Sprawl Campaign Overview Strip commercial developments along highways and large lot residential subdivisions spread out over farmland and forested areas. This is the classic picture of sprawl, and it's not pretty. Tragically, though, it is an increasingly familiar and disturbing one.
Sprawl is more than just an eyesore across our countryside.
Sprawl contributes to increasing costs for public services, the declining health of central cities, environmental degradation and loss of farmland, isolation of people who cannot drive, and a degraded quality of life. Suburban sprawl costs us all. With so many land use decisions made at the local level, sprawl is a problem as diffuse as the tract housing developments which help to define it. The Sierra Club is fighting sprawl today by building on the strength of our more than 450 local grassroots groups so they are better equipped to address sprawl where so many of the decisions happen. Our Challenge to Sprawl Campaign promotes easily replicated techniques used by our local groups.