Sprawl, World Climate Change, and Aldo Leopold
The following is an essay I wrote for my current Environmental Planning course at St. Louis University. The assignment was to look at a current issue in the context of the writings of Aldo Leopold. Leopold’s book, the Sand County Almanac, was published in 1949 — the year following his death at age 61.
Aldo Leopold missed the most horrific land-use crime, suburban sprawl. Decades after Leopold was thinking like a mountain, men were blasting the mountain to flatten it for big box stores and acres of free parking. Leopold’s writings give us much to ponder
about the conservation of wild areas but little to work from with respect to the rapid development of land for human use. The amount of land consumed per person has steadily increased with each passing decade, and combined with an increase in total population the natural areas which Leopold worked to conserve are disappearing at an alarming rate.
With the exception of Pearl Harbor, the United States was untouched from the ravages of WWII. Just shy of six decades since his passing in 1948 at the age of 61, the world has changed considerably. Leopold would not be pleased with our progress of the last sixty years. In these passing years nearly equal to his life on this planet, we’ve ravaged our own landscape unlike anything seen in Europe during the war.
We’ve spent lifetimes attempting to seize control of the planet only to have it shake us off at different turns. Not to say this is right, just an acknowledgment that this is where society has taken us to date. There is no question that we humans have not been thinking like a mountain, but how to overtake and develop the mountain and everything around it. Ironically, while Leopold’s writings started an environmental movement for the conservation of wildlife areas he seemingly did nothing to abate the consumption of land for “normal†society.
Leopold’s time saw few suburban communities. Those he would have seen would be the “Garden City†developments offering pastoral settings ringing urban cores, radically different than today’s ex-urban areas. However, a year prior to his passing, the rise of suburbia was on its way with the 1947 start of Levittown. Interstate highways, drive-thrus, bedroom communities, and the cloverleaf interchange would all come following his death.
My personal land-use ethic relates to this sprawl and our consumption of land. In short, I believe that we humans are here for a short time and perhaps do get to consume the land — but only so much. Humans have been building civilizations for thousands of
years but never has planet earth seen a more destructive group of people. We crossed the line decades ago. So much so the line can no longer been seen in the rear-view mirror.
We are at a point where today’s generations must make up for the mistakes of past generations. In growing regions they must seek to rebuild in a more compact manner while any new ground taken needs to be developed in whatever term you like to use —
old urbanism, New Urbanism or just plain urbanism. Multiple modes of mobility need to be accommodated in whatever we build, in any region, from this day forward. Anything less is without a doubt, immoral.
So where does this leave Leopold? Nature should still be front and center in our minds — we must be aware of why it is that we are reversing our past mistakes. Nature, and the preservation of the planet as we know it, absolutely must come first. Interestingly, this involves building human habitats that has little to do with nature in its pure form: commercial districts lined with streetcars and rows upon rows of multi-unit housing stacked over retail, for example. Every region, large and small, needs an Urban Growth Boundary to contain it from encroaching onto the natural environment surrounding it’s borders. Many regions, from the Springfield Missouri’s to the St. Louis’ of the world, have already developed all the land they will need for the next 60 years.
The era of the ‘ranch’ house in the 1/4 acre ‘country’ subdivision are over. The naturalist packing the Subaru with Chinese-made camping equipment purchased at REI is also done. Our fundamental relationship with nature must shift. Just as Leopold
suggested multiple generations ago, we must make a major shift in our society in how we view nature. Our land ethic is no longer simply including land (soil, etc…) in with humans but we have to think globally as we never have before.
We Americans are warming the planet as no other country is doing and it is up to us to make sure we don’t heat the planet to the point where New York’s subways are flooded, that Miami beach’s deco hotels are not under water, that once lush areas of the world do not become arid and so on. Of course, other countries are doing their best to catch up to the U.S.
Leopold’s guidance has proven helpful with respect to managing wildlife preservation areas but has fallen way short in the rest of the earth. Although we’d never advocate hunting humans, we do need to learn to manage ourselves and the land we consume
so that we can get ourselves back in line with nature. At this point we have little choice.
