In Depth Articles

Smart Cities
Policy Papers

During the next two decades, the number of Chinese residents migrating from rural to urban areas will be roughly equivalent to the relocation of the entire current population of the United States. As China's own leaders recognize, without careful planning this urban transformation may bring disastrous consequences. Grounded in experiences in both the United States and China, this December 2007 issue paper provides a comprehensive set of recommendations for the implementation of smart growth strategies that promote more efficient use of land, services, and resources.

Environmental Characteristics of Smart Growth Neighborhoods
Policy Papers

These studies, published in October 2000 and February 2003 for NRDC in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, suggest that the environmental benefits of smart growth are real and can be measured.

Solving Sprawl
Report

Sprawl is taking a grave toll on our environment and the way we live, giving us mind-numbing traffic, ugly strip development, fragmented communities, and loss of open space. In the seemingly disconnected jumble of subdivisions and empty downtowns, a sense of place seems harder and harder to find. But this November 2001 book from NRDC, Solving Sprawl, offers an inspiring contrast to these grim trends. Through 35 real-world stories, the book illustrates how people in cities, suburbs, and rural areas have found profitable, community-oriented alternatives to sprawl.

Developments and Dollars: An Introduction to Fiscal Impact Analysis in Land Use Planning
Report

This guide provides citizens, planners, local officials and others concerned with sprawling development and growth issues with tools they need to examine the likely impacts of development proposals on local taxes and municipal budgets. It also offers advice on accounting practices sometimes used to make development appear more attractive to local governments than it really is.

Unwelcome (Human) Neighbors: Sprawl and Wildlife
Policy Papers

A policy paper detailing how roads and sprawling neighborhoods are replacing pristine wildlife habitats at an alarming pace, putting the survival and reproduction of plants and animals at risk.

Paving Paradise: Sprawl and the Environment
Report

Make no mistake about it: to expand metropolitan areas into the countryside at rates many times faster than population growth, as we have been doing over the past five decades, is not good for the environment. Whether we can improve the pattern in the coming decades will be critical because, in the first half of the 21st century, the U.S. population is expected to grow by half. That anticipated growth of some 130 million people is equivalent to the current population of France and Germany combined. Where will these new citizens live, work, and shop? How important is it that we, as environmentalists who care about sustainability, bring resources to bear on the shape of America's future urban development?

Another Cost of Sprawl: The Effects of Land Use on Wastewater Utility Costs
Report

A 1998 NRDC study that adds to the growing body of literature demonstrating that low-density sprawl development is costly, inefficient, and inequitable.