sustainable urban development urban sprawl or compact city

the rise of ‘urban sprawl’ as the primary form of urban development has come under increased criticism in recent years because of its negative environmental, social and economic effects. sprawl development is now perceived as contributing to significant fiscal costs for infrastructure providers such as local government. the form of the city is still a crucial aspect of its sustainability, and as the negative environmental, economic and social effects of urban sprawl become increasingly visible through traffic congestion, social isolation and the continual loss of important land on the urban fringe, it becomes clear that continuing this pattern of development into the future will be highly unsustainable. this paper will discuss the evolution of urban sprawl: how and why it has occurred; why it is so unsustainable yet so popular; before moving on to focus on the compact city concept. this is discussed in relation to differences between definitions of what exactly a ‘compact city’ is, and how it varies through the literature related to the topic; also will include an extended discussion about what makes a city (or part of a city) compact or not, and what the supposed benefits are from increasing the density of the urban environment. method in this research, is comparative-analytic. the results show that in response to this dire situation, literature in the early-to-mid 1990s proposed a blanket solution, which has been termed ‘the compact city’: a model of urban intensification that would (supposedly) reduce car-trips, ‘save’ the countryside from urban expansion, promote social equity, revive derelict downtown areas, and contribute to greater urban vitality and long-term sustainability.