Abstract:This article reviews studies published in English language planning journals since 2001 that focus on the environmental impacts of sprawl. We organise our analysis of the reviewed literature around: (1) the conceptualisation or measurement of sprawl; (2) a comparison of research methods employed and findings with respect to four categories of environmental impacts-air, energy, land, and water; and (3) an exploration of emergent and cross-cutting themes. We hypothesise that the trend towards breaking down silos observable in other areas of planning scholarship is also reflected in the recent sprawl literature and structure our review to test this proposition. International in scope, our work demonstrates how focusing on outcomes can facilitate balanced comparisons across geographic contexts with varying rates of urbanisation and affluence. We find that the sprawl research published in planning journals over the past decade frequently engages with broader themes of resilience and justice, increasingly considers multiple environmental outcomes, and suggests a convergence in the way sprawl is studied that transcends national boundaries as well as the developing-developed country dichotomy.

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This paper presents an empirical analysis of the effects of high-density zoning on multifamily housing construction from 1990 to 2000 in the suburbs of six US metropolitan areas. Zoning constraints are measured as the total number of high-density units allowed by right in each suburban jurisdiction obtained from local zoning ordinances and geographical information data. Using two-stage least squares, the analysis provides two important results: zoning as practised by suburban governments in the six metropolitan areas limits the construction of multifamily housing below market determined levels; and, multifamily zoning constraints are not exogenous but vary systematically with distance from the central city and with the racial composition of the community in 1960.

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