Make America sprawl again? In a New York Times article, entitled “Why America Should Sprawl”, journalist Conor Dougherty argues that sprawl is essential to solving the housing crisis. But housing is not our only crisis.
Our current housing deficit could partly be addressed by building a carefully-considered amount of compact, mixed-use, walkable-bikeable communities with public transit in places currently used as farmland or open space, collectively known as greenfields. And perhaps that is what Dougherty means by the term “sprawl”. But others may argue that Dougherty (and a growing number of writers) are advocating literally for sprawl as defined by Britannica: “Urban sprawl, also called sprawl or suburban sprawl, the rapid expansion of the geographic extent of cities and towns, often characterized by low-density residential housing, single-use zoning, and increased reliance on the private automobile for transportation.”
Housing Is Not Our Only Crisis
The kind of sprawl in the Britannica definition, (which from now on I will just refer to as sprawl), is the cause of many of our current problems. Sprawl requires huge amounts of energy to move heavy cars, often with a single occupant, over great distances in order to access not just worksites but also everyday destinations like schools, parks, and shopping.
This inefficient form of transportation is inherently destructive as well as wasteful. Consider the environmental damage and pollution caused by extracting, transporting, refining, and burning oil. Even electric cars, like their gas-powered counterparts, require mining and manufacturing as do solar panels, wind farms, and endless miles of copper wiring needed to produce and deliver the electricity.
Sprawl forces people to buy, maintain, fuel, repair, license and ensure cars at an average cost of over $10,000 per year, a burden even on middle class budgets, while leaving car-less households at the mercy of poorly-funded public transportation systems.
Cars have also made cities less livable for people while killing over 40,000 Americans annually and motivating would-be cyclists and pedestrians to instead travel by car for self-preservation. More car-dependent sprawl will only make matters worse.
In addition to a housing crisis, we have a climate crisis. In 2022, the transportation sector produced 28 percent of US GHG emissions, more than any other sector including electricity generation (25 percent) and industry (23 percent). Of that total, over half (57 percent) comes from light-duty vehicles like cars. Emissions from cars are difficult to reduce because, for the last 80 years, most developments have been built under the assumption that all households will own a car and use it for just about every journey. The accumulation of heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere is creating unnatural disasters including extreme weather, drought, wildfire, and sea level rise. Insurers are abandoning high-risk areas in response to the increased threat. Doubling down on sprawl will only exacerbate the climate crisis.
Sprawl also squanders the benefits provided by greenfields. The protection of wetlands and watersheds helps safeguard drinking water and manage stormwater as we become increasingly whipsawed by drought and flooding.
Well-maintained forests sequester carbon and offer outdoor recreation opportunities for beleaguered humans. In addition, the preservation of habitat is essential for the continued survival of threatened and endangered species during this era of widespread extinctions.
We are currently converting over 700,000 acres of farmland to development every year in the US. Under that business-as-usual scenario, we will lose another 18.4 million acres of farmland between 2016 and 2040. As if that isn’t bad enough, the loss would grow to 24.4 million acres, or over one million acres of farmland per year, under a scenario that assumes runaway sprawl. Unless and until we have an alternative way to grow food at scale, it just seems sensible to minimize the loss of farmland.
In addition, we have a crisis of uncertainty. The American birthrate now stands at about 1.7 live births per woman, which is well below the replacement rate of 2.1. The US has offset this decline for decades with immigration. But America could see that change if governments make the US a difficult or even undesirable destination.
Most demographers predict that total US population will begin to drop in this century and some claim it could happen as soon as the 2040s. Some cities will continue to grow due to internal migration. But others will shrink. The population losers could end up repeating the hardships experienced by many rust belt cities like Detroit, which has lost two-thirds of its peak population and where 20,500 abandoned homes were demolished between 2014 and 2018 alone at a cost of $260 million.
