Abstract
Many localities are struggling to deal with the undesirable consequences of sprawl. “Smart Growth” has been championed as a solution to many of these problems. However, disagreements or misunderstandings often surface regarding the exact characteristics of sprawl or whether or not a particular housing tract embodies those characteristics. This paper develops a set of 12 geospatial measures for objectively analyzing development tracts for characteristics of sprawl: (1) land use density, (2) leapfrog development, (3) segregated land use development, (4) development that is inconsistent with regional planning, (5) highway strip development, (6) new road network efficiency, (7) alternate transportation mode accessibility, (8) accessibility to important community nodes, (9) loss of important land resources (such as wetlands, prime farmland and endangered habitat), (10) encroachment upon sensitive, preserved open space, (11) excessive per unit impervious surface coverage, and (12) growth trajectory. These measures are operationalized for three recent subdivisions in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. The measures help to reduce sprawl rhetoric by focusing on quantifiable problematic characteristics of a particular tract of development.
- © 2004 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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