I found this online.  It is a map showing urban sprawl, based on satellite imagery, for the period 1976 to 1992.  So it misses the last 10 years or so. 

 

It is based on this study

Sprawl Maps

 

I zoomed the Cincinnati/Dayton/Indianapolis/Columbus area and the Cleveland/Pittsburgh area.  The growth areas are colored red or pinkish-red....

 

 

 

This time frame--1976 to 1992---was probably not a good snapshot as I seem to recall the 1990s was the big suburban boom era here in SW Ohio.

 

Also, a question on how granular this is, as this resolution could miss a lot of ribbon development on country roads or smallish subdivisions..which is really how this area seems to sprawl.

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting maps.  They look less sprawly than these kinds of sprawl maps usually look, but that may be because they don't include the 1990s as you pointed out.

 

The map says it's based on 30x30 meter squares, so some of the smaller things should have been picked up, but it looks like this particular publication of it is not presented at that full resolution, so we probably are missing some things here.

I'm in Atlanta right now and I had to drive through the ghetto and got lost to try and find the zoo and I cant believe how sprawled the inner city ghettos are...its really weird. The hotel im at tonight is in Dawsonville, GA...really far north of Atlanta but the traffic all the way to this hotel was worse than i-75 I'm not kidding. What's sad is they have a lightrail that goes really far out and it's still this bad.

^ Like you say, it's all about the land use when it comes to how bad the road congestion is. If you run a MARTA heavy rail line through sprawlville, you'll probably get riders who are trying to evade the traffic, but it doesn't reduce the traffic. Like water, traffic finds its own level in low-density, auto-centric communities where land uses aren't mixed and walking/cycling is punishable by maiming or death.