Urban Sprawl, Public Health, and Equity

Environmental Justice Resource Center's commissioned paper series for its Atlanta Transportation Equity Project (ATEP). Frumkin argues that sprawl is very much a public health issue, based on seven considerations: air pollution, health, lack of exercise, motor vehicle crashes, pedestrian injuries and fatalities, threats to mental health, and lost social capital. The distribution of hazards across the population is addressed for each component. Like most public health hazards, the adverse impacts of sprawl do not fall equally across the population, and those most affected deserve attention. Nationally, minorities and the poor bear a disproportionate burden of sprawl-driven health threats.