Essay --

The purpose of this paper is to examine the formation of urban sprawl including its impacts on people and to explore efficient alternatives. Urban sprawl is a common problem that the world is currently facing in the process of urbanization. The North America urban sprawl that began from 1950s has been regarded as an illness of urban developments. With the purpose of drawing lessons and enlightens to a sustainable urban planning, this paper tries to analyze social and economic reasons that have been the motivation of North American urban sprawl. And interpret the causes and effects of urban sprawl, and what can we take to mitigate this phenomenon? Secondly, the paper introduces the most famous new planning movements such as Sustainable Development, Smart Growth, New Urbanism and so on. Finally, based on above observation, the paper proposes that lessons should be drawn from North American’s mistakes and not follows them. Furthermore, the paper probes into several problems in se eking a proper urban space model and policy on the process of urbanization. We must alert urban sprawl and keep on exploring sustainable urban governance policy and pay attention to induct the public opinion on consumption and culture in finding for the mechanism of structural innovation. We should commit to build sustainable transport system to reduce the consumption of automobiles. We should promote multi-intensive model of land use in urban exploration. Keywords: urban sprawl, urban planning, Introduction Started from the 1950s, the movement that many post-war cities expanded outward to form a mass migration from the center of the city surrounded by low-density suburban living patterns generally referred to as "urban sprawl." The problems posed by the... ...rt there will be no urbanization. Economy has its own rules and its own development. We cannot "push" or "speed up" subjectively, Destructive Enthusiasm in urban planning will be a dead end. Therefore, in reality, we must guard against false or excessive urbanization driven by the interests of the regime and to halt the urban sprawl-style expansion, to achieve a gradual urbanization. "New Urbanism", "compact city", "smart growth" provides us with useful ideas. There are few tiny gaps between the focus of these concepts, but their main principle is the same, namely to improve the utilization efficiency of urban space and create policies to control urban sprawl. Change the city zoning concept, promoting diversification of land use; reduce reliability on motorized travel; improve public transport to stimulate the vitality of the city It is our common goal of the future