Ending Global Sprawl: Urban Standard for Sustainable and Resilient Development

by Peter Calthorpe

The health and well-being of humankind depends upon the kind of cities we build in the next two generations.

We now have 4.2 billion people living in cities and that number will increase to 6.7 billion by 2050. Based on our current pattern of global sprawl, this will translate into an 80% expansion of city footprints from 2018 to 2030. The current form of global sprawl deepens spatial inequalities and isolates opportunities for those who need the opportunities of urban life the most; it heightens the costs of infrastructure and social services, and it intensifies the environmental burdens of poor air quality, carbon emissions, and deteriorating ecosystems.
Urban Standards for Sustainable and Resilient Development

Authored by Peter Calthorpe and published by the World Bank, the book “Ending Global Sprawl: Urban Standards for Sustainable and Resilient Development” seeks to define the global challenges of sprawl and how its various manifestations contribute to social isolation, economic inequality, and environmental degradation.

311 pages, ebook

Published November 22, 2022

About the author

Peter Calthorpe is a San Francisco–based architect, urban designer, and urban planner. He is a founding member of the Congress for New Urbanism, a Chicago-based advocacy group formed in 1992 that promotes sustainable building practices. For his works on redefining the models of urban and suburban growth in America Calthorpe has been named one of twenty-five ‘innovators on the cutting edge’ by Newsweek magazine. - Wikipedia