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Originally Posted by Reesonov
Anyway, Regina certainly has its fair share of sprawl in the Canadian sense (fairly tightly packed together SFHs along poorly planned boulevards and cul-de-sacs), but almost none in the American sense (large acreages and exurbs). Its pretty typical of Canadian cities in that sense.
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How is that sprawl? Obviously the city is growing outward, but sprawl is rapacious and unsustainable growth.
If Regina's perimeter growth is pretty tightly packed, then it's probably no less dense than any of the neighborhoods that are closer to the core, except for downtown itself. Looking at satellite images, it seems like neighborhoods are fairly connective within themselves. They pull back from the supergrid streets, but these seems fairly common in Regina, even closer to the center.
I'd prefer to reserve my ire for stuff like Atlanta's sprawl, where neighborhoods are very low-density islands in an ocean of forest. Adjacent developments leave wide swaths of forest in between them with awkwardly-shaped parcels that are more or less impossible to develop. Planners call this "leapfrog development", but that assumes the skipped-over parcels will get filled in. Oftentimes, they can't.
In the Southwest, it's common to hear outward expansion labeled as sprawl, but this isn't quite right either. The new development is fairly dense. The problem is that any population growth - in subdivisions and highrises alike - entails a corresponding increase in water usage, and water is pretty scarce. Now, swimming pools and green-grass lawns are huge water hogs, but that's not an urban planning failure
per se, it's a design failure - transplanted Midwesterners expecting the same comfy green lawns they had back in Ohio, and local government that aren't willing to prohibit these water wastes.