Rapid City Growth Causes Concern Over Urban Sprawl

In the Aug. 18 issue of the journal PlosOne, a study co-authored by Yale urban environment professor Karen C. Seto predicted the "a major global expansion of urban land over the next two decades."

"The research team, consisting of scientists from Yale, Stanford, Texas A&M University and Arizona State University, performed a meta-analysis on 326 English-language papers about urban land expansion to predict the global increase of "urban extent," the fraction of land occupied by cities."

"'If cities are configured so that they take up increasingly more land it means that more people drive, as opposed to walk, from point A to point B,' (Seto) said. 'If you think about the implications of that - across billions of urban people - it doesn't matter how many emissions we reduce by switching to more energy-efficient cars.'"