In addition to total US population decline, some cities will shrink due to climate change. Dougherty’s New York Times article profiles developments 40 miles north of Dallas where temperatures are predicted to exceed 100 degrees for 84 days of the year by the end of the century and where people will be vulnerable to more frequent disasters including drought, wildfire, hailstorms, and hurricanes.
Climate change will produce climate migrants who flee Texas and other hard-hit states. It will be painfully ironic when cities currently pursuing sprawl in response to the housing crisis ultimately end up having to pay to undo that sprawl in response to the climate crisis.
Alternatives to Greenfield Development
One takeaway from Dougherty’s New York Times piece and articles in other publications, including Public Square, a journal of the Congress of New Urbanism, is that we have no choice but to develop greenfields. In some cases, perhaps in many cases, that will be true.
However, many of the European cities profiled in Ecocity Snapshots have succeeded in accommodating growth with little outward expansion of their urban footprints. Under its aim to “build the city inward”, Stockholm added more population within its core city compared to the outer belt between 2002 and 2013. Copenhagen achieved a comparable score on the urban containment index for these years. From 2001 to 2010, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain captured 97 percent of its growth within the greenbelt surrounding this Basque city of over 250,000 people. Between 2002 and 2008, 80 percent of Oslo’s new development occurred on previously-developed sites including brownfields. Similar results have been achieved in Bristol, United Kingdom, Freiburg, Germany, and many other winners of the European Green Capital and European Green Leaf awards.
As in Europe, many American cities have also been preferencing infill over greenfield development by building on former industrial, warehousing, and railroad sites. But there are many more opportunities that we could put to work such as failing shopping malls and empty office buildings created by the rise of online shopping and remote work. By creatively transforming currently underused properties we might also be able to convince more empty nesters and retirees to relocate so that more young couples can raise a family in a single-family home without having to buy new homes in greenfield developments that typically require long commutes.
Shape, Not Sprawl
Despite the alternatives to greenfield development listed above, some cities will inevitably have to grow out as well as up. But as many urban scholars point out, outward expansion does not necessarily mean sprawl. A great deal of outward expansion can be and has been in the form of well-planned developments that are served by cost-effective infrastructure and are so walkable/bikeable that families can enjoy car-free living.
When talking about this form of outward expansion, it makes sense to advocate for shaping outward urban expansion using smart growth strategies rather than saying that America needs to sprawl. The shapeless spread of poorly-planned growth known as sprawl has wasted an obscene amount of farmland, habitat, and other rural resources. It has also generated a substantial portion of the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for extreme weather, drought, wildfires, and floods. The housing crisis should be solved without repeating one of the most spectacular blunders of the last 80 years.
Notes
American Farmland Trust. Farms Under Threat. Accessed at Farms Under Threat – Future Scenarios.
Britannica. 2025. Urban Sprawl. Accessed at Urban sprawl | Definition, Examples, Problems, Causes, & Alternatives | Britannica.
Dougherty, C. 2025. Why America Should Sprawl. New York Times. Accessed at America Needs More Sprawl to Fix Its Housing Crisis – The New York Times.
Jankowski, P. 2025. MIT. As climate change pushes dry weather east, striking changes are coming to Dallas-Fort Worth. Climate Portal. Accessed at As climate change pushes dry weather east, striking changes are coming to Dallas-Fort Worth and Texas | MIT Climate Portal.
Pruetz, R. 2016. Ecocity Snapshots. Hermosa Beach: Arje Press.
Raabe, B. 2023. A History of the Detroit Demolition Program. Bella Contracting. Accessed at A History Of The Detroit Demolition Program | Bella Contracting Services.
Steuteville, R. 2025. We need outward growth – but not sprawl. Public Square. Congress of New Urbanism.
Accessed at We need outward growth—but not sprawl | CNU.
USEPA. 2024. Fast Facts on Transportation Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Accessed at Fast Facts on Transportation Greenhouse Gas Emissions | US EPA.
