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Is Sprawl Associated with a Widening Urban–Suburban Mortality Gap?

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Abstract

This paper examines whether sprawl, featured by low development density, segregated land uses, lack of significant centers, and poor street connectivity, contributes to a widening mortality gap between urban and suburban residents. We employ two mortality datasets, including a national cross-sectional dataset examining the impact of metropolitan-level sprawl on urban–suburban mortality gaps and a longitudinal dataset from Portland examining changes in urban–suburban mortality gaps over time. The national and Portland studies provide the only evidence to date that (1) across metropolitan areas, the size of urban–suburban mortality gaps varies by the extent of sprawl: in sprawling metropolitan areas, urban residents have significant excess mortality risks than suburban residents, while in compact metropolitan areas, urbanicity-related excess mortality becomes insignificant; (2) the Portland metropolitan area not only experienced net decreases in mortality rates but also a narrowing urban–suburban mortality gap since its adoption of smart growth regime in the past decade; and (3) the existence of excess mortality among urban residents in US sprawling metropolitan areas, as well as the net mortality decreases and narrowing urban–suburban mortality gap in the Portland metropolitan area, is not attributable to sociodemographic variations. These findings suggest that health threats imposed by sprawl affect urban residents disproportionately compared to suburban residents and that efforts curbing sprawl may mitigate urban–suburban health disparities.

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Notes

  1. “Smart growth” is antisprawl development that values long-range, holistic considerations of environmental protection, economic growth, and social equity over short-term fiscal considerations. The term of “smart growth” is often used interchangeably with “growth management.” Examples of growth management/smart growth strategies include (a) urban containment boundaries that direct urban development into areas intended or needed for urban uses and protect rural land from urban spillovers, (b) capital improvements programming and adequate facilities standards that discourage developments farther away from existing civil infrastructure systems and encourage infill and redevelopments, (c) land preservation techniques (e.g., transfer of development rights and agriculture/forest buffers) that protect resource land from urban development pressures, etc.

  2. The Generalized Linear Model (GLZ) is an extension of the General Linear Model (GLM) to be used when response variables follow distributions other than the normal distribution and when variances are not constant.

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Acknowledgement

The authors thank Professor Gerrit Knaap at the University of Maryland for his gracious assistance in obtaining the Portland mortality data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 301 19th Avenue South, 295E HHH Center, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

    Yingling Fan

  2. Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA

    Yan Song

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Correspondence to Yingling Fan.

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Fan, Y., Song, Y. Is Sprawl Associated with a Widening Urban–Suburban Mortality Gap?. J Urban Health 86, 708–728 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-009-9382-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-009-9382-3

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