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The
death of smart growth
By Bonnie
Erbe, Scripps Howard News Service
Originally published September 1, 2003
(used by permission of the author)
Do you hate sitting in
traffic? Are you offended by the proliferation of strip malls and
ticky-tacky tract housing in what was (not too long ago) open space
or peaceful farmland? If you live in a city or suburb, have you
noticed how much longer it now takes (than say, even a decade or
two ago) to escape the claustrophobia of concrete for the relaxing
effect of green, open space? Then you and I share a common concern:
a disdain for urban sprawl.
In the 1970s and '80s, politicians thought they had developed a
solution to sprawl. They called it Smart Growth. Zoning laws were
changed to foster denser settlement in urban and suburban areas
to lure people into already-developed areas and thus save farms,
forests and other open spaces from development.
But Smart Growth is not smart enough to combat an insuperable enemy:
massive immigration. A new study by the Center for Immigration Studies
shows, "about half the loss of rural land in recent decades
is attributable to increases in the U.S. population, while changes
in land use account for the other half. New immigration and births
to immigrants now account for more than three-fourths of U.S. population
growth. Therefore, population growth and the immigration policies
that drive it must be an integral focus of efforts to preserve rural
land."
The United States' rate is among the highest population growth rates
in the developed world. World Bank figures show our population grew
at a rate of 1.1 percent between 1980 and 2000. This may not sound
like much, but compare that rate to the United Kingdom's 0.3 percent,
while Sri Lanka grew at 1.4% during that period and Somalia at 1.5%.
In my relatively short life span, our population has mushroomed
from fewer than 200 million residents, to almost 300 million (288
million to be precise.) Projections show at our current rate we
will surpass the 350 million mark by mid-century -- an ocean of
new Americans.
Both parties (Democratic and Republican) love immigration. Liberals
believe immigrants tend to vote Democratic. Conservatives favor
the cheap labor they provide. But the next time any supporter of
unfettered immigration is stuck in traffic, he or she should consider
the Center for Immigration Studies' findings:
"The more a state's population grew, the more the state sprawled.
For example, states that grew in population by more than 30 percent
between 1982 and 1997 sprawled 46 percent on average. In contrast,
states that grew in population by less than 10 percent sprawled
only 26 percent on average.
On average, each 10,000-person increase in state population resulted
in 1,600 acres of undeveloped rural land's being developed, even
controlling for other factors such as changes in population density.
Apportioning the share of sprawl that is due to increases in population
versus increases in per-capita land consumption shows that, nationally,
population growth accounted for 52 percent of the loss of rural
land between 1982 and 1997, while increases in per-capita land consumption
accounted for 48 percent."
This is a lot of facts and figures to absorb all at once. But the
main point to take away from this is, zoning laws can never be smart
enough to preserve the quality of life Americans enjoyed until the
latest immigration boom that began during the middle of the last
century. Smart Growth essentially tries to push more people into
the cities. Like efforts to get Americans to drive energy-efficient,
instead of gas-guzzling cars, it just isn't working.
As a proud granddaughter of immigrants, I support the concept of
immigration. But since we are a nation of immigrants, we owe a duty
to the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren (and so
on) of immigrants who are already here, to preserve a reasonable
quality of life for them. We cannot deliver on that promise to the
next generation or the generation after that if we continue to grow
at our current rate.
(Bonnie Erbe, host of the PBS program "To the Contrary,"
writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe(at)CompuServe.com.)
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