It was with pleasure that we met with the long range corporate planning official mentioned in the Feedback section, whose interest in the population islands proposed in this website was tempered by his involvement in one of the New Urbanism’s projects well underway. His focus was to sell us on the idea that the project he was helping to construct was far more space and land efficient than the ideas presented here. Great emphasis was placed upon the Energy Star certified performance of constructions and the use of all the greening items, methods and materials available together with the Company's membership and involvement in all the appropriate planning, conservation, and ecological organizations available locally and nationally. Our being neither salesmen nor debaters, he managed to make a rather impressive case. Being uncomfortable with this however, since it ran counter to the extensive studies prompting this "putthatinmybackyard" website, we made the point of visiting the construction site again and obtaining a full package of the promotional literature. This update is the result of using the published comparative figures of the subject project to responsibly test the validity of the long range planning official's assertions.
The visual observation on the site noted the emphasis placed upon space conservation “Littles” for the nostalgically designed dwellings were made even smaller. Spaces between free standing houses were reduced to dimensions well below the 20 foot standard in most housing tracts. Front and back yards were severely constricted. Observed however, was a fivefold increase in planned population density over that of the adjoining urban community. At first glance, this is a tremendous improvement for future growth. Might, as usual the devil be found in the details?
The figures speak somewhat differently about the efficiency allegations made. Census reported populations are divided by urban acreages to determine population density. In the instant local case, this calculates at 3.13 persons per acre for the adjoining city. You can perform this calculation for your own community simply by accessing its demographics on the internet. For example Boston has 10.3 people per acre; New York City 41.25; Chicago 19.92; Los Angeles 6.13 and Dallas 2.21. Remember, as you calculate, that there are 640 acres per square mile. The mileage figure is normally given in demographic reports.
The New Urbanism example visited, using the same calculation method was an impressive five times local occupancy or 15.65 persons per acre with a claimed 25% open space. A study of the Master Plan reveals that rather than a wide open contiguous park, the open space includes project border buffer zones, school playgrounds, narrow lakeside beaches and combined common backyard playground strips. The prospectively wonderful shores of the project's sizeable lake are largely planned to be devoted to the higher end dwelling sites while less economically advantaged folks purchase space in barracks like two and three story multi-family structures well apart from the elite as is standard in most communities. Fair enough. After all, this is considered a game, a standard game of economic returns.
The population islands in seas of land proposed in our study, using precisely the same calculation method reveals that some 75 people are readily scheduled to occupy the same land area with the ecologically distinctive difference, noted at all of the above examples, of having 90% of the same land areas devoted to multiple nature uses as needed and desired by the communities affected – woodlands, wetlands, parks, meadows, horticulture or otherwise. Higher or lower population densities become purely a matter of circumstantial economic needs or desires.
Difference? The first two examples, the New Urbanists development and its adjoining city and all the other mentioned cities, grew just like Topsy to meet social and economic needs as they arose with minimal monetary risk exposure while the consideration of social, economic and primary ecological needs of future generations of expanding populations were treated as of little or no consequence, if considered at all.
While this referenced project may possibly be applauded as a step in the right direction, the problem it, and others like it pose is that attention is diverted from the necessary goal to start implementing those programs, in the limited time available, of reversing those serious problems of expanding populations, energy waste, global warming, urban sprawl, traffic jams and those many of our other malignant ills.
