Featured Program
A CPTV Connecting Our Communities Production
Produced in Association With The Hartford Courant and The Hartford Courant's Key Issues Forum
If someone were polluting your water, driving up your energy costs and making you spend more time in the car, you would want to know who and why. Sprawl: Driven by Denial, a CPTV Connecting Our Communities production that premiered on CPTV on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2005, laun
ched a dialogue examining how chasing the American Dream has become a slow motion crisis.
Tom Condon, a Hartford Courant columnist and editor of Place in the Sunday Commentary section, hosted the live one-hour broadcast interactive town meeting that explored the problem of sprawl as well as potential solutions. Panelists taking part in the discussion were Douglas I. Foy, Secretary of the Massachusetts Office for Commonwealth Development; Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture and urbanism and of American studies at Yale University; and Connecticut State Representative Lewis J. Wallace Jr.
Sprawl: Driven by Denial is a CPTV Original produced in association with The Hartford Courant and The Hartford Courant's Key Issues Forum.
In conjunction with the television broadcast, The Hartford Courant published an editorial project about sprawl in its Commentary section on Sunday, Oct. 9.
The dialogue that Condon initiated during the CPTV broadcast of Sprawl: Driven by Denial has continued in his online column.
Sprawl is a growing problem that was a major issue in Connecticut's state legislature this past year and promises to be a front-burner topic in the 2006 gubernatorial election. Sprawl is defined as dispersed, auto-dependent development outside of compact urban and village centers, along highways and in the rural countryside. Sprawl began with the suburbanization of Connecticut starting right after World War II and gaining momentum in the 1960s. More recently, Connecticut has experienced intense development pressure on what used to be rural towns.
Sprawl increases the time that commuters spend driving, which wastes both energy and time, and causes significant air and water pollution. Between 1997 and 2002, according to federal data, each Connecticut resident on average added nearly 500 miles to the annual mileage they drove.
As more houses and roads are built, sprawl has led to the loss of forests, fields and farms, creating aesthetic and environmental problems. A University of Connecticut study using satellite images found that the "urban footprint'' of land covered by buildings and roads grew by 15 percent between 1985 and 2002.
In addition, sprawl has led to isolation of the very poor in inner cities and of senior citizens in various pockets of sprawl.
Connecticut Public Television (CPTV) is a locally and nationally recognized producer and presenter of quality public television programming, including UConn Women's Basketball games, Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers, Barney & Friends, Teens Behind the Wheel, Wall of Fire and In Our Prime. Now in its 43rd year, CPTV remains committed to bringing 
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The Hartford Courant, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, is the oldest continuously published newspaper in the nation. The most widely circulated and read newspaper in Connecticut, The Courant is a subsidiary of Tribune Company, one of the country's leading media companies, operating businesses in broadcasting and publishing. Tribune reaches more than 80 percent of U.S. households. More information about The Hartford Courant is available online at www.courant.com.
Cllick for a transcript of the show http://cptv.org/pdf/sprawldrivenbydenial.pdf
Production Credits
Sprawl: Driven by Denial is a CPTV Original produced in association with The Hartford Courant and The Hartford Courant's Key Issues Forum.
Produced by: Paul Pfeffer, Amy Zielinski, Tom Condon
Executive Producer: Jay Whitsett, vice president of programming for CPTV
Host: Tom Condon
