Urban sprawl and growth management – drivers, impacts and responses in selected European and US cities

Abstract

Urban growth management has become a common term to circumscribe strategies and tools to regulate urban land use in metropolitan areas. It is particularly used to counteract negative impacts of urban sprawl but also to frame future urban development. We discuss recent challenges of urban growth in 6 European and 2 US American city-regions. The paper compares the urban development focusing on a quantification of drivers and effects of urban growth and a qualitative analysis of the applied urban growth management tools. We build our analysis on findings from the EU-FP6 project PLUREL. The cities have different success in dealing with urban growth pressure -some can accommodate most growth in existing urban areas and densify, others expand or sprawl. Urban growth management is no guarantee to contain urban growth, but the case studies offer some innovative ways how to deal with particular challenges.

The Smartness Profile of Selected European Cities in Urban Management – A Comparison Analysis

“…Additionally, planning coverage is characterized by great diversity, for instance Lodz is covered by plans in only 16.1%, but Gdansk -65.4% (Hajduk, 2018). Lack of spatial development plans causes chaotic development and urban sprawl of cities (Howe & Langdon, 2002;Fertner, Jørgensen, T. A. S. Nielson, & K. S. B. Nilsson, 2016). An important issue is the development of sustainable transport in the context of spatial management.…”

Structural and functional improvement of urban fringe areas: toward achieving sustainable built–natural environment interactions

“…These areas, however, can cause problems by limiting the interactions between natural and built elements of the landscape if they are not managed in a proper way. One of the main issues affecting the relationship between urban and natural systems in urban fringe areas is urban sprawl creating a number of problems in many large cities both in developed and developing countries (Fertner et al 2017). In developed countries, this issue has been addressed in some cities and the urban fringe zone is planned and managed in order to prevent inconsistent urban sprawl and manage the interactions (Zhao et al 2009).…”

“…In developed countries, this issue has been addressed in some cities and the urban fringe zone is planned and managed in order to prevent inconsistent urban sprawl and manage the interactions (Zhao et al 2009). For instance, in cities like Portland, Manchester, and Copenhagen, urban fringes are successfully managed to prevent unplanned city growth (Fertner et al 2017) by providing a buffer zone that protects both built and natural systems. However, the mentioned cities are located in relatively humid climates and this resolves some of the issues spontaneously.…”

Urban sprawl and childhood obesity

“…Urban sprawl is one such obesogenic environmental factor. Urbanization has been most rapid in developing economies, but urban sprawl has become increasingly pronounced in developed economies such as the United States and European Union 23 . It can be generally defined as the expansion of built land cover with low population density, with change characterized by the speed of urban area growth outstripping the speed of population growth.…”

“…Our findings provide a comprehensive and up‐to‐date summary and interpretation of the scientific evidence on how a key dimension of urbanization may affect childhood health. This, in turn, could serve as an important reference for aligning urban planning, a key goal of which is the control of urban sprawl, 23,29 with the imperatives of public health in which the curtailment of the childhood obesity epidemic is increasingly urgent 30,31 …”