Residential Settlement Patterns: A Service Costs Analysis

The Halifax Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia is working on the region's 25 year plan. In looking at "alternatives of how and where it should grow", HRM has created an ongoing "Cost of Servicing study...to better understand the cost implications of various growth alternatives."

They list 7 residential patterns:

1. Rural 2+ acre lots;
2. Rural 1 acre lots;
3. Suburban Low Density;
4. Urban low Density;
5. Suburban Mid-Density;
6. Urban Mid-Density; and
7. Urban High Density.

Urban mid-density and high-density residential patterns are substantially cheaper to service than rural and most suburban forms, and still cheaper than suburban mid-density.

Check out the report for yourself. Replicating this kind of study in the various U.S. metropolitan areas would help to demonstrate the case of the great costs involved in sprawl, not to mention the various subsidies that fuel sprawl under the prevailing planning and development paradigm in the United States.