ABSTRACT
A literature review by Ewing found poor accessibility to be the common denominator of sprawl. Sprawl is viewed as any development pattern in which related land uses have poor access to one another, leaving residents with no alternative to long-distance trips by automobile. Low residential density is on everyone's list of sprawl indicators. Three types of mixed-use measures are found in the land use-travel literature: those representing relative balance between jobs and population within subareas of a region; those representing the diversity of land uses within subareas of a region; and those representing the accessibility of residential uses to nonresidential uses at different locations within a region. Urban centers are concentrations of activity that provide agglomeration economies, support alternative modes and multipurpose trip making, create a sense of place in the urban landscape, and otherwise differentiate compact urban areas from sprawling ones.
