Do increases in highway capacity cause urban sprawl?
“Urban sprawl” is a term that has been widely used to describe the rapid and uncontrolled growth of urban areas onto previously undeveloped land at the urban fringe. It has a popular connotation of large tracts of agricultural lands and wildlife habitats being converted to suburban single-family housing developments. Construction of new highways and even some types of transit improvements (e.g., commuter rail services) are often cited as major contributors to urban sprawl by making land at the urban fringe more accessible and therefore more attractive for development. The relationship between transportation improvements and land development is extremely complex, and even less well understood than its impacts on travel behavior. While improved transportation accessibility in a particular corridor may indeed make land more attractive for development, other factors such as water and sewer lines, quality of schools and other public services, undevelopable land (e.g., slope, floodplains, et
