Descriptive and comparative studies of 1990 urban extent data for the New York Metropolitan Region

Two generations of decentralized growth have dramatically expanded the urban portion of the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state region. In the last 30 years, the amount of urban land has increased by more than 60 % despite only a 13 % increase in population. (Regional Plan Association, 1998) The disparity between population growth and land consump-tion, spatially and temporally, has made research on urban sprawl an issue of increased notoriety. Furthermore, the direct impacts on the physical, ecological, natural, and cultural resources are compounded by the fiscal costs associated with building new in-frastructure and public services in remote developments. Since 1999, a multidisciplinary team from the United States Geologi-cal Survey, the Regional Plan Association, and Cornell University’