Sprawl Talk

In a sweet dish of brain candy titled "The steep costs of living so far apart from each other," the Wall Street Journal contemplates the true cost of sprawl (about $1 trillion annually in the U.S., one recent study found), and it's no surprise that metro Atlanta gets a dishonorable mention. On a graphic illustrating the density of major world cities, Atlanta reigns supreme as the most spread-out, with less than 10 residents per hectare (that's roughly 2 and ½ acres). In the next several decades, the analysis found, some 2.2 billion people will move into urban areas, and if they should want density like Atlanta's, "We'd need the equivalent of all the land in India to accommodate them." [Image, info: WSJ]