions but they admit that compact growth scenarios do not reduce travel time and congestion. Probably the most interesting finding in the book is in chapter 9 where quality of life in sprawl and compact conditions is compared. The authors measured quality of life at the county level with an index that includes indicators of weather, environmental quality and aesthetics, commuting time, crime, taxes, wealth, educational factors, government expenditures, cost-of-living, demographics, and employment factors. Although many people move to sprawling developments beyond the urban fringe, the authors allege that nationally, quality of life will not improve in sprawl conditions. Furthermore, regionally compact growth will only slightly decrease quality of life in the Northeast...