How does sprawl threatens the environment and farmland

By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies in accordance with our Privacy Terms and Cookie Policy. In a new report , the California Climate and Agriculture Network CalCAN reviewed two incentives programs aimed at developing affordable housing and conserving ag lands.

Funding for the programs has been drying up this year as cap-and-trade revenues continue to decline. It's rare for neighborhood events to occur. Families are more isolated and those living alone are marooned in a hostile environment according to Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, People are forced to spend more time commuting longer distances to reach their jobs, homes, schools and shopping areas.

In a compact, efficient city these travel times are often minimal, but sprawled cities take time to navigate. Suburban tract and country dwellers also spend more time maintaining large, empty residential properties: mowing the grass, plowing long driveways, raking leaves, weeding, etc.

Sprawling business and home owners often fail to realize the long-term personal costs and risks of maintaining distant properties. As property taxes rise to cover service costs, and fuel costs increase for travel and heating large buildings, the owners' budgets may have trouble keeping up. Transportation costs for children and handicapped family members are much greater. As sprawled homeowners age, their large properties become a greater burden to maintain. When they can no longer drive their car, they are stranded.

As baby boomers age, large numbers of people will be forced to sell their suburban or country homes to move into the city, creating displacements and possibly lowering the value of expensive homes. These are overhead and maintenance costs faced by families, beyond the cost of buying or building the home. Sprawled communities force people to drive their cars if they need to get groceries, go to school, or get to work.

In the past, cities were structured so many of these destinations were within walking distance. Now, many neighborhoods lack even sidewalks for pedestrians, forcing residents to walk in the street next to the traffic whizzing by.

In the past it was normal for kids to walk to school, but now their parents often drive them or they take their own cars. Is it any wonder that an epidemic of obesity is plaguing our country? Walking is the best form of life-long exercise, yet our development patterns actively discourage walking. Helter-skelter sprawl is not attractive, yet many of our transportation corridors are now edged with jumbles of residential, commercial, and industrial developments and their enormous parking lots , which have no sense of beauty or order.

This adds to the stressful, disconnected feelings which urban residents often express. Compact Cities. An often cited example of urban sprawl is Atlanta, GA US , which has a similar population as Barcelona but occupies an urban area that is 26 times as large. If communities are not walkable or bikeable, we need to drive to schools, shops, parks, entertainment, play dates, etc.

Thus we become more sedentary. Residents of sprawling counties were likely to walk less during leisure time and weigh more than residents of compact counties. A sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of overall mortality, cardiovascular disease, and some types of cancer. The effect of low physical fitness is comparable to that of hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes.

A consequence of the increasing consumption of land and reductions in population densities as cities sprawl is the growing consumption of energy. Generally, compact urban developments with higher population densities are more energy efficient. Evidence from 17 cities around the world shows a consistent link between population density and energy consumption Figure below , and in particular high energy consumption rates that are associated with lower population densities, characteristic of sprawling environments, dependent on lengthy distribution systems that undermine efficient energy use.

Right: Population density and CO2 emissions, selected European cities. Transport related energy consumption in cities depends on a variety of factors including the nature of the rail and road networks, the extent of the development of mass transportation systems, and the modal split between public and private transport.

Evidence shows that there is a significant increase in travel related energy consumption in cities as densities fall. Essentially, the sprawling city is dominated by relatively energy inefficient car use, as the car is frequently the only practical alternative to more energy efficient, but typically inadequate, relatively and increasingly expensive public transportation systems.

As sprawl increases our reliance on cars and driving, it makes our air dirtier and less healthy. Cars, trucks and buses are the biggest source of cancer- causing air pollution, spewing more than 12 billion pounds of toxic chemicals each year, or almost 50 pounds per person. Our wetlands - nature's water filters - are also under attack. Each year more than , acres of wetlands are destroyed, in large part to build sprawling new developments. Since wetlands can remove up to 90 percent of the pollutants in water, wetlands destruction leads directly to polluted water.

Sprawl increases the risk of flooding. Development pressures lead to building on floodplains and the destruction of wetlands, natural flood-absorbing sponges. Much of this flooding occurred in places where weak zoning laws allowed developers to drain wetlands and build in floodplains. Sprawl destroys more than one million acres of parks, farms and open space each year. This threatens America's productive farmland, and turns our cherished parks and open spaces into strip malls and freeways.

Our tax money subsidizes new sprawling developments, rather than improving our existing communities. Sprawl costs our cities and counties millions of dollars for new water and sewer lines, new schools, and increased police and fire protection.

Those costs are not fully offset by the taxes paid by the new users.