Causes of sprawl: A portrait from space

Marcy Burchfield, Henry Overman, Diego Puga and Matthew Turner

Working Papers from University of Toronto, Department of Economics

Abstract: We study the extent to which US urban development is sprawling and consider what determines differences in sprawl across space. Using remote-sensing data to track the evolution of land use on a grid of 8.7 billion 30x30 metre cells, we measure sprawl as the amount of undeveloped land surrounding an average urban dwelling. On this measure, while the extent of sprawl remained roughly unchanged between 1976 and 1992, it varied dramatically across metropolitan areas. Ground water availability, temperate climate, rugged terrain, decentralized employment, early public transport infrastructure, uncertainty about metropolitan growth, and unincorporated land in the urban fringe all increase sprawl.

Keywords: urban sprawl; land development; remote sensing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O51 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2005-09-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Causes of Sprawl: A Portrait from Space (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-192

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