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Do economists have anything to contribute to the debate on urban sprawl? (and would anbody listen to them if they did?)

  • Symposium Urban Sprawl
  • Published:
Forum for Social Economics

Abstract

This essay explores reasons for the relative shortage of work by economists on the subject of urban sprawl. I argue that a correct economic understanding of the sprawl issue is difficult to communicate. Meanwhile, a simplified caricature of economic thinking on sprawl has emerged. It argues that decentralized, low-density development has been chosen by the “free market”, therefore the problem signified by the word sprawl does not exist. This argument, made in the name of economics but not always by economists, has served to polarize the detabe as much as to enlighten it. I propose an alternative understanding of the economics of sprawl that provides common ground for debate among economists, planners, and politicians.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA

    Paul D. Gottlieb

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  1. Paul D. Gottlieb
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Additional information

The author is associate director of the Center for Regional Economic Issues at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. In a prior life, he studied cost-of-sprawl issues for the New Jersey Office of State Planning.

Thanks go to Rachael Callanan for assistance on this paper.

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Gottlieb, P.D. Do economists have anything to contribute to the debate on urban sprawl? (and would anbody listen to them if they did?). FSSE 28, 51–64 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02833983

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02833983

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