ABSTRACT
The outward spatial growth of US metropolitan areas has outpaced population growth over the last three decades. This growth at the edges of previous urban development began much earlier but become more pronounced with mortgage insurance programs that favoured suburban locations, and with heavy investment in the interstate highway system of the mid 1950s which had the unintended result of encouraging more people to commute longer distances by automobile. The phenomenon of much if not most of new construction in metropolitan regions involving conversion to urban uses of land in what had been countryside is commonly referred to as urban sprawl.
