The Effects of Sprawl & Poorly Planned Development

Sprawl Effects Us in Many Different Ways:

Increase in Traffic
Crowded Schools
Air and Water Pollution
Destroying Parks, Farms, and Open Space
Waste of Tax Money
Flooding

Read more about the Cost of Sprawl

Sprawl increases traffic on our neighborhood streets and highways.

Sprawl lengthens trips and forces us to drive everywhere. The average American driver spends 443 hours per year - the equivalent of 55 eight-hour workdays - behind the wheel. 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.

Sprawl crowds our children's schools.

Scattered development creates crowded schools in fast growing communities while other schools close. New development puts more children in suburban schools, but does not pay for the new schools that inevitably must be built. According to Florida's Department of Education, 17,738 temporary or trailer classrooms are currently in use in that state, and a report by the Conference Board claims that 20 percent of school kids in California learn in temporary classrooms.  In Montgomery County, MD during the course of 10 years the county closed as many schools as it built in new areas.

Sprawl pollutes our air and water.

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, or almost 50 pounds per person. Our wetlands - nature's water filters - are also under attack. Each year more than 100,000 acres of wetlands are destroyed, in large part to build new developments. Since wetlands can remove up to 90 percent of the pollutants in water, wetlands destruction leads directly to polluted water.

Sprawling pavement has devoured thousands of miles thoughout America.

Poorly planned development 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.

Sprawl wastes our tax money.

Our tax money often subsidizes new developments, rather than improving our existing communities. Sprawl costs our cities and counties millions of dollars for new water and sewer lines, new schools, and increased police and fire protection. Those costs are not fully offset by the taxes paid by the new users. Instead, poorly planned development forces higher taxes on existing residents.

Sprawl worsens the damage from major floods.

Sprawl increases the risk of flooding. Development pressures lead to building on floodplains and the destruction of wetlands, natural flood-absorbing sponges. In the last eight years, floods in the United States killed more than 850 people and caused more than $89 billion in property damage. Much of this flooding occurred in places where weak zoning laws allowed developers to drain wetlands and build in floodplains.

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