Minnesotans For Sustainability©
Sustainable: A society that balances the environment, other life forms, and human interactions over an indefinite time period.
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Minnesotans For Sustainability©
Sustainable: A society that balances the environment, other life forms, and human interactions over an indefinite time period.
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Sprawl in California A report on quantifying the role of the state’s population boom*
Leon Kolankiewicz and Roy Beck [Parts 6 to Endnotes]
Table of Contents
We applied the apportioning methodology to the 28 California Urbanized Areas identified by the Census Bureau before 1990. In the table that follows, the first and second columns of figures show how much rural land was consumed and converted into urban land during the period studied. [Cities with data in the 1980-1990 column were designated Urbanized Areas for the first time in 1980. The fact that there are two different lengths of study does not alter the comparisons of percentages in the two right-hand columns. And where the Census Bureau combined Urbanized Areas during the period of the study, data were adjusted so that comparisons are accurate.] Read the table like this, using the first line of the table as an example: 1) The total Antioch-Pittsburgh Urbanized Area sprawled out during the 10-year period covered by Census figures and consumed 35.5 square miles of rural land, converting it into urban land. 2) 67% of that 35.5-square-mile Overall Sprawl was related to the population growth in the Urbanized Area.33% of that 35.5-square-mile Overall Sprawl was related to Per Capita Sprawl (growth in per capita land consumption). 3) The actual percentages of population growth and of Per Capita Sprawl are not included in this table. [Find them in Tables 1a and 1b.] 6.1. Population growth related to 100% of sprawl in most cities The results of the comparisons are dramatic. Far from being an insignificant factor in California’s mass sprawl, population growth is related to the overwhelming majority of that sprawl.
The unadjusted analysis showed the population
growth share of sprawl to be 100% in 22 of the 28 Urbanized Areas. What this
means is that in those cases, between 1970-90 or 1980-90, there was no increase
in per capita land consumption in the Urbanized Area as a whole. [In Table 2, we
adjusted three of the 22 to lower proportions for reasons explained in Appendix
E, so that after adjustment, 19 Urbanized Areas display 100% shares of sprawl
related to population growth.]
Data sources: 1970 Census of Population, Volume 1 –
Characteristics of the population, Part 1 – United States Summary, Table 20 –
Population and Land Area of Urbanized Areas, 1970 and1960 (issued June, 1973);
1980 Census of Population, Number of Inhabitants, United States Summary, Table
34 – Population, Land Area, and Population Density of Urbanized Areas: 1980;
1990 Census of Population and Housing, Summary Population and Housing
Characteristics,
United States, Table 8 – Land
Area and Population Density: 1990. Vast amounts of some of the most scenic, fertile and biologically diverse land in the country were urbanized in those 19 areas. Nonetheless, that population growth is related to 100% of sprawl for so many California cities is a sign of some success in meeting Smart Growth “densification” goals, in that it means every one of those 19 Urbanized Areas succeeded in stopping increases in the per capita consumption of land. In most cases, the per capita consumption of land not only stopped growing but was reduced. Thus, an increase in per capita land use did not account for any sprawl. Those 19 areas are stark reminders of the limitation of current anti-sprawl and Smart Growth efforts. Their tools for fighting sprawl are woefully inadequate because they do not address population growth. Although they met their goal of stopping Per Capita Sprawl, Overall Sprawl has been rampant in most of those cities. For example, Simi Valley encroached on another 22 square miles of rural land between 1970 and 1990. The losses were 45 square miles in Oxnard-Ventura, 53 in Fresno, 61 in San Jose, and 89 in Sacramento. Palm Springs paved over nearly 27 square miles in the 1980s alone. For some smaller Urbanized Areas, the Overall Sprawl in actual square miles may look relatively insignificant compared to that of the large cities. But the percentage sprawl in most of those was quite large, usually running well over 25 percent. Whether the sprawl was 19 miles (as in Salinas), or 41 miles (as in Bakersfield), or 150 miles (as in Riverside-San Bernardino), some of the finest agricultural land in the world was lost forever under the asphalt and concrete of the expanding cities. Those 19 Urbanized Areas provide conclusive evidence that simply stopping the growth in per capita land consumption will not stop sprawl. 6.2. Los Angeles suggests limits of ‘the denser the better’ approach To stop sprawl in the face of continuing population growth, a city would have to force major increases in density on its residents. But no city has shown anywhere near the political will to regiment and restrict its inhabitants sufficiently to accommodate population growth without sprawl. One of the chief examples of failure is the de facto champion of “densification” –Los Angeles. The designation of Los Angeles as a kind of Smart-Growth model may seem incongruous to many because of its reputation as the “sultan of sprawl” and “suburbs in search of a city.” For many Americans, Los Angeles is a sprawling model of what they don’t want their city to become. But, indeed, the Los Angeles Urbanized Area earned quantitative Smart Growth honors between 1970 and 1990. One of the chief ideas behind Smart Growth initiatives is that denser is better. Nearly all Smart Growth policies are based on the concept that a city’s population can continue to grow indefinitely without creating a lot of sprawl. That can happen in only one way: by confining more and more people into existing urbanized areas. You know that Smart Growth efforts are reaching one of their major goals when you see density increasing. The city that packs the most people into each square mile gets the prize. Under those measures, the champion model of Smart Growth in the entire nation since 1970 was none other than Los Angeles. Smart Growth Honor No. 1: Unlike most American Urbanized Areas (but similar to most in California), Los Angeles stopped all individual sprawl. That is, the land per resident did not expand. In fact, the urban land per resident shrank by 8%. That means the density increased. From 5,313 residents per square mile in 1970, Los Angeles squeezed in another 500 people per square mile by 1990. Moreover, Smart Growth was achieving its goal throughout the Urbanized Area; density increased in both the core city and in the suburbs. Smart Growth Honor No. 2: By 1990, land consumption per L.A. resident had dropped to 0.11 acre. That made Los Angeles the most densely populated Urbanized Area in America. No other urban area -not even New York- provided so little land per resident.8 This is a model that Smart Growth planners apparently would wish for all Americans, certainly if the U.S. population continues to grow. The fact that Los Angeles on paper deserves Smart Growth accolades raises two important questions: (1) Has the increased density improved the quality of life of those who live there? (2) Has the increased density stopped sprawl? The first question is a complex one that is outside the scope of this study. Certainly, though, there are indicators that the increased density is related to several major causes of social stress and frustration in Los Angeles, such as overcrowded schools and traffic snarls. Retrofitting a city to accommodate high-density living is very difficult and expensive at best and probably impossible in reality. An example would be the massive problems and expense associated with recent attempts to build a subway to serve even a tiny fraction of Los Angeles. Often, increased density results in a more congested quality of life. And congestion is a result no one is seeking. The second question is easy to answer; Census Bureau calculations show that increasing the density in Los Angeles did not stop sprawl. Between 1970 and 1990, urban Los Angeles sprawled across an extra 394 square miles (252,160 acres). This was in addition to the 1,572 square miles it already occupied in 1970. Only five other Urbanized Areas in the entire country sprawled more than Los Angeles during this time period. That’s hardly a model of success in combating the sprawl problem. What accounted for this sprawl? Population growth, pure and simple. Between 1970 and 1990, the L.A. Urbanized Area grew by 3.1 million residents –largely because of the federal program of increased immigration levels and the inadequacy of federal efforts to curb illegal immigration. All those additional people had to live, work, play, commute, and be educated somewhere. Although they and the existing residents were willing and able to crowd more closely together than in the past, they did not choose to live together all in the existing urban area. That would have increased the density another 37% over what already were the densest living conditions that Americans in any Urbanized Area were willing to accept. The unwillingness to further crowd themselves into an ever-denser Los Angeles may have been related to the nonlinear nature of congestion once density reaches a certain level. For example, once freeways are near their capacities, increasing the number of cars on the road by, say, 37% can increase waiting times, traffic jams, etc., by much more than 37%. For whatever reasons that residents refused to increase their density enough to accommodate 3.1 million additional residents, the result was the loss of another 394 square miles of orchards, farmland, natural habitat and other open and rural spaces. Thus, just as Los Angeles is one model for meeting the Smart Growth goal of high-density living, it also is a model of how Smart Growth initiatives are likely to fail to stop sprawl under current federal policies that generate population growth.
Other models of increasing density but
continuing major sprawl were Riverside-San Bernardino, which converted another
150 square miles of rural land into urbanized land, and San Diego, which
consumed 309 additional square miles. Only five California Urbanized Areas
exhibited the overall American tendency to increase the urban land required for
each resident. Per Capita Sprawl was related to 20% of Overall Sprawl in
Salinas, 22% in San
Francisco-Oakland, 26% in
Santa
Cruz, 33% in Antioch-Pittsburg,
and 48% in Seaside-Monterey. Summing the entire area of Overall Sprawl from the 28 Urbanized Areas, one finds 1,670.5 square miles of rural land lost to sprawl. The average share of sprawl in California Urbanized Areas explained by population growth was about 95%. California’s cities, for the most part, stopped the trend of increasing per capita urban land use. Population growth in most California cities is now the only sprawl-inducing factor that is increasing. More than any other ingredient, it is the overall growth of U.S. population that is most responsible for the population growth driving sprawl in California’s Urbanized Areas. Between 1950 and 2000, the population of the United States rose from about 150 million to 275 million. A disproportionate part of that growth occurred in California, which tripled its population during that period. Between 1970 and 1990, the period of analysis, California’s population rose from 20 to 30 million, accounting for 10 million of the 45-million national increase. According to the Census Bureau, if current trends of American fertility rates and federal immigration policies continue, California is on a course to hit 50 million residents in 2025. At that point, Californians will be living more densely than today’s residents of China. Nothing that has occurred in California’s cities thus far suggests that –if federal policies driving national population growth continue– sprawl will not continue its march across California’s ever-more beleaguered rural and open spaces well beyond the year 2025. In the process, the state’s environment and quality of life for residents will pay an ever-higher price for the nation’s unwillingness to stabilize its population. These population policies, phenomena and trends –as has been shown by this study– are central to understanding the future of sprawl in California. Studies and plans from state commissions, think tanks, universities and advocacy groups that purport to offer blueprints for combating sprawl without talking about dealing with population growth look either naïve, foolish or deceptive in light of the findings of this study.
We began this investigation to test whether a
common sense perception (that
California’s population
explosion is a major factor in its rampant sprawl) could be quantified as true.
That perception had been thrown into doubt by the treatment of population growth
as a non-factor in sprawl by myriad activists, journalists, planners and This study has provided the quantitative evidence in support of the common sense perception: Population growth obviously is the No. 1 factor related to California’s deplorable sprawl problem.
Appendix A: California Urbanized Areas Raw Data
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