Too often, people speaking out for better ways to use land and improve communities define the issue as "sprawl."  Sprawl is a bad thing, ruining our environment and taking over the landscape.  If the problem is sprawl, the solution is to stop sprawl.  Sprawl is the enemy.

This gives their political opposition enormous opportunity. "Referred to in pejorative terms as urban sprawl, suburbanization has been blamed for a number of negative impacts," writes the Commonwealth Foundation.  "Suburbanites cherish the very lifestyle that the opponents of suburbanization abhor."   Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago) argues that sprawl is no better or no worse than any other settlement pattern.  Author Robert Bruegmann, a professor of art history, planning and architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says that sprawl works because it satisfies a lot of needs.

Every time "sprawl" is demonized, the audience is unnecessarily forced to place themselves somewhere in the story, as victims or opponents of suburbanization, or as "the rest of us."   It's a story that excludes anyone who doesn't already agree with the speaker.

Sprawl is not the problem.  It's a word that describes land-use patterns resulting from decisions that have been made in the past.