The torching of that housing development in Maryland got me thinking about the whole urban sprawl issue. Periodically, we have young political activist solicitors stop by and try to get us to sign petitions that in one way or another urges a stop to sprawl. My reaction has always been that one person’s sprawl is another person’s affordable and safe housing. I have no inherent objection to sprawl and am somewhat puzzled by this movement. I don’t think we’re in any danger of losing all of our green space because of sprawl and contentions otherwise seem a bit over dramatic to me. Are the concerns solely environmental, because many developments take the environment into account in the design phase. What am I missing?
I don’t think you are missing much. You have pretty well nailed it.
We would all be better off with more centralized development. The higher density allows walking and mass transit as an example. The problem is, that is not what people want. They want their low density developments on their plot of land. What are we supposed to do? Tell them we know better that they what is good for them and not let them have it? I don’t think so.
I type this from my 1.5 acres in South Florida. No sprawl here that I have noticed.
“I don’t think we’re in any danger of losing all of our green space because of sprawl”
Please at least keep the sprawl in your neighborhood. I moved out here in the boonies to escape all of that. I have nature trails to run on and rural back roads for riding. We even have lots of wildlife in the area. Would like to see it stay that way.
We would all be better off with more centralized development. The higher density allows walking and mass transit as an example. Why do you think we would be better off with more centralized development? It’s a lot worse to bike or run in a city than in the suburbs. There is more pollution in cities when people are packed closer together. The backyards for kids to run around in are smaller or non-existent. That’s not even getting started on the quality of schools in cities. Mass transit is a great idea in theory, but often not such a great idea in reality. It’s a lot easier to go shopping for mundane items like groceries when you have your car to haul everything back home. It’s also usually a lot more convenient to drive your own car instead of waiting for a bus or train to arrive. Mass transit can provide a means for commuters to go from the suburbs to downtown, assuming that’s where they need to be for work or want to be for play. Otherwise, mass transit is often just a miserable way of getting around. It’s also a lot easier to build a new road than to a newly developing area than to build a new railroad line.
I think the simple or not so simple answer to that is that most cities started out close to where they could get food from the farmers. The farmers where on the best growing land and now that is getting taken up by sprawl. In southern Ontario, most of the richest farming land is under development, forcing the farmers to move to less hospitable regions and it costs more to ship the food. It’s a viscious circle.I most certainly don’t have an answer to it, this is, as I understand it, the problem with sprawl.
Right around here there is a fair bit of good farmland and some small forest. The forest is dwindling fast and they actually have filled in two swamps (!!!) to build houses on just so people won’t have to drive ten minutes north. The horse feild I used to ride by just north of here is about to be wall to wall homes. A single home lot where the house mysteriuosly burned down now has THREE homes on it. Makes no sense to me.
J
I think what they really object to is growth. I live in CO and have family in Phoenix / Scottsdale area and both are bad regarding sprawl. It is hard to see open fields and places you used to go be paved over and the wildlife that was there vanish. It is also sucks to have to keep going farther to find some open land, and they are builing in every direction here. That said, I don’t know what the alternative is? Developers are also redeveloping older neighborhoods so the only alternative would be to make Denver into Manhattan and I don’t want that either. The problem of sprawl is just a symptom of uncontrolled growth which brings other problems like the fight over water which is big here too.
there is more to the urban sprawl issue than just the loss of green space. there is a growing field in public health about how urban sprawl is affecting our health. see the reference below. i understand that the statistically significant associations are very small, but the obesity issue in america is still a relatively new problem, and urban sprawl is definitely a contributiong factor.
if you are interested do a yahoo search for ‘built environment and obesity’, or ‘built environment and public health’.
this is a very interesting and new area of research. in my opinion.
American J Health Promotion. 2003 Sep-Oct;18(1):47-57. Relationship between urban sprawl and physical activity, obesity, and morbidity.
They touched on that a bit in Super Size Me. He gave some numbers on how far the average American walks during the day now compared to when most people had to walk to their job or as part of their job. He pointed out most people hardly walk anywhere on a daily basis and move from bed to car to desk to car to couch to bed.
Do you know where Sheridan and Hampden intersect (Bear Valley)? That is the area I grew up in and when I was 5 or 6, there was nothing between there and the mountains.
