sprawl

The End of the Suburbs is a new book from Leigh Gallagher, assistant Managing Editor at Fortune Magazine, that bluntly assesses the future of suburbia. Gallagher says it's over; at least in the form it's taken for the last 50 years. She marshals demographic and consumer preference data in a driving ... read more »

One result of Detroit's recent bankruptcy has been the usual finger-pointing about the cause of that city's probems. Commonly mentioned culprits include deindustrialization, absence of federal support, and the sprawl-induced decline of urban tax bases.  Another common argument (especially among... read more »

Last week, I blogged about the relationship between sprawl and poverty, using metro Atlanta as an example.  I showed that in Fulton and DeKalb Counties (the two most urban, transit-friendly counties in the region) the obesity rate was only slightly higher than the poverty rate, while in more su... read more »

One dispute in the literature about sprawl and obesity is whether the impact of sprawl is significant compared to the impact of social class.  It could be argued that obesity is primarily a function of poverty and lack of education, rather than of automobile dependency. ... read more »

Numerous studies (such as the one referenced here) have suggested that there is some connection between sprawl and obesity, because residents of sprawl walk less and are thus more likely to weigh more.   ... read more »

Join John Norquist on Wednesday, December 12th at 12:00pm EST, for a CNU Fireside Chat with Chuck Marohn, Executive Director of Strong Towns, the host of the " ... read more »

After yesterday's post on obesity in New York, I thought I would do some more research comparing obesity in cities and suburbs, focusing on central cities that (a) were coterminous with their counties (so I could find obesity statistics for cities alone) and (b) were sufficiently transit-oriented an... read more »

The City Data web page contains, among other things, county-by-county statistics on obesity.   Because each New York borough is a county, I thought that looking at New York might be more informative than looking at other metro areas where a county can include a wide range of cities and suburbs.... read more »

The Center for Neighborhood Technology recently issued a report suggesting that compact cities with high housing costs (such as New York or San Francisco) might actually be less expensive than otherwise cheaper but car-dependent areas such as South Florida and Southern California.  As provocati... read more »

I just read the "Curbside Chat" booklet on the Strong Towns blog and found one observation that surprised me.  The booklet notes that after World War II, there was some public concern about the possibility of another Great Depression, "but another 'spatial fix' prevented that from happening... ... read more »