factoid re: urban sprawl
I read this in the Environmental Building News 9/07 issue yesterday, in an article about how the energy used to travel to and from buildings can easily overcome any energy savings by the building itself if it's in the boonies.
"Land development is occurring at a far higher rate than the population growth, resulting in sprawl. In the nation's 34 metropolitan areas with population greater than one million people, between 1950 and 1990 the population increased 92.4%, ...while the urbanized land area grew by 245%, or 2.65 times the population growth rate."
Wow. I kinda knew, but... now I can really bitch about the 'burbs.
The article goes on with some of the standard eco/planning speak that I've heard for years, about how we need to buildt compactly, with walkable, bikeable neighborhoods where people don't have to go so far, or can usually take transit if they do. Which is all great, but the big unspoken thing was housing affordability, and job availability. If you can't afford to live in one of the ideal areas for lowering your travelling energy use, you get stuck being 'part of the problem'. And if the only reasonable job you can get is in the suburban tech centers, and you don't want to or can't live in a nearby area of that suburb, well...
* the source behind the ...: "according to the U.S. Environmetal Protection Agency (EPA) report 'Our Built and Natural Environments: A Technical Review of the Interactions Between Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Quality,'"
"Land development is occurring at a far higher rate than the population growth, resulting in sprawl. In the nation's 34 metropolitan areas with population greater than one million people, between 1950 and 1990 the population increased 92.4%, ...while the urbanized land area grew by 245%, or 2.65 times the population growth rate."
Wow. I kinda knew, but... now I can really bitch about the 'burbs.
The article goes on with some of the standard eco/planning speak that I've heard for years, about how we need to buildt compactly, with walkable, bikeable neighborhoods where people don't have to go so far, or can usually take transit if they do. Which is all great, but the big unspoken thing was housing affordability, and job availability. If you can't afford to live in one of the ideal areas for lowering your travelling energy use, you get stuck being 'part of the problem'. And if the only reasonable job you can get is in the suburban tech centers, and you don't want to or can't live in a nearby area of that suburb, well...
* the source behind the ...: "according to the U.S. Environmetal Protection Agency (EPA) report 'Our Built and Natural Environments: A Technical Review of the Interactions Between Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Quality,'"