Rethinking Urban Sprawl
Moving Towards Sustainable Cities
This report provides a new perspective to the nature of urban sprawl and its causes
and environmental, social and economic consequences. This perspective, which is based
on the multi-dimensionality of urban sprawl, sets the foundations for the construction
of new indicators to measure the various facets of urban sprawl. The report uses new
datasets to compute these indicators for more than 1100 urban areas in 29 OECD countries
over the period 1990-2014. It then relies on cross-city, country-level and cross-country
analyses of these indicators to provide insights into the current situation and evolution
of urban sprawl in OECD cities. In addition, the report offers a critical assessment
of the causes and consequences of urban sprawl and discusses policy options to steer
urban development to more environmentally sustainable forms.
Published on June 14, 2018