On the Effectiveness of Smart Growth Programs in Curbing Urban Sprawl

Abstract. According to research to date, sprawl negatively affects the lives of millions of Americans annually. Fortunately, in the U.S., several states have designed and enacted growth management programs to curb its expansion. But have they been effective? Following up on work by just a handful of other research teams, we control for land area, population, fuel cost, per capita income, passenger-miles of public transportation use, congestion, and crime rates as factors causing change in land area in a 1982-2005 panel data of 85 metropolitan areas. We examine so-called “smart growth” programs by state from their effective dates of implementation rather than their enactment dates. We find that anti-sprawl policies only in the State of Washington seem to curb sprawl. Additions to highway mileage induces sprawl in metropolitan areas regardless of the status of state smart growth programs. In contrast, additions to principal arterials roadways appear to increase sprawl only in states without smart growth programs. So transportation planners in smart growth states may be “damned if they do and damned if they don’t” since not only does highway building cause sprawl but so does the non-build alternative since it results in greater congestion, which also seem to induce sprawl there. Finally, we find evidence that reducing central-city violent crime rates and increasing fuel costs also appear to most effective in reducing sprawl.