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TAMPA - What's driving sprawl: land use choices or booming population? Both, argues a new study that ranks Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater as the eighth most sprawling urbanized area in the United States.

"On average, there are more of us, and each of us is using more urban land," states the report, which is the work of Leon Kolankiewicz, a former Orange County, Calif., planner, and Roy Beck, a Washington policy analyst, former journalist and population expert.

The findings are available online at www.sprawlcity.org. Basing ratings on U.S. Census Bureau data, the study, overseen by planners and academic experts nationwide, found the Tampa Bay region's sprawl is partly the result of 13 percent growth in per capita land consumption between 1970 and 1990.

But overwhelmingly, sprawl here was caused by a 98 percent growth in population during the same 20-year period, the report concludes.

In that time, 358.7 square miles of Bay area woods, wetlands, orchards and farms were gobbled up by new houses, strip malls and roads to accommodate newcomers, the study states.

But blaming sprawl on population growth is "not politically correct," said Ed Childress, deputy director of an Arlington, Va., Web site - www.numbersusa.com that studies census data and pushes for tighter immigration control.

Today's 1.9 million residents of Hillsborough and Pinellas counties grew by 907,836 people between 1970 and 2000, according to 2000 census data.

"Everybody wants to leave out population because it would be non-PC to talk about immigration. There are lots of cries of racism and discrimination," Childress said.

The Sierra Club concedes that population is the chief cause of sprawl in some regions. But the group is cautious about possible fixes.

"Though population is one of the factors that creates sprawl, not all solutions that appear to focus on population actually work," say Sierra Club officials, calling population control tactics potentially "unfair and exclusionary."

"There is going to be population growth. We can't stop that," said Frank Jackalone, a Sierra Club senior representative from St. Petersburg. "We favor slowing population growth in Florida. We don't favor immigration controls or artificial limits."

Alan Farago, co-chairman of the Florida Sierra Club's urban sprawl committee, said Florida's future depends on "`whether there will be a return to putting the public interest ahead of very narrow definitions of property rights."

Beck, who has written for Atlantic Monthly and lectured widely on population issues, said the study shows that Tampa-St. Petersburg developed large tracts of rural land in the past 30 years, creating sprawl.

But the region's leaders also of fered incentives for more than 900,000 people to move in, thus driving the sprawl engine with what Beck calls "the religion of growth."

"They subsidize new development by not charging developers the true costs of growth," Beck said. "They also give tax incentives to incite companies to move in. All that causes population growth, which causes sprawl."

Bills pending in the Florida Legislature propose using a management tool called "full cost accounting" to expose the public cost of development before approval or denial. The idea is supported by Gov. Jeb Bush and a growth study commission he named last year to reform the state's 1985 growth management laws.

If Bay area residents don't like sprawl - surveys show they rank growth their top concern - then they "should ask their politicians why tax money is being used to bring new population into town," Beck said.

Jim Hosler, a Hillsborough County researcher, said the study's findings are not surprising. But seeking ways to fix sprawl could be sticky, he said.

"One of the key things anti- sprawl advocates need to consider is how do you massage growth management laws to encourage revitalization more than they do," Hosler said.

"If you're not against population growth, you need to encourage revitalization and refurbishment and grow up more densely as opposed to growing out," he said. "It's a tough issue because it involves more than just lot size preferences."

Besides this area, Florida had seven other areas in the study's top 100: Orlando (17), West Palm Beach/Boca Raton (28), Jacksonville (31), Fort Lauderdale/ Hollywood (43), Miami/Hialeah (54) and Pensacola (58).

Brad Smith can be reached at (813) 259-7365.