Wonderful concepts, but how do you square it with the reality that our country’s population will increase by a third over the next 40 years and other parts of the world are growing at an even faster rate? I’ve been a believer in and, like you, have practiced Zero Population Growth over the course of my life. I’ve seen what happens when growth limits are imposed locally, particularily around Boulder, Colorado. Yes, density increases. But, since scarcity is being (artificially) created, land costs inflate exponentially. Short term, it just drives up housing costs. Long term, as costs continue to rise beyond most worker’s affordability, most people are forced to drive (or with a minority, to commute on public transit) to find affordability (much) further outside the boundaries. In the ’70’s, more people commuted out of Boulder to jobs. Now, with a bigger increase in jobs than housing, more people commute into the “city”. Bottom line, immediate sprawl is contained, only to be leap-frogged by sprawl in ex-urban areas!
Around here, our surrounding counties continue to grow because most people are convinced they offer more affordability than St. Louis city or county. With an increase in the number of singles, more residential units are required. It does little good for any one community to act in isolation. Oregon had the concept right with statewide limits, but my understanding is that recent court decisions have gutted many of the decades-old limits. Can we convince the folks in Jeff City that this is a viable concept? I’d rather bet on the Rams in the Super Bowl this year. Unfortunately, I think nature will be the ultimate arbiter, with water, too much or too little, having a greater impact on our lives every year . . . bummer, huh?
Jim,
I think you nailed it with Oregon’s example of state-wide limits. Perhaps statewide is not enough though. A federal change in highway and transportation funding needs to occur. Taxes should be based on consumption, not penalizing employment. If the tax structure and funding mechanisms didn’t favor sprawl, we would not see it so prevalent nationwide. In the case of Boulder, perhaps the artificial limits needed to be adjusted slowly to account for an increased population. You also sounded offended that lower classes would have to ride public transportation. Why shouldn’t we all? We all tend to see ourselves as Romanesque elite classes carried around in private carriages so we can avoid interacting with the rest of society. A little blending of the classes would benefit us all.
A horrible example of sprawl continues to be the San Francisco bay area. They have run up against natural boundaries that zoning cannot change. Instead of addressing the escalation of housing prices with high density neighborhoods served by BART and light rail, they expand the freeways to allow people living in the San Juaquin Valley (45 minutes away w/o traffic) to commute into the Bay Area. People live in their cars without time for family, exercize, community building and religious pursuits. All this while further funding extremists in oil-rich portions of the world as we compete for energy reserves with the growing economies of India and China.
That is not a long term strategy for our country. It’s not even a green vs business debate. It’s self-defense and conservative economic planning.
There needs to be a rural lobby for smart growth. Metropolitan advocates for smart growth won’t have an impact because we do not control the state legislature. A coalition between groups could have an impact, however I don’t see a lot of rural objection to exurban development. One such individual, St. Charles Councilman Joe Brazil, was soundly defeated in the state republican primaries when he ran for representative against Scott Rupp. Having grown up in areas which were once mostly farmland, and have since been developed by Paul McKee and Rick Sullivan, I don’t see a lot of farmers suddenly thinking that selling their land for a lot of money is a bad idea. Oregon’s green belt was challenged in court by the lobby that wants to build in rural areas, as in developers. So it seems the hedonistic economic incentive to sell out to developers is quite compelling and it would take a lot of convincing for people to believe otherwise. In an economically depressed state, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. What incentive is there since many don’t have a viable alternative?
Moreover, if you are hoping for federal action on sprawl then you are smoking more of that magic herb than me. Such action would be contradictory to federalism and states rights. A good idea locally would be to require that developers fund infrastructure expansion rather than have them funded locally. This would be an impact fee. The higher cost of development may thus slow how far out it goes. Yet what regionally authority would pass such legislation? I don’t think we have one.
I’m not “offended that lower classes would have to ride public transportation” – I wish that more could and would. The reality is worse. By pricing workers out of the community, combined with the lack of viable public transportation on the fringes, more people are being forced to drive longer distances between an affordable home and work. Once you’re in the car, if you’re already halfway there before you have an option, why change? The same thing is happening in the LA basin/southern California and around NYC, and to a lesser degree around here, in our surrounding counties.
I don’t have a good answer on this one. Draw a line, either permanent or slowly expanding, and you artificially drive up residential prices. Don’t draw a line and you get the sprawl we all know and love. The only real “answer” is little or no growth, combined with affordable densification. And while government can mandate “better choices”, to a certain extent, individuals will continue to make “uninformed”, “irrational” decisions to buy that ¼ acre with three bedrooms and vinyl siding simply because it’s all (they believe, probably rightly so) that they can afford . . .
Given the idea that social conscience is key, one must ask “are local advocates-leadership raising or lowering conscienceness and our abilities to share resources?” Are these shared resources being designed to benefit a broad spectrum of users or rather a narrow set?
Take the Metro Extension as an example: a light rail installed without bike and pedestrian paths is undoubtedly a loser. Why?
Experts suggest people can fight both obesity and global warming by simply getting out of their cars and walk or bike half an hour a day instead of driving. One scientist calculates that if all Americans walked just half an hour a day instead of driving, they would cut the annual U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide by 64 million tons and about 6.5 billion gallons of gasoline would be saved. Americans would also shed more than 3 billion pounds overall, about 13 pounds/year per person.
Of course this means a major shift from supporting sprawl to supporting livable and pedestrian friendly communities. This option was deleted in the Extension design.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iVOFixBth5dArR81zllBuVJTrPsAD8SRJD0G0
The potential payoffs are huge, although unlikely to happen, thanks to local leadership, poor personal habits, MoDOT, and particularly Metro’s design failures.
equals42’s comment of a shift from an earnings based tax structure to a consumer based tax structure is part of the cultural revearsal. The reliance on property tax based public education is another aspect that needs rectifying. When a barrel of oil eclipses the $100 dollar mark, the US will still be electricity independent and without having built a nuclear plant in how many years? The UGB worked. St. Louis may “get it” at some point. Now will it be before or after the majority of America “gets it”?
Now when it comes to people having children… That’s a nice hot button issue.
Oh yeah, Steve, you are better putting your money down on the Rams for the super bowl.
I’m very impressed with the quality of Steve’s post and the responses. Yes, we are way past a time for change and I’m afraid that soon Mother Nature will strike back and reclaim what once was hers. China has yet to get up to speed and when she does there will be little stopping the destruction of what is left of our environment. yes what happens overseas very much affects us all around us.
Steve, your writing is excellent. It’s nice to read a blog that includes decent use of the language. However, you must re-phrase the following, “With the exception of Pearl Harbor, the United States was untouched from the ravages of WWII,” to include what I’m sure you meant to say, something like “With the exception of Pearl Harbor, the land itself was untouched by the ravages of WWII.” Surely the families cannot be considered to be untouched by the ravages.
I wish the political leadership and others would really put climate change and population growth in economic terms. Certainly our dependence on fossil fuels is going to have to change in the near future just by the nature of the product and demand placed for its use. I would expect oil prices to be well past $100 per barrel well before Manhattan floods. The ordinary Joe stills worries a lot more about paying bills.
Pearl Harbor was not the only physical attack on the United States or its Territories during World War II. Attacks by our enemies on our soil were not the only physical ravages upon our states and territories during that war.
A couple of correspondents mentioned the challenge to Oregon’s growth limits law. Three years ago, Oregon voters passed Measure 37 which was a big win for individual property rights advocates because it required the state to compensate land owners for loss of value due to land use decisions made by government. This meant that if a farmer could not sell his land for a shopping mall, he had to be compensated for the loss of value of that land. Under the law there have been thousands of claims filed for compensation, which made land use laws totally infeasible.
However, now Oregonians have seen the light and have repealed most of Measure 37. Here is a link from Grist.
http://www.grist.org/news/2007/11/07/oregon/index.html
http://www.aldoleopold.org/legacycenter/