The Unexplained Relationship between Urban Sprawl and Home Ownership

Urban sprawl is characterized by low density distribution of housing as the city grows. Some underlying factors behind urban sprawl and home ownership may be determinant to explain to what extent this is actually true in reality and this will be the central focus of this paper: to analyze. After reviewing the factors that affect urban sprawl and homeownership and analyzing why the relationship between these two has not been widely explained so far, we get the conclusion that urban sprawl could, in theory, cause a decrease in the demand for housing in the city center and therefore decrease housing prices, increasing affordability not only for housing in the city center, but as a result, of housing in the city as a whole. However, in reality, this may not be the case. This uncertainty relies mainly in the fact that, in the presence of urban sprawl, prices for housing in the city center may increase, decrease or remain stable because of other external factors. Finally, there is also a possibility that because the external costs of urban sprawl have not been yet internalized by the cities, the inner city is also baring the external costs generated by sprawl, and this diminishes the effect of a decrease in the housing costs in the city centers. A further empirical or quantitative research, identifying and including these external factors, could be needed in this area in order to determine the actual relationship between the suburbanization process and housing affordability.