ABSTRACT
The result was that the vast majority of urban development occurred as unplanned, unserviced sprawl with tiny developments of a few houses along existing farm lanes and on short dead-end lanes extending from them. The term “sprawl” (supurôru) has a slightly different meaning in Japan than in the other developed countries. In Japan the term refers to haphazard, unserviced development along existing rural lanes. That was a common usage of the term in the West before the Second World War, but such development has been mostly eliminated in the years since, and the term “sprawl” is now more commonly used to refer to patterns of metropolitan growth that spread over larger areas than necessary because of low densities, leapfrog development that leaves large tracts undeveloped, or patterns of development that tend to reduce accessibility and increase road use and congestion (Cervero 1989; Ewing 1997).
