The Argument for stopping Urban Sprawl

Andrew Atkin:

It's true that only about 1 part in 125 of New Zealand's land area is covered over in sprawl, with much less than that being actually built on (much of the sprawl area is garden, grass and trees). Because of this, we argue that urban sprawl is not an environmental problem as it consumes such little land in the greater scheme of things. Indeed, our agrarian actions are many times more invasive.

But there's another way of looking at it.

Take this scenario. We discover 100 exoplanets close by in our galaxy that are full of life. Would that then make it okay for us to completely trash our earth, because earth is then only 1% of the life-bound planets that we specifically know of? Obviously not. The existence of other-life planets, no matter how many there might be, in no way devalues the earth that we currently stand on. Intrinsic value is not a relativity game.

With this appreciation, we can understand the grief many might feel with the mental picture of 'mother nature' being concreted over for human settlements, even though people may know that it's only a very small portion of the total land.

You can still argue that no matter how big our planet is overall, sprawl nonetheless paves over a lot of earth and that can reasonably be seen as a problem. So let's take this common grief - and look at the reactions.

Kill Sprawl:

The reaction promoted by mainstream environmentalists is to stop sprawl outright. Forcing cities to go up - not out.

The problem, as most now know, is that stopping sprawl comes with massive costs. Anti-sprawl policy compromises economic development and housing affordability, as it artificially enforces a scarcity of land to build on, which also aggravates many other problems that come with crowded living, such as pollution and mental health problems.

Yet, mainstream environmentalists hold to anti-sprawl policy because for them the green grass should nonetheless be preserved, even at very real human cost.

Green Sprawl:

But there is another defensive potential to stop humans concreting over the earth - again presuming that 1 part in 125 is to be seen as already too much. The idea is to design sprawl so that it doesn't need concrete (or very little of it) in the first place.

So is sprawl without concrete realistic?

Take a look at the image directly below. It shows us how much land we need to pave over for a functional road, if we want to make a religion out of keeping the green instead of the grey.

We can already buy driverless pod cars, off the shelf, that can operate on little more than a couple of concrete rails like what the image below indicates (UTLra PRT). So we can get rid of most roading for new residential developments, if that's what we really want.

Take a look at the following image to get my point. We can virtually bury houses in the greenery if we insist, especially if we move in the direction of earth-houses. Add a roof-top garden? A steel-frame house on 6-foot stilts, with plants underneath?

Human settlement can be remarkably uninvasive, and indeed it can drive ecologically-rich garden-style development if we so wish. In fact there are odd spots of this kind of development everywhere. It's beautiful, green, and potentially very affordable.

So where do mainstream environmentalists stand with this kind of development, as an alternative to Urban Growth Boundaries which make the price of land insane? That is, the idea of greening sprawl rather than outright blocking it?

The answer, sadly, is nowhere to be heard. I have promoted this possibility in forums to environmentalists in the past, and all I seem to get is stone-cold silence to the suggestion. It's almost like they're more interested in beating-up on humans than helping out the environment... Or, maybe more realistically, conforming to a party-line so as to maintain their unity and preserve their backing.

It's tragic. We can so easily green sprawl today if we really can't stand the concrete. We have the tools to do it. There is no need, by any reasonable measure, to block human urban expansion. We can simply regulate sprawl to be pretty much as green as we want, if we want.

But alas, this possibility never seems to enter the public conversation on 'up versus out'. I hope this will one day change, because we're paying dearly for our current anti-sprawl policy (Urban Growth Boundaries), and we do so most notably with a housing market where prices have gone mad. 

All of it is totally unnecessary.

Extended article: http://andrewatkin.blogspot.co.nz/2011/12/green-sprawl-why-not.html