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Outsmarting
Smart Growth
Population
Growth, Immigration,
and the Problem of Sprawl
By
Roy Beck, Leon Kolankiewicz,
and Steven A. Camarota
August, 2003
WASHINGTON (August 26, 2003) -- In recent years, many local governments,
states, and non-profit groups have adopted initiatives to
save rural land from sprawl. Most anti-sprawl efforts have
focused on "Smart Growth," which emphasizes better
planning to create more efficient land use.
A
new study from the Center for Immigration Studies finds that
this approach will have limited success in saving rural land
because it fails to address a key reason for sprawl -- population
growth.
Based on data from the Census
Bureau and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources
Conservation Service, the study shows that about half the
loss of rural land in recent decades is attributable to increases
in the U.S. population, while changes in land use account
for the other half.
New
immigration and births to immigrants now account for nearly
90 percent of U.S. population growth. Therefore, population
growth, and the immigration policies that drive it, must become
an integral focus of efforts to preserve rural land.
The
122-page report, entitled "Outsmarting Smart Growth:
Population Growth, Immigration, and the Problem of Sprawl,"
contains detailed information for
every state and is available at http://www.cis.org/articles/2003/sprawl.html
Among
the report's findings:
•
Department of Agriculture data collected between 1982 and
1997 show that in states with less than 10 percent population
growth, developed land expanded 26 percent on average, compared to a 46 percent expansion
of developed land in states that grew in population by more
than 30 percent.
•
On average, each 10,000-person increase in state population
resulted in 1,600 acres of undeveloped rural land being developed,
even controlling for other factors such as changes in land
use per person.
• Nationally, population growth accounted
for 52 percent of the loss of rural land between 1982 and
1997, while increases in per-capita land consumption accounted
for 48 percent.
• "Immigration-driven
population growth is out-smarting Smart Growth initiatives
by forcing continued rural land destruction," said Roy
Beck, Executive Director of NumbersUSA Education and Research
Foundation, and lead author of the report. "Smart Growth programs
in the face of rapid population growth will require increasingly
onerous government regulation; without such population increases,
artificially imposed by the federal government, Smart Growth
policies would not only be more successful, they will also
encounter less public opposition."
Among
other findings in the report:
•
Smart Growth must also play a significant role in anti-sprawl
efforts because per-capita land use has been increasing. Between
1982 and 1997, land use per person in the United States rose
16 percent.
•
There is significant variation between states in the factors
accounting for sprawl. For example, population growth accounted
for more than half of sprawl in five of the 10 states that
lost the most land, while increases in
per-capita land use accounted for more than half of sprawl
in the other five worst sprawling states.
• An examination of the nation's largest
urban areas reveals the same pattern as in the states.
Census Bureau data show that between 1970 and 1990, population
growth accounted for slightly more than half of the expansion
of urbanized land in the nation's 100 largest cities.
• In the 1990s, new immigration and
children born to immigrants accounted for most of the 33-million
increase in the U.S. population. Census Bureau data from 2002
indicate that the more than 1.5 million legal and illegal
immigrants who settle in the country each year, along with
750,000 yearly births to immigrants, are equal to 87 percent
of the annual increase in the U.S. population.
•
Contrary to common perception, about half the country's immigrants
now live in the suburbs. The pull of the suburbs is even greater
in the second generation. Of the children of immigrants who
have settled down and purchased a home, only 24 percent have
done so in the nation's central cities.
•
The suburbanization of immigrants and their children is a
welcome sign of integration. But it also means that they contribute
to sprawl just like other Americans.
What's Different About This Study?
Most studies in this
field, as well as the work of most anti-sprawl organizations,
have not focused on the actual destruction of undeveloped rural land. Instead, they have
evaluated the density of new development or the use of various
urban-planning techniques. While such studies are valid for
analyzing various aspects of sprawl, they have the distinct
disadvantage of largely disregarding the loss of agricultural
land and natural habitat, because all of the emphasis is on
the quality of the planning or the density