Naked horizon December 02, 2007

Welcome to Minnesota, where everything isn't actually above average. Humorist Garrison Keillor would have us believe we are the model of family, efficiency, and sweet satire. In stark contrast, Smart Growth America pegs the Twin Cities metropolitan area as narrowly below average. Using a four-factor sprawl index, they developed a study to "create a multidimensional picture of the sprawl phenomenon and analyze related impacts".

According to their exhaustive data, while we're ahead of Kansas City, Indianapolis, and St. Louis, we fall behind half of the major cities in Texas (really!), Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Milwaukee, New York, and of course Portland.

The executive summary begins: "Much as Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography, most people would be hard pressed to define urban sprawl, but they know it when they see it."

Look out those car windows on the way home. You'll probably see plenty of the following: "The landscape sprawl creates has four dimensions: a population that is widely dispersed in low-density development; rigidly separated homes, shops, and workplaces; a network of roads marked by huge blocks and poor access; and a lack of well-defined, thriving activity centers, such as downtowns and town centers. Most of the other features usually associated with sprawl - the lack of transportation choices, relative uniformity of housing options or the difficulty of walking - are a result of these conditions."

Read the report: Measuring Sprawl and its Impact

image used with permission: Metropolitan Design Center, UMN