Urban Sprawl

Cities today growing are growing at a rapid rate, driven by surging population growth. As population increases, cities can grow up by building taller buildings, or grow out by occupying more land. Planners are becoming concerned that there is too much ‘out’ and not enough ‘up’, a phenomenon known as Urban Sprawl. Urban Sprawl has been facilitated in the modern era by the invention and wide acceptance of the motor vehicle, meaning development is possible almost everywhere, and sprawl is common place in many modern day cities (Newman & Kenworthy, 1999). Reasons for sprawling urban development include developers taking advantage of cheaper land further from the city knowing people will sacrifice travel time, due to the relatively low cost of travel, in order to purchase affordable land. (Danielson & Lang, 1998). Likewise, green outer suburbs with large houses on big lots and plentiful public space are very appealing to consumers; the problem however, is the low-density housing has many consequences. These include replacing public transport supply further encouraging auto dependence; reduced accessibility to employment and facilities for the poor, increased congestion, pollution and travel time, and reduced safety (The World Bank, 2002). The alternative, high-density development has a much lower per capita impact on the environment, yet it lacks some of the desirable community aspects of low-density development (Danielson & Lang, 1998). The two alternatives planners face are to allow the further expansion of cities urban fringe or re-develop existing suburbs to hold an increase in population (O'Sullivan, 2012). Melbourne is a prime example of a city facing the urban such a conundrum, with population expected to increase by 1 milli...

... middle of paper ...

...icating that UGB’s and other means of urban containment lead to higher land prices by limiting supply of developable land. Yet empirical evidence on the housing price effects of UGB remains disjointed and fragile, indicating that land supply constraints and higher land prices do not necessarily translate into higher housing prices (Jun, 2006).
Furthermore, most of the studies focus on Portland in the USA, and those conducted outside the USA focus on greenbelts rather than UGB’s (Mathur, 2013). Considering the increasing adoptions of comprehensive growth management strategies across the globe, it is time to focus on an area’s outside of Portland, and the USA in particular, and analyze the effect of the UGB on housing and land prices in Melbourne. Anaysis into the impact of distance from UGB, both within and beyond the UGB also provides an area for further study.