You mentioned working definitions earlier. the word 'sprawl' means, to most everyone ive heard say it, to spread out haphazardly without a plan. Within that word there is an implicit idea of a large enough population to make some sort of impact.
My view is that a dozen houses on 20 acres that's 10min past city limits isn't sprawl. But that scenario apparently applies to the definition. The community wasn't planned out by some master overseer. 'Good'(what a worthless word in the context of debate) design principles almost certainly wouldn't have been used. etc etc.