Are Fragmentation and Sprawl Interlinked?

The association between municipal fragmentation and suburban sprawl is examined, based on a cross-sectional analysis of all U.S. and Canadian metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 residents in the 1990s. Results reveal that this association is rather weak but significant and is sustained even when the less fragmented and more compact Canadian metropolitan areas are excluded from the analysis. The impact of residential sprawl on fragmentation is significant, but fragmentation does not predict sprawl. Low levels of fragmentation do not guarantee compact development, but lack of excessive fragmentation might be a precondition for compact development in North America.