Urban sprawl usually means an area of the city that is dedicated for residential housing. It's often designed around providing several single family units with the typical 2-3 bedrooms with a porch and nice lawn area, making it a low density zone. These typically provide nice affordable housing, as it's far enough from the main city and generally urban housing is cheaper per sq.ft than other locations to help attract families.

However, urban sprawl often relies on the roads to travel to nearly everything. This leads to clogged streets and highways every morning and night during peak commute time and just generally more traffic as families drive everywhere. It's this extra dependency on the roads that is a substantial negative, as well as bringing in less tax revenue than a similar city location that makes it an issue on the public transportation roads. Families are also burdened with lengthier road trips for School, Work, and every day errands. Making car ownership mandatory, rather than a modern convenience.