"Fat of the Land" tells the story of how Detroit subsidized its own demise by providing priceless infrastructure to suburban townships, how Macomb Co. (MI) failed to plan for development and is now "swimming in its own sewage", and how places like Grand Rapids, MI, Gaithersburg, MD, Portland, OR, and Minneapolis, MN are combatting sprawl through regional planning, growth boundaries, and farmland preservation.

Participants in the program include some of the country's most respected names in urban planning, state government, and academia. They include: Maryland Gov. Parris A. Glendening; Andres Duany, the co-founder of the New Urbanism movement; Myron Orfield, Director of Minneapolis' Metropolitan Area Research Corporation; Keith Schneider, the former New York Times national environment writer and founder of the Michigan Land Use Institute; Douglas Kelbaugh, Dean of Architecture and Urban planning at the University of Michigan; and, john powell, Director of the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota.