The Citistates Group

Smart Growth America’s just-released report, Measuring Sprawl and Its Impact, has been winning high marks from land use cognoscente because it has a solid academic research base (Rutgers’ Reid Ewing, Cornell’s Rolf Pendall, Smart Growth America’s Don Chen). And because it’s comprehensive, using no less than 22 variables to rate metro areas — essentially how scattered and separated they’ve let themselves become, or conversely, how relatively compact and efficient they remain.

Not much is missing from these measures — sprawl (1) in terms of the scattering of people and housing, (2) in separation of homes from jobs, schools and services, (3) in maintaining or adding downtowns and other activity centers, and (4) in keeping well-connected street networks instead of letting themselves be super-blocked and cul-de-sacked.

Heavy sprawl cities pay a heavy price, the research reports: much more driving per family, half again as many traffic deaths, less transit use and walking, more serious air pollution.

The most sprawled regions, interestingly, include both Sunbelt boom spots like Atlanta, Fort Worth and West Palm Beach and such Frostbelt metros as Bridgeport, Gary, Rochester and Detroit, where the middle class has fled outward. Least sprawled regions are a mix too, with such tight-packed places as New York, Providence and San Francisco ranked not far from Denver and Miami.

But no study’s perfect. Smart Growth America created a strange Sprawlometer that puts the least sprawling cities on top (instead of the reverse). And it misses the dynamic — sense of change — of the 2001 Brookings study, Who Sprawls, which measures how much regions are gobbling up fresh lands contrasted to their actual population gains. The Brookings study (by William Fulton, Pendall and others) found the biggest density losses in traditional Northeast-Midwest centers like Pittsburgh and Boston. Boston metro gained (1982-97) just 6.7 percent in population, but almost doubled its stock of urbanized land.

Moral of the story: It’s not just what you are, but where you’re going.

Boundary crossers, community connectors, learning groups — what are the new forms of civic engagement surfacing to meet America’s changing lifestyles? In the world where diversity now reigns, how are people forging ties, building relationships and improvising on old leadership structures in order to be part of “the buzz”? Are these new operating styles having any impact on our politics, governments and traditional civic institutions? These are some of the questions that reporters Bill Bishop and Mark Lisheron explore in their latest installment (October 6) for the series, “The City of Ideas”, in the Austin American-Statesman. Read the article and give us your thoughts.

To read about other media developments check out “Media on the March” in our What’s New? page.