Massive growth of urban sprawl in Austria 1975-2020

Co-authored by REMASS PI Helmut Haberl, this article examines how urban sprawl developed across Austria between 1975 and 2020.
Urban sprawl means that homes, workplaces, and services spread into previously intact landscapes, resulting in scattered, low-density developments outside compact towns and cities.

From a sustainability perspective, sprawl is worrisome, given that these settlements require vastly more resources for providing wellbeing-relevant services, compared to compact urban settings. Raising resource consumption in turn reduces resilience and drives global heating.

The researchers used detailed maps and population data to track not only how much land contained buildings, but also how dispersed those buildings were and how many people lived nearby.
They found that Austria changed from having mostly low levels of sprawl to widespread high sprawl, especially as development expanded from city edges into suburban and rural areas. Highly sprawled land grew from about 1,100 km² in 1975 to 5,800 km² in 2020 - roughly a fivefold increase.

Over the same period, land affected by buildings grew much faster than Austria’s population, indicating that development used increasing amounts of land per person. The study identifies different phases of sprawl, including a strong suburban expansion in the 1990s and a particularly strong rural expansion between 2000 and 2010.

The authors conclude that Austria needs stronger and more enforceable planning, greater use of already zoned or underused land, and denser development near public transport to limit further sprawl.

Read the full paper here.