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Our Built and Natural Environments: A Technical Review of the Interactions Between Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Quality, 2nd Edition

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Decisions about how and where we build our communities have significant impacts on the natural environment and on human health. Cities, regions, states, and the private sector need information about the environmental effects of their land use and transportation decisions to mitigate growth related environmental impacts and to improve community quality of life and human health.

This report:

Patterns of development, transportation infrastructure, and building location and design–the built environment–directly affect the natural environment. Development takes the place of natural ecosystems and fragments habitat. It also influences decisions people make about how to get around and determines how much people must travel to meet daily needs. These mobility and travel decisions have indirect effects on human health and the natural environment by affecting air and water pollution levels, the global climate, levels of physical activity and community engagement, and the number and severity of vehicle crashes.

Trends in land use, building patterns, and travel behavior highlight how significantly our development patterns have changed in recent decades. The size of virtually every major metropolitan area in the United States has expanded dramatically. In many places, the rate of land development has far outpaced the rate of population growth, although more recent trends in some areas suggest the pattern could be changing. As the amount of developed land has increased and more and larger homes have been built, buildings, roads, and associated impervious surfaces have grown to serve an increasingly dispersed population. As our communities changed to accommodate cars, the percentages of people taking public transit, walking, and biking declined. Projected population growth and demographic trends suggest that the need for additional development will continue to increase.

Updated: 6/20/2017
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