Sprawl is poorly planned development in which housing, jobs and services are separated and spread out over vast distances. This phenomenon causes three major problems: increased driving, the destruction of green space, and costly infrastructure needs (new roads, municipal services, utility lines, new suburban school buildings while center city schools decay, etc).

These needs cost American households $630 more in taxes and transportation costs per year and produce 8 additional tons of CO₂ emissions (a greenhouse gas that causes global warming). The hidden costs of sprawl require us to pay for the destruction of our environment from our own bank accounts whether we want to or not.

Stuck in Our Cars

Sprawl spreads development out over great distances and offers little or no transportation choice, forcing people to drive everywhere and lengthening all those trips. The average American driver spends 443 hours per year behind the wheel - the equivalent of 55 eight-hour workdays.

	Residents of sprawling communities drive three to four times as much as those living in compact, well-planned areas. Adding new lanes and building new roads just makes the problem worse - studies show that increasing road capacity only leads to more traffic and more sprawl. Click here for more information about induced traffic.
At Tysons Corner, 8 lane highways without crosswalks and imposing walls discourage transit and pedestrian access.

All this extra driving comes with a price. The average US household spends about 18% of its budget on transportation, making it the second largest household expense.

Sprawling cities have driving-related energy consumption rates that can be three times that of better planned, more compact cities that also offer transportation choices like bicycle routes and public transit within walking distance of homes.

Losing Our Open Spaces ... and Our Cities

New "McMansions" dot the countryside West of Leesburg, VA

New "McMansions" dot the countryside West of Leesburg, VA

As sprawl races outward it destroys more than one million acres of parks, farms and open space each year. This threatens America's productive farmland and turns our cherished parks and open spaces into strip malls and freeways.

Over the last 40 years, northern Virginia has lost 37% of its prime farmland to sprawl, with “McMansions” and townhouses –without towns- sprouting where local farmers once grew produce you bought at roadside stands.

Our taxes go to fund the replacement of open space with “big box” megastores and strip commercial developments that drain the life away from historic downtowns and inner suburbs, filling them with decaying storefronts and vacant lots.

	Between 1980 and 1990, even as Montgomery County’s school population dropped by 10,000, it was forced to construct 70 new schools while abandoning 68 others in the declining inner suburbs. It simply doesn’t make sense to plow under entire rural counties as we forsake our infrastructure inside the beltway.
Abandoned storefronts inside the beltway in Temple Hills, MD

Polluting Our Air & Water

Smog looms over Woodrow Wilson Bridge construction. The widening will worsen sprawl and related pollution as it leaves no room for transit alternatives like Metro.

As sprawl increases our reliance on cars and driving, it makes our air dirtier and less healthy. Cars, trucks and buses are the biggest source of cancer- causing air pollution, spewing more than 12 billion pounds of toxic chemicals each year. Our very own Metro DC region is currently listed as a “seriously” noncompliant region for federal air quality standards. Forty percent of this region’s air pollution comes form cars and trucks.

Our wetlands - nature's water filters - are also under attack. Each year more than 100,000 acres of wetlands are destroyed around the country, in large part to make way for sprawling new developments. Since wetlands can remove up to 90 percent of the pollutants in water, wetlands destruction leads directly to polluted water.

Smart Growth… a Better Way to Live

Smart growth principles channel growth into existing communities, provide transportation choices, build fast, clean, efficient public transportation systems, and preserve farmland and open space. Through better planning, smart growth reduces dependence on cars and alleviates congestion, thus reducing burdens to our budgets and our environment.


Residents of downtown Bethesda can live, work, play	and access metro, all within a short walk or bike ride.

Smart growth makes it possible to design homes and neighborhoods so that they are closer to jobs, shopping and transit. In combination with improved transit systems, more pedestrian and bicycle friendly design gives residents multi-modal transportation choices that significantly reduces emissions of pollutants into the air we breathe and provides options for those too old, too young or too poor to drive.

By creating walkable, mixed-use communities (jobs, shopping, schools, homes close to each other), smart growth also allows towns to develop a strong sense of place, which many suburbs that isolate housing, retail centers and job sites fail to provide.

Washington neighborhoods are livable, walkable and provide a range of transit options.

Washington's neighborhoods are livable, walkable and provide a range of transit options.

Benefits of Smart Growth

Placing new development within already built areas reduces driving by as much as 61% and CO₂ emissions by 50%.
Planning pedestrian-friendly development along with clean, reliable transit systems would save the average household over $2000 a year on transportation and save 40 million tons of carbon emissions.
If 25 million new units of housing built in the US over the next 25 years are placed in a more space efficient way, 3 million acres of land would be preserved, 3,000 fewer new miles of roads would be needed, and at least $250 million would be saved.
In another 50 years, implementing smart growth measures would save 200 million metric tons of carbon per year.

Arlington: A Success Story

Twenty-five years ago Arlington County made the decision to place seven of its Metro stations not along freeways, surrounded by parking lots, but rather underneath two of its commercial corridors in dire need of revitalization.

In Ballston, life is spent on broad sidewalks, not behind the wheel.

In the compact, transit oriented neighborhood of Ballston, life is spent on broad sidewalks, not behind the wheel.

Today the conveniently clustered mixed-use developments of Ballston, Pentagon City, Clarendon, Rosslyn, Courthouse and Crystal City testify to the power of transit oriented development as an engine for smart growth. Just imagine how intelligent decisions made today can create a brighter future for your community.

For more information about sprawl in the Metro DC region, continue browsing our site or contact Chris Carney at chris.carney@sierraclub.org or (202) 237-0754.

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A Primer on Sprawl and Smart Growth

What is Sprawl?