Urban Sprawl

This topic is one of the more interesting to me in Public Admin - along with traffic patterns and how to overcome congestion. Weird I know, but something about traffic fascinates me. I digress, however.

The previous week we discussed urban sprawl from a public health perspective, one in which I never really focused on personally. I view urban sprawl from the wanton destruction of green space and poor land use policies that precede sprawl and proceed from expansion around a central city. Humans have a unique ability to build 'up' instead of 'out' in ways that were previously that of fantasy and fiction. We can go so far as to create impressive green space within and on top of buildings as we push upward. Yet we continue to waste space by building outward. This is unsustainable in the long term.

But this article we discussed concerning public health matters with regard to urban sprawl made me stop and ask myself one question - this was the one 'big' question I wanted to ask in class but we ran out of time. So I will posit the question here for now. Viewing the health implications of urban sprawl, would not the reverse be equally detrimental to the health of a population? That is, population density led to widespread epidemics historically; would this be a health related argument against centralization and for urban sprawl?

As an example, Philadelphia in the 1700's dealt with severe bouts of yellow fever - at the time of John Adams and the birth of the United States, Philadelphia was regularly evacuated for long stretches of the year in order to minimize the loss of life. This is quite an old example, but the idea holds some truth today. Should an epidemic break out within a large city, urban sprawl can act as a buffer for treatment and prevention prior to a complete outbreak in a region.

It is a tough topic either way, and I find myself arguing against that which I prefer of the two choices, but it is important to understand the problem from all sides in order to develop solutions that are effective and equitable.