Ahh, sprawl. It makes us totally dependent on our cars, increasing traffic and pollution. It obliterates open space, destroying wildlife habitat and healthy ecosystems. It strains once-thriving downtown areas, leading to all sorts of urban decay. But according to a new study, it's not as bad as we think it is.

The study [1], called "Causes of Sprawl: A Portrait from Space," compared data from 1976 (high-altitude photos) and 1992 (satellite imagery) and found that the overall, the amount of open space surrounding individual houses has not changed. According to a press release [2] about the study, "Forty two per cent of land in the square kilometre surrounding the average residential development in 1976 was open space, compared with 43 per cent in 1992."

The press release, from the University of Toronto, quotes one of the researchers saying, "if we zoom out and look at the city from a distance, we see little change, at least in terms of the proportions of sprawling and compact development: the new city is just like an enlarged version of the old city."

But isn't this enlarged version just another way to say "sprawl"? In the Denver metro area, for instance, thousands of acres of former farmland and open prairie has been converted to cookie-cutter housing developments [3] over the past decade. The houses are, for the most part, densely situated, with small yards and little privacy. And new subdivisions are filling in the space between the less new ones. But this is undoubtedly sprawl: these developments are nowhere near downtown and there is no way to access them without driving. The way they're constructed may not serve to change the national percentage of open space surrounding individual homes, but the overall effect is net loss of undeveloped land, and many more people living in places that require driving.

Image credit: diegopuga.org [4]

[via ScienceDaily [5]]