Right now, the picture is not promising. Such a pattern gobbles up open space, prevents the economic use of farms and forests, displaces habitat, and forever changes our streams, rivers, and the Bay. Sprawl hurts the Bay Sprawl produces from five to seven times the sediment and phosphorus as a forest and nearly twice as much sediment and nitrogen as compact development. Unmanaged growth will overwhelm whatever progress has been made in cleaning up the Bay. Sprawl makes us use more land than we need.
Sprawl produces traffic congestion and more air pollution.
The car is the only form of transportation that can serve sprawl. Such a pattern induces twice as much road building, three to four times as many automobile trips per day, and a lot more air pollution than more compact patterns of development. Sprawl is expensive. On average, sprawling low-density residential development usually costs local governments more to provide public services than it returns to local coffers. This means sprawl produces less tax money for schools, police and fire stations, parks, and other public services.