Progressive planners should find ways to support local efforts in community development and planning that contribute to broader structural change at the national and global levels. If we are not aware of the global trends and do not act to confront them, our local efforts can solidify the international structure of poverty and inequality. The urban agenda needs to be strongly linked with the global environmental agenda by pointing to the wasteful process of urbanization propagated in the West. This is an issue that planners should be especially concerned with for it directly concerns the work we do. Urban development and planning in the U.S. are dominated by a pro-growth mentality, spurred by the real estate, auto and oil industries.
Metropolitan growth is sprawled to accommodate the private auto as the main transportation mode.
Urban sprawl consumes large amounts of land and encourages higher rates of energy consumption and waste than more compact forms of development. In large part because of its sprawled metropolitan regions, the U.S. is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the world, and a major contributor to global warming. Reliance on the auto not only wastes energy and pollutes the environment, but wastes human resources because people spend excessive time in traffic. In international forums, the U.S. is relatively silent about sprawl. The main strategy it advances for dealing with its consequences is treatment of tail-pipe emissions and alternative fuels.