Both of these issues can be directly linked to a lack of community life in the United States. Talk to any criminologist and they will tell you that a lack of community leads to crime. Talk to any sociologist and they will tell you that a lack of community leads to loneliness.

However, no one is connecting the dots and studying why community life has almost completely disappeared in the US. Where have all the small towns gone; those places that would offer us a sense of community rooted in a sense of place? To put it succinctly, they have been paved over and bulldozed to make room for suburban sprawl.

In fact, for over fifty years it has been against the law to build small towns in America. Yes, you heard correctly, zoning laws continue to make it illegal to build community-oriented small town main streets with homes, schools and offices within walking distance. Instead, suburban sprawl, which segregates, isolates and fragments our lives, has been the only legal form of development in America for 50 years.

Before the Second World War, mixed-use small town development was not only allowed, it was encouraged. Instead of the wasteland of sprawl, American suburbs were designed to be community-oriented villages.

Although the trolley systems that helped create them are gone, these streetcar suburbs are still some of the best places to live in America. They are made up of stores where residents shop, restaurants and cafés where neighbors and friends meet, parks where people gather, as well as offices, schools, and a wide variety of housing options within walking distance. All of which creates lively public spaces that allow for a healthy sense of community to develop.

Despite the obvious livability of suburban small towns, for fifty years zoning laws all over America have dictated that we construct all the functions of life far away from one another, effectively negating the possibility of community life. As a result, most Americans have always gone shopping at gigantic malls or huge supermarkets, entering these places anonymously and usually leaving without recognizing a soul.

We may have developed an economy that fulfills most of our material needs, but we live in a society that offers us a lonely diet of one anonymous experience after another.

Certainly, suburban sprawl seemed like a good idea at the time - spacious homes, tidy lawns, and broad streets. But if you peel back the facade, sprawl is not so pristine and paradisaical. On the outside, sprawl may look wonderful, but at its core, it is almost completely devoid of the replenishing energy of community life.

This alienation has had a dramatically negative impact on many people's lives. Psychologists have found that individuals who are integrated into a community network report fewer symptoms of psychological disorders than those who are socially isolated.

Regrettably, in America today, because of sprawl, loneliness is rampant. In one major survey, a quarter of U.S. adults reported that they had felt extremely lonely at least once in the previous two weeks.

Another study, this one by the American Medical Association, determined that the number of people being treated for depression has increased dramatically in the United States. And according to the National Institute of Mental Health, 10% of Americans suffer from depression in any given year. That's almost 30 million people!

The reason this is of concern is that loneliness and depression are responsible for the intense emotional pain that can lead to suicide. Today, suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers aged fifteen to nineteen-after motor vehicle accidents and unintentional injury.

In fact, Americans aged fifteen to nineteen years old were four times as likely to kill themselves in 1988 as in 1950. Overall, suicides now take in excess of 30,000 American lives each year, more than homicides.

If we had the opportunity to live in small town communities instead of sprawl we would never have to be alone unless we wanted to. Just by walking outside, we would be instantly transported into a world filled with companionship and human interaction. Small towns are designed to integrate people into a community, conferring a sense of belonging rooted in a sense of place. Sprawl offers none of that.

It's time we admit that suburban sprawl does very little to create a safe, civil and community-oriented society. It is time to change zoning laws and make it legal again to build small towns.

Our safety, sense of belonging, and quality of life depend on it.

Douglas E Morris is the author of "It's a Sprawl World After All." He can be reached at roma79@aol.com or www.ItsaSprawlWorld.com

In response to Douglas E. Morris intelligent commentary on the psychological and physical implication urban sprawl can create, I agree with how suburban sprawl impedes social interaction and physical mobility.
Living in urban sprawl for almost fifteen years now, I was thrust into an isolated refuge where all social interaction was gone and a sense of meeting interesting individuals became a thing of my once heartfelt urban past. I am still presently miserable and alone and spend my days leering at the ugly facades these pre-fab communities create for a myriad of transplants looking to escape into a monochromatic nightmare of the middle class bourgeois. It is time for a new, more idealistic way to live other than deluging oneself into a hermetic lifestyle surrounding by constant boredom