Sprawl hurts us all by crowding our schools. New sprawl creates crowded schools in the suburbs, and empty, crumbing schools in center cities. One reason for the financial troubles of our Cincinnati Public Schools is the dwindling tax base of the city due to sprawl. In population surge in our outlying areas has also caused chronic school overcrowding. In the Lakota School district in Butler County, for example, taxpayers were forced to pay for 10 new schools in the 1990s, and yet they still need two more.
Sprawl creates more air and water pollution.
Largely due to the worsening traffic congestion on Cincinnati roads and highways, and the lack of efficient mass transit, the air quality in Cincinnati has become a major health problem. The American Lung Association gives the Tri-State's air quality a failing grade, the EPA recently had to issue a special health alert just for Cincinnati residents with asthma and other respiratory problems. Sprawl also means more asphalt and concrete, which increases run-off that threatens our rivers, lakes, streams, creeks. Sprawl destroys parks, farms and open space. That represents one quarter of the entire area's farmland destroyed in one generation, the most of any Ohio metropolitan area.