A lack of regional government planning can foster sprawl. In metros in the Northeast and Midwest, dozens of local governments regulate development. The result is fragmented planning. Efforts by local and state governments to restrict sprawl are growing but have had limited impact. Population density today.
Density is the percentage of a metro area s population that lives in urbanized areas.
The Census Bureau defines urbanized areas as those parts of a metro with 1,000 or more residents per square mile. Change in population density during the 1990s . The second component of the index measures how much a metro s percentage in urbanized areas increased or decreased from 1990 to 1999. The two rankings were added to produce each metro area s sprawl index score. That gave Louisville a rank of 85 among the 271 metros.