Urban Sprawl

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Urban Sprawl

What is Sprawl?

The term sprawl was first introduced in 1937 by one of the first city planners in the southern United States, Earle Draperone. The working definition of sprawl is the “tendency toward lower city densities as city footprints expand.” In more specific terms, the term urban sprawl as used in the pattern of land development in the United States as “spread-out” or “unlimited and noncontiguous way outward” with “one- or two-story single-family residential development on lots ranging from one-third to one acre (less on the West Coast) accompanied by strip commercial centers and industrial parks, also two stories or less in height and with a similar amount of land taking.”