With the election of Dave Cieslewicz as Madison’s new mayor, Urban sprawl, his primary platform, is coming into the spotlight as a pressing issue for Madison.

Urban sprawl is the continued spread of residential homes to areas further from the central city. This phenomenon can promote economic stratification, discourage affordable housing, create traffic congestion downtown and pollute the environment, according to city officials.

Madison Planning Commission member Richard Wagner said the commission recently turned down a proposal to build a Sam’s Club on the periphery of Madison because they worried it would contribute to more sprawl and potentially harm a creek in the area. He said the commission has trouble deciding how to deal with “big box development,” meaning single large chain stores, like Target stores, gobbling up to 50,000 square feet.

Commission member Ken Opin said big box stores are a problem because everybody wants to shop at them but nobody wants to live next to them, further increasing the spread in suburban housing.

Cieslewicz said the problem with housing sprawl is suburban residents’ subsequent reliance on cars and the extra energy and construction needed to channel power out to rural homes. He said runoff along highways and construction sites eventually end up in Madison’s lakes, and he prefers cities because they enable individuals to make a “smaller environmental footprint.”

“All of those contributions that you make to air pollution, water pollution, global warming and land-use consumption are going to be so much less if you make your home in the city,” Cieslewicz said.

Opin said urban sprawl is harmful to the environment because it necessitates sewer tanks in virtually every suburb of Madison rather than the connected sewer systems in downtown Madison.

“Most septic tanks inevitably fail,” Opin said.

He said sprawl also leads to inequality between low- and high-income residents, with higher-income residents building their homes farther away from downtown.

Madison School District superintendent Art Rainwater said he tries to draw school district boundaries to include a mix of socio-economic backgrounds, but it is difficult because Madison’s low-income housing is concentrated in specific areas.

Madison will reach boundaries for new development in the next 20 years. Wagner said the new challenge will be to work with neighboring communities in order to discourage new housing from “leapfrogging” into remote areas outside of Madison. He also said Madison will need to develop the downtown and raise its skyline to discourage further sprawl.

“We have to be willing to go up if we don’t want to go out,” Wagner said.

Cieslewicz set several lofty goals interspersed throughout his campaign regarding efficient land use. He wants new neighborhoods on the fringes of the city to be “walkable” and compact, and he also wants to build more densely inside Madison.

Planning commission member Lee Madden said Cieslewicz has a clear vision to deal with Madison sprawl, and the commission plans to redevelop the East Washington corridor, similar to the way the West Washington corridor was “reinvigorated” by new development.

The planning commission reevaluates its city land use plan every 10 years; its next review of the plan will be within a year.