Sustainable Land Development Today - September 2007 - (Page 25)

LAND PLANNING By Rick Harrison The T ruth about Sprawl It is not necessarily a dirty word. We do not have a sprawl problem rapidly consuming our lands as you might believe from reading most books and articles on the subject written by a variety of experts. What we have in America is unprecedented growth. Let me explain: At the turn of the century, over 100 years ago there were only 76 million Americans. Today there are over 300 million. One of the reasons is that life expectancy in the same time period grew from 48 years to 75 years. One third of our population growth is because of the advances in medicine and health care. Without those advances our population would be only 200 million people. According to information from Scott Templeton of the Department of Applied Economics and Statistics from Clemson University, backed by data from Demographia, our suburban and urban cities encompass about 100 million acres of land, or about 155,000 square miles. The continental land of the United States is 2,870,084 square miles – not including Hawaii or Alaska (population approximately two million). Simply put, our sprawling cities and suburbs consume only 5.4 percent of the available lands. There are 300 million people that live on 100 million acres. This equates to only three people per acre. The 100 million acres include non-residential uses, like shops to buy things and places to work, and parks to play. This also of course, assumes the entire population lives in cities and suburbs. Factoring rural population in America we are somewhat less than three persons per acre in our cities and suburbs. To put this in another perspective, the entire American population can all live within the State of California at the same average density (three persons per acre) and leave the rest of the country untouched and natural. There would still be almost 10,000 square miles left to develop within California alone. Of course those areas left would likely be in mountainous terrain, difficult to inhabit. Now let’s take this scenario further. What if we actually did all move to California? Would that completely solve our sprawl problems? Concentration of huge populations in one area guarantees traffic congestion. Selling goods and services from San Diego to customers in San Francisco, according to MapQuest, is a seven hour and 45 minute drive of 503 miles. However, when we all move to California, the already over-loaded highways will become far worse, so flying would make more sense. But then our national 5,300 public-use airports (Bureau of Transportation Statistics) will be reduced to only California’s approximately 300 airports servicing 8,100 aircraft owned by airlines and the 217,500 private aircraft all trying to avoid each other in the limited crowded airspace. Since land would be extremely hard to come by, the price for housing would be prohibitive. People would not in fact be equally spread out at three persons per acre, as low income families surely would live in dense, high density “projects” with only the rich upper class enjoying any sense of space. Where this theory of the mega city breaks down is that all this population www.LandDevelopmentToday.com 25 http://www.LandDevelopmentToday.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sustainable Land Development Today - September 2007

Sustainable Land Development Today - September 2007 Contents Our Voice: Teaching and Learning Your Voice: Reader Response Editorial Board A 52-Mile Taking Fiber to the Front Doors of America Educators Incorporating Sustainability Land Planning: The Truth about Sprawl Irrigation: Communication Key Wastewater: Many Challenges Determine Sewer Options Regulation: Changing by State, Region, and Municipality Risk Management: Construction Defect Claims Recommended Reading Products/Services Showcase Advertiser Index Calendar Classifieds The Last Word

Sustainable Land Development Today - September 2007

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