Yeah, I not quite due East of there on the other side of I-25. It is solid from there to the foot hills. I grew up down around Arapahoe Rd which was all fields and anything beyond County Line was farm land. Now it is all lights and pavement. When was the last time you were here? Have you seen it recently? It is crazy but the other side is the city is much nicer and more vibrant than it was when I was growing up.
With more centralized development we could be less dependant on the automobile. I think that is a good thing, but I don’t practice that, nor do most people want to live that way based on their behavior.
As a society, we make choices. So be it.
I get out there once or twice a year. My family still lives there. There have been a lot of improvements in some things such as the banks of the Platte River and Bear Creek, which used to be garbage dumps but have now been cleaned up and have bike paths. Also, LoDo is nice. Used to be all vacant buildings and winos down there. I do hate what they did to Elitches, though. Should have left it alone instead of moving it downtown.
I noticed in the video capture of that fire in the development that many of those homes looked to be “big footprint” type homes, with a lot of square footage.
I think what gets ELF and few of these other wackadoos going is the sheer size of these so-called “estate homes”, especially if the home in question is meant only for a man and his wife and 1 or 2 children 
There’s no easy solution to sprawl, and the country has two competing needs:
#1. We need the population growth to stay ahead of the grossly fecund Islamist hordes (according to some of the more right-wing among us). Therefore, we need to be willing to put up with population densities in urban, suburban and exurban areas to accommodate that growth.
#2. We need the greenbelts and other wide-open areas because of our need for so-called “space” and to avoid atavistic responses that overcrowding can seem to elicit in some instances.
Tony
The development that was torched was one of big homes. They are big homes because of a couple of things. In Maryland the zoning laws are restrictive, developable land is in short supply so the only thing that it pays to build are large homes.
also even when it can be developed, the lot sizes required are such that the yards use a big house on them.
You can’t separate suburban sprawl from the schools issue. Everyone is moving further and further away from city centers where schools are terrible. City centers were planned for a century ago and can be relatively nice places. It’s the clientele that makes it a bad neighborhood. But people will put up with a lot except when it comes to their kids. In the US you are mandated to go to the school in your neighborhood. So everyone wants to move out of the city, to someplace with a good school but not too far away from work. Right on the edge, so they move to perry hall, MD. But then the school starts to go down in Perry Hall because everyone is moving their. So you move to kingsville, then to Bel Air, then to Jarretsville.
But even in the sprawl the lack of multi use properties makes us drive everywhere. There are no neighborhood restaurants or neighborhood markets within walking distance. The residences are over HERE, the retail is over THERE and the indutrial park is behind that fence over THERE. In between are four lane roads and unkempt sidewalks than no one ever uses. I’d prefer to see more mixed use properties but I think it is only half the problems.
Unfortunately in Maryland our last governor didn’t see that our predicament with suburban sprawl is in large part due to restrictive zoning regulations. Like any good democrat he figured that if the last set of regulations didn’t gix it, the next set surely will. So our smart growth plan have added even more burden to people looking to build a house.
“In southern Ontario, most of the richest farming land is under development”
The urban sprawl around Toronto is becoming quite ridiculous the way it is eating up prime farm land. The quality of life in the “big smoke” in 20-30 yrs from now will not be what it is today.
My cousin has recently moved “out” of Toronto to Newmarket. New subdivisions on prime farm land, monster houses and tiny postage stamp sized lots.
**Are the concerns solely environmental, because many developments take the environment into account in the design phase. What am I missing? **
I’m sure the enviro-nuts have a host of reasons why sprawl is harmful to the environment. They’re probably right about most of them. The one that springs to my mind is loss of habitat. Real problem.
Sprawl is both wasteful and ugly. (The ugly part shouldn’t be minimized: We’re immersed in this stuff- it has a real effect on quality of life.)
Like Art said, though, it’s what we seem to want.
Kevin, you said it much better than I did.
Amy, what he said.
Here in southern Kalifornia tons of contractors are building homes. On old homes most people build up / second story for remodels, as lots are small . The only way to save yourself is get near a park or national forest so your always against a green zone . Its all about Tax revenue and sales. $$$$$ money money L.A ., San Fran , San Diego , Wash. DC , Worst traffic in the world , truckers say