Land Development / Sprawl

Sprawling land development is consuming the American countryside at an alarming rate -- around 365 acres per hour according to government figures. In most communities the amount of developed land is growing faster than the population. This pattern of growth forces us to be overly dependent on automobiles, increasing the pollution and damage they cause. It also destroys farmland and open spaces and pollutes more and more watersheds. At the same time it contributes to a range of serious social problems, particularly for urban populations left behind. In response to these trends, citizens, public interest groups and all levels of government have begun to develop smart-growth solutions to revitalize our cities, promote more compact and transit-oriented development, and conserve open space.

The Canadian newsmagazine MacLean's, at the time of a 1997 conference exploring Jacobs' work, noted that "the lessons from that one book -- that cities are ecosystems that can be smothered by rigid, authoritarian planning; that busy, lively sidewalks help cities thrive as safe, healthy places; that good urban design mixes work, housing, and recreation -- have influenced a generation of planners and architects."

Professor Rolf Pendall of Cornell University analyzed suburban sprawl over the course of the 1980s in 282 metropolitan areas. He found that the population growth variable explains about 31 percent of the growth in land area. They found that even those areas that experienced no population growth increased in urbanized land area by an average of 18 percent.(1)

This new evidence supports the conclusions of a study by former mayor of Albuquerque and author David Rusk. Rusk studied 213 urbanized areas and found that between 1960 and 1990 population increased from 95 million to 140 million (47 percent) while urbanized land increased from 25,000 square miles to 51,000 square miles (107 percent). This means that density per square mile decreased by 28%.

Data collected by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for its State of the Cities 2000 report (1994-1997 time period) show a continuation of this trend: Our urban areas are expanding at about twice the rate that the population is growing. It is important to remember that if there are multiple causes of sprawl, then their impact is multiplied together, so that if population increases by 50%, and density decreases by 50%, land consumed will increase not by 100%, but by 300%. So poor land use makes the impact of population growth worse, and vice-versa.

source:  http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/whitepaper.asp

"Our urban areas are expanding at about twice the rate that the population is growing." 

 -  U.S. Dept. of Housing & Development: 

 "The State of the Cities 2000"

"The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic." -James Marston Fitch, New York Times, May 1, 1960