[travisb]

Firstly, sprawl is the result only if it is around a central core(s) to which many people need to travel on a frequent basis. If few people need to travel to those cores regularly then you don't get sprawl, but rather more in-fill nodes along pre-existing highways.

Secondly, those things you mention are true -- all else being equal. But everything else isn't equal. Eliminating thirty miles of driving a day can make up for a lot of extra heating costs. Houses can cheaply avoid major cooling costs like urban heat island effects, and lack of shade suffered by apartment buildings. Economies of scale in shipping is a thing, but past a tractor-trailer a day they diminish rapidly.

So it isn't as clear that, with the way people actually live in cities today, that the systematic carbon costs, or even financial costs, favours cities the way it might have fifty or eighty years ago.

[skhunted]

Firstly, sprawl is the result only if it is around a central core(s) to which many people need to travel on a frequent basis.

This is wrong. As an extreme example consider this. If all families in the U.S. were as evenly distributed as possible with each family having at least a 1 acre lot then it would be correct to say that we are sprawled out. Sprawl in the sense we are taking about refers to spreading out.