Who Thinks Urban Sprawl Is A Good Thing?

Sign up for CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and/or follow us on Google News!

The Dallas area has grown by about three million people over the past two decades, and Ross Perot, Jr. predicted in the New York Times that greater Dallas would continue to push outward for many decades more. It will start at a point 40 miles from downtown, he says, then increase 50 miles, and keep going until it bursts across the state line into Oklahoma. If that urban sprawl should come to pass, it would surpass the population of the Chicago region.

Many planners and environmentalists think of this scenario as a nightmare.

Certainly, Dallas is not alone. According to the most recent US Census numbers, cities of all sizes grew on average from 2023 to 2024. Many southern and western cities experienced accelerated growth. Princeton, Texas had a remarkable 30.6% growth rate. New York City, Houston, and Los Angeles saw their greatest numeric gains during this time, and some cities in the northeast and midwest marked their first population increase in recent years.

Urban sprawl isn’t the only answer. In fact, there are a number of groups that offer a different vision to meet rising housing demand and, in doing so, infuse a vision of urban densification, transit, walkability, and a lot more biking.

How High Is The US Domestic Population Growing Annually, Anyway?

Calls to “build, baby, build” accompany assertions that the current US housing stock cannot meet the needs of a rising population. Actually, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) anticipates that the rate of US population growth generally slows over the next 30 years, from an average of 0.4% a year between 2025 and 2035 to an average of 0.1% a year between 2036 and 2055. (Interestingly, the CBO notes that “net immigration becomes an increasingly important source of population growth. Without immigration, the population would shrink beginning in 2033, in part because fertility rates are projected to remain too low for a generation to replace itself.” But I digress…)

Several prominent figures push the theory of population decline, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is at the top of the list. The father of at least thirteen children, Musk has warned that declining birth rates and aging populations are some of his biggest concerns for the future of humanity. While it is accurate that several countries are experiencing demographic shifts, it is more that a current woman’s fertility rate will drop yet the global population will stay steady.

So, to fulfill the desires of a shifting population, there are numerous ways to create appealing, functional, healthy, and safe housing situations. Instead of hyperbole, it will take planning. Instead of fear-mongering, it will take keen understanding of community dynamics.

Renovating: An Alternative to Building More and Faster

An odd New York Times article describes urban sprawl in the same vein as “privilege” and “gentrify” and insists that it “has come to contain more emotion than meaning.” Author Conor Dougherty, who wrote Golden Gates: The Housing Crisis and a Reckoning for the American Dream, derides how “anti-sprawl legislation has successfully limited or prohibited this sort of growth in much of the country.” Dougherty also acknowledges that farming regions like Napa Valley and wild spaces like the Marin Headlands were saved by anti-sprawl legislation. The gains, he quickly spits out, came with projects that were “tied up in years of lawsuits that can add millions of dollars to the final cost.” Well, yes, it is costly and time-consuming to buck against environmental best practices.

Dougherty argues that the “solution is to build more” and adds, “that’s not controversial.” Such an existential assumption doesn’t take into account that new construction to satisfy the US thirst for more built structure has an alternative: rebuilding existing structures. Sure, managing deep renovation projects is challenging due to the interactions with their surroundings, the issues of limited access and space, and the uncertainty around the composition and conditions of existing buildings.

Challenging, yes, but not impossible.

Instead of Urban Sprawl, How about Renovating to Reduce Carbon?

Buildings are energy- and resource-hungry. Their construction and use account for around 39% of global carbon dioxide emissions, and they consume around 40% of all the energy produced. (This is a good place to note that April 2025 was the second warmest April on record, with a global average temperature of 1.49 ± 0.12 °C (2.67 ± 0.22 °F) above the 1850-1900 average, behind April 2024 by 0.07 °C.) According to the European Commission, 35 million existing buildings could be renovated and up to 160,000 additional green jobs created in the construction sector by 2030.

Two major supply-based strategies can increase the speed and volume of energy renovations.

1. Replacing time-consuming on-site renovations with off-site renovations using prefabricated insulation elements;
2. Moving beyond individual building projects and implementing serial renovations by aggregating several buildings within the same time frame and proximity.

Then there are renovation strategies that incorporate building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) components as a new building material. It’s one of the most promising ways to achieve decarbonization of the building stock in an economical and environmentally efficient manner. Case study research points out that integrating BIPV can significantly enhance energy savings, achieving up to 122 % in energy efficiency gains and can meet the 2050 targets for cumulative energy demand (CED) and global warming potential (GWP). Additionally, the most effective BIPV scenarios demonstrate economic viability with a payback period of 14–18 years and internal rates of return (IRR) between 5.3% and 5.9%.

Final Thoughts

Here are two final examples where carbon impact is at the forefront of consideration when housing expansion is needed.

Don’t Waste Buildings (DWB) is the voluntary effort to put a spotlight on up-front, or embodied, carbon and make the case for the productive use of empty and underperforming buildings. These buildings, all over the UK and the globe are untapped economic and social assets, not structures to be casually discarded. They could be utilized to deliver much-needed housing and development at greater speed, lower cost, and with less of an impact on our environment. Lloyd Alter writes on his Substack that he finds DWB interesting due to their focus on “reducing upfront carbon emissions by reusing, restoring, and adapting existing buildings.” Agreeing that some buildings need to be at least partially demolished, they also have the position that demolition is a “crisis” because of it significant upfront carbon emissions and need for replacement (new build) construction.

The Center for the Sustainable Built Environment (CSBE) researches construction and urban design pathways to build the housing and infrastructure that we need while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with construction material use in line with the Paris Agreement. They state that, to provide guidance on past/current GHG emissions and future reduction needs, it is important to calculate construction emissions and carbon budgets for over 1,000 cities across the world.