Suburban growth accelerates in the 1990s

The development of farmland, forest, and other open space accelerated rapidly in the 1990s, according to recent government figures. The rate of “greenfield” development was more than three million acres a year from 1992 to 1997 – double the rate of the previous 10 years, according to an Agriculture Department study. Between 1982 and 1992, the rate was 1.4 million acres/year. Although the development has provided an economic windfall for many farmers in rapidly developing regions, critics of sprawl, including Vice President Al Gore, immediately seized upon the report. “These new figures confirm what communities across America already know – too much of our precious open space is being gobbled up by sprawl,” Gore says. “We need to help communities grow in ways that work.” At the the current rate of development, 1.5 percent of the entire US land mass would be developed in 10 years. Defenders of the status quo point out that this represents a small percentage of total land, and plenty of land remains undeveloped. Critics of sprawl argue that most development is concentrated around metropolitan regions, where most people live. The quality of life in metropolitan regions is being severely impacted by sprawl, according to these critics. The economy was probably the major factor in the rise of development in the 1990s. However, the increasing trend to large lot development is another significant factor. The study also puts the impact of the New Urbanism into perspective. Although new urbanists have changed the development debate in America, they have had little effect to date in slowing down sprawl. The vast majority of growth in the US is still in the form of conventional suburban development.