Reviews
The arguments of those who oppose urban sprawl emphasize more on specific issues such as health and environmental issues than on the vitality of this type of neighborhoods and the urban planning consequences for the city as a whole.
• - Health and environmental impact. Urban expansion is associated with a series of negative effects on the environment and public health, resulting from greater dependence on automobiles. However, these criticisms are mitigated by those who argue that dispersion generates new development poles in cities and creates sources of work. Likewise, many people prefer to live close to their place of business, which is increasingly distant from the center of urban areas.
• - Increased pollution and dependence on fossil fuels. Since the years after World War II, the use of private vehicles has become widespread, contributing to increased air pollution. On average, suburban residents generate more pollution and carbon emissions than their urban counterparts due to longer driving times.[2].
• - Increase in traffic and traffic accidents. A heavy dependence on automobiles contributes to increased traffic jams on city roads, as well as automobile accidents, injuries to pedestrians, and air pollution. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of five and twenty-four and a leading cause of death in all age groups.[9] Residents of larger areas are at greater risk of dying in a car accident.[10].
• - Increase in obesity. The American Journal of Public Health and the American Journal of Health Promotion have stated that there is a significant relationship between urban dispersion, obesity and hypertension.[5] Presumably, because they spend more hours sitting driving their cars and because they tend to walk less than people who live in the center.
• - Decrease in share capital. Urban sprawl may be partly responsible for the decline in social capital in the United States. Compact neighborhoods can encourage eventual social interactions between neighbors, while low-density expansion creates barriers to that interaction. Dispersion tends to replace public spaces such as parks with private spaces, such as clubhouses and other places with restricted access. Residents of sprawling neighborhoods rarely walk or take public transportation, reducing opportunities to be in face-to-face contact with their neighbors.[6].
• - Decrease in land and water quantity and quality. Because of the greater amount of land needed to build sprawling suburbs compared to traditional urban neighborhoods, more cropland and wildlife habitats are displaced per capita. As forest cover is cleared and replaced by new development, rainfall is absorbed less effectively by soil and underground aquifers.[2] This threatens both the quality and quantity of drinking water supplies. Dispersion increases rainwater mixing with gasoline and oil runoff from parking lots and roads. The dispersal of fragments of land that increases the risk of invasive species spreading to the rest of the natural habitat.
• - Increase in infrastructure costs. Living in a larger, more widespread development makes running and maintaining public services more expensive. The massive use of the automobile at the expense of public transportation forces city planners to build large roads and parking lots. The provision of services such as water, sewage and the laying of electrical networks is also more expensive per household in less dense areas.[11].
• - Increase in personal transportation costs and times. Residents of low-density areas spend a greater proportion of their income on transportation to their workplaces than residents of high-density areas.[12] Workers must also spend several hours commuting or traveling by car to or from their homes.
• - Quality of life. The quality of life is eroded by the lifestyles promoted by urban sprawl. Duany and Plater-Zyberk believe that in traditional neighborhoods, the proximity of the workplace or home to shops, restaurants and cafes is an essential component to the successful balance of urban life. Furthermore, they state that the proximity of the workplace to homes also gives people the option of walking or cycling to work or school and that without this type of interaction between the different components the pattern of urban life quickly falls apart. James Howard Kunstler has argued that the aesthetics of suburban environments make them "places not worth worrying about," and that they lack a sense of identity and history.
• - Segregation. Some blame these types of suburbs for promoting a tendency to homogenize society and culture, leading people with similar race, background or socioeconomic level to live in them, segregating themselves from the rest of the city's inhabitants.[13] In countries like the United States, this type of segregation and social stratification was institutionalized in the early 1950s and 1960s with the financial industry and later with redlining in neighborhoods to prevent certain people from entering and residing in the districts. rich. This also led to a redirection of public funds to schools in the new developments to the detriment of those in the rest of the city, where students from poorer families attended.[14] This type of segregation encourages lifestyles that can lead to positive views about themselves and negative opinions about others.[15].
The United States was the first country where the dispersion developed and where the first voices against it appeared. The American Institute of Architects is against the expansion of this type of urbanism and instead supports smart growth, the development of neighborhoods with diversified uses, and that discourage automobile use.[16] There are several environmental organizations that oppose expansion by investing in existing communities.
Answers
• - Increasing preference for urban dispersion. Some studies maintain that many families in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe and much of the rest of America, especially middle-class and upper-class families, prefer a suburban lifestyle. Reasons cited include a preference for low population density (less ambient noise and more privacy), better schools, lower crime rates, and a generally slower-than-urban lifestyle in greater contact with nature. Those in favor of a "free housing market" also maintain that this way of life is a matter of personal choice and economic means.[4] Some Americans maintain that the suburban way of life is part of the American dream. However, a number of studies have suggested that many wealthy people are heading towards the city center to take advantage of the greater cultural offerings that these areas often offer.[17] In many cities in the Western world, there is the phenomenon that land values are higher in the suburbs than in central areas, evidence of people's interest in living in these developments.
• - Traffic and travel time. Other studies argue that traffic intensities tend to be less, travel speeds faster, and as a result, less environmental pollution. (See The Demographia report). Kansas City in Missouri is often cited as the ideal example of a low-density city, with below-average congestion and below-average real estate prices for Midwestern cities. Studies measuring commuting time in major metropolitan areas of the United States have shown a decline in travel times in the period 1969 to 1995 even though the geographic size of cities increased.[18] More recent data suggests that this trend has reversed; a 2000 study by the US Census Bureau shows travel times have increased over all previous periods.[19]
• - Risk of an increase in housing prices. Portland (Oregon)'s anti-expansion policies are criticized as increasing housing and land prices. Some research suggests that Oregon has had the largest increase in home prices in the United States,[20] but other research shows that the increase in property values in Portland is comparable to that of other Western cities.[21] In Australia, high property prices are proclaimed to be a product of "urban consolidation" policies implemented by state governments.[22].
• - Freedom. Some sociologists such as Émile Durkheim suggest that there is a relationship between population density and the number of rules that must be imposed. The theory is that as people perform their actions closer to others, they are more likely to affect those around them. This potential impact requires the creation of new social or legal norms to prevent conflicts. A simple example would be determining what is the maximum volume at which you can listen to music without disturbing neighboring residents.
• - Overcrowding and increased aggression. Numerous studies link increased population density with increased aggression between people. Some believe that increased population density encourages crime and anti-social behavior. It is argued that human beings are social animals, and need large amounts of social space so as not to become agitated and aggressive.[23].