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The Problem: Sprawl
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Sprawl -- the blighted landscape of cookie-cutter suburbs, strip malls, and far too
many highways that has spread across so much of America -- is a hot topic. Most of us are all too familiar with its ills: endless
driving and frequent traffic jams, aggravated pollution, fragmented communities and degraded rural and natural areas.
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While these effects are plainly visible, sprawl also carries a large hidden price tag: It
places fiscal burdens on cities and towns to extend services and infrastructure -- new telephone lines, sewers, police and fire service
-- to outlying areas, even as their downtowns are drained of economic vitality. More and more Americans -- city planners,
environmentalists, community leaders and residents of urban, suburban and rural areas -- have come to realize that this brand of
headlong, poorly planned development is not in the long-term interest of their communities.
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In communities across the nation, there is a growing concern that current development
patterns -- dominated by sprawl -- are no longer in the long-term interest of our cities, existing suburbs, small towns, rural
communities, or wilderness areas. Low-density, segregated land use patterns and auto-oriented development have facilitated the
phenomenon of suburban sprawl. The resulting impacts include increasingly congested freeways and roads,
dis-investment in inner-cities,
declines in air quality, loss of open space and farmland, and a decline in the quality of life for all. To successfully address these
problems it is necessary to embrace smarter and fairer development patterns.
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Though supportive of growth, communities are questioning the economic costs of abandoning
infrastructure in the city, only to rebuild it further out. Spurring the smart growth movement are demographic shifts, a strong
environmental ethic, increased fiscal concerns, and more nuanced views of growth. This is critical because during the next 20 years,
the Bay Area is projected to grow by 1 million people. The result is both a new demand and a new opportunity for smart growth.
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