Across the nation, the debate over metropolitan sprawl and its impact has become pivotal to urban planning. A decade and a half ago, Smart Growth America and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sought to raise the level of the debate by sponsoring groundbreaking research to quantitatively measure sprawl and its quality-of-life impacts. The resulting measures are widely used in urban research and public health.

Costs of Sprawl provides a panoramic guide to urban form in America, measures sprawl for metropolitan areas, urbanized areas, and counties, and studies the...