Urban Sprawl isn't to blame

Brendan Gleeson, Professor in Urban Policy Studies at University of Melbourne, has written an article titled Urban sprawl isn’t to blame: unsustainable cities are the product of growth fetish, in which appears the following quotes:

mounting evidence shows that high density development in inner areas performs very poorly in terms of resource consumption and greenhouse emissions. The idea that outer suburbs are inherently less sustainable than inner ones doesn’t bear scrutiny.

We have sprawl in every possible physical form – from low density suburbia to the vertical sprawl produced by market driven compaction. It is a fallacy to describe the latter as sustainable.

The outer suburbs simply aren’t the source of our mounting environmental problems. And neither is social delinquency a helpful way of thinking about what is a long run failing of the market economy.