Are fragmentation and sprawl interlinked? North American evidence

The association between municipal fragmentation and suburban sprawl is exam ined, based on a cross-sectional analysis of all U.S. and Canadian metropol itan areas with more than 500,000 residents in the 1990s. Results reveal th at this association is rather weak but significant and is sustained even wh en the less fragmented and more compact Canadian metropolitan areas are exc luded from the analysis. The impact of residential sprawl on fragmentation is significant, but fragmentation does not predict sprawl. Low levels of fr agmentation do not guarantee compact development, but lack of excessive fra gmentation might be a precondition for compact development in North America .