Growing Smart by Linking Transportation and Urban Development
By Robert Cervero
INTRODUCTION
Sprawl is like pornography. It is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Sprawl is the endless expanse of city lights on the horizon a half-hour away from Los Angeles International Airport. It is mile upon mile of ticky-tacky strip-commercial development. It is crawling in traffic on a ten-lane beltway on a Saturday afternoon.
Greater Atlanta is poised to eclipse Los Angeles as the world's most sprawling metropolis. Its land area, which currently stretches some 200 kilometers from end to end, is growing four times faster *358 than its population. Its commutershed - the territory from which workers are drawn - now encompasses four states. The typical Atlantan commutes fifty-five kilometers each day, the farthest in the United States. One Fortune 500 company recently threatened to pull entirely out of the region because of traffic nightmares and a rapidly eroding quality of life. Federal funding for promised' highway projects was recently withdrawn because of the region's continuing air pollution problems and failure to adopt a regional plan that conformed to state air quality targets. This was a wakeup call, prompting Georgia Governor Barnes to appoint an all-powerful state authority - the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA) - whose principle charge is to reign in sprawl.
The tentacles of sprawl today touch all corners of the globe. In Santiago, Chile, unbridled growth consumes 2000 hectares of land each year, much of it in the fertile Maipo and Mapocho valleys. Resulting losses in vegetation and soil absorption have triggered dust storms and flooding. On Java, Indonesia's most populated island, some 250 square kilometers of farmland, forests, and wetlands are being converted every year to urban uses. A megalopolis of non-stop urbanization is taking form between Jakarta and Surabaya, some 600 kilometers apart.
Sprawl is like pornography. It is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Sprawl is the endless expanse of city lights on the horizon a half-hour away from Los Angeles International Airport. It is mile upon mile of ticky-tacky strip-commercial development. It is crawling in traffic on a ten-lane beltway on a Saturday afternoon.
Greater Atlanta is poised to eclipse Los Angeles as the world's most sprawling metropolis. Its land area, which currently stretches some 200 kilometers from end to end, is growing four times faster *358 than its population. Its commutershed - the territory from which workers are drawn - now encompasses four states. The typical Atlantan commutes fifty-five kilometers each day, the farthest in the United States. One Fortune 500 company recently threatened to pull entirely out of the region because of traffic nightmares and a rapidly eroding quality of life. Federal funding for promised' highway projects was recently withdrawn because of the region's continuing air pollution problems and failure to adopt a regional plan that conformed to state air quality targets. This was a wakeup call, prompting Georgia Governor Barnes to appoint an all-powerful state authority - the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA) - whose principle charge is to reign in sprawl.
The tentacles of sprawl today touch all corners of the globe. In Santiago, Chile, unbridled growth consumes 2000 hectares of land each year, much of it in the fertile Maipo and Mapocho valleys. Resulting losses in vegetation and soil absorption have triggered dust storms and flooding. On Java, Indonesia's most populated island, some 250 square kilometers of farmland, forests, and wetlands are being converted every year to urban uses. A megalopolis of non-stop urbanization is taking form between Jakarta and Surabaya, some 600 kilometers apart.