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Urban sprawl and Disappearing Farmland

© Kenneth Friedman

FLASH! An article in the journal Science on Friday April 30 reports that scientists have determined that a parasitic worm is the cause of deformed frogs in the western United States. Previously, deformation was blamed on ozone depeletion or pesticides.

In March 1999, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) issued what it calls "Brief Analysis No. 287"--"The Truth about Urban Sprawl." I'm not going to cover all of what the report said in this column; maybe later. For now, the gist of the report is that perception of urban sprawl has reached the point at which sprawl has become a national debate but that there is evidence that suggests that development outside of urban areas--what we often call suburban sprawl--doesn't threaten quality of life and that it can be managed better through real-estate markets than through land-use planning. Frankly, I thought urban sprawl had been a national debate for at least 30 years or more.

I suspect that the NCPA has a point about the greatest suburbanization taking place in the early half of this century--the twenties, thirties and forties. If you think about it, except for big cities like New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and so on, most cities probably only had four or five houses in them, so any newly built house amounted to "suburbanization." When the next five houses were built--the suburbs, the first five were seen as an "urban" area.

I can't remember the twenties and thirties when all that suburbanization was supposedly taking place but I can remember from the 40s on. I remember when my parents moved from south Philly to somewhat northwest. When we moved, the developer was building row houses. Lots of row houses. On farmland. I vividly recall a secret foray once across the BIG STREET to the railroad tracks beyond which I could see nothing but fields of corn. I must have been 7 or 8, so corn looked awfully tall. The corn and everything else agricultural is long long gone.

NCPA says "less than 5 percent of the nation's land is developed and three-quarters of the population lives on 3.5 percent of the land." I don't doubt the figures. I recall reading somewhere that upward of 90 percent of the population lives (or will live shortly) within 50 miles of the coasts, which leaves a lot of undeveloped land inland. You can see a lot of this open land in Montana where there are more cattle and buffalo than people, in the Dakotas where there are more prairie dogs than people, and in Iowa where there is more corn than people. I don't think they're growing tomatoes, avacados and peaches in Montana or the Dakotas, however.

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