I don’t know about you, but I live in an area with lots of urban sprawl.  It seems like no one lives in the city they work in anymore.  This doesn’t seem like much of an issue, but when you have hundreds of thousands of people clogging the same two roads into the city in question, life becomes unbearable.

According to Smart Growth America, the cities with the most urban sprawl are:

1. Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.
2. Greensboro-Winston-Salem- High Point, N.C.
3. Raleigh-Durham, N.C.
4. Atlanta
5. Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C.
6. West Palm Beach-Boca Raton- Delray Beach, Fla.
7. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk Danbury, Conn.
8. Knoxville, Tenn.
9. Oxnard-Ventura, Calif.
10. Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas

My city, Raleigh, is number 3.  The daily commute can be a major chore because it takes half an hour to drive from one end of the city to the other…without traffic…if you are speeding.  Smart Growth America has also ranked the cities with the least urban sprawl:

1. New York
2. Jersey City, N.J.
3. Providence
4. San Francisco
5. Honolulu
6. Omaha, Neb.
7. Boston
8. Portland, Ore.
9. Miami
10. New Orleans

These are the cities that are most centralized, and thus have somewhat easier commutes.  Certainly New York has traffic, but things are not seperated by great distances.  In cities with urban sprawl problems, not only is the distance a problem, but so is traffic.  This is because, as said earlier, people don’t car pool, they don’t use (or don’t have mass transit,) and everyone jams there SUVs onto the 1 or 2 streets that head into town.  Is your city on the most or least list?  Drop me a line and let me know how your life is effected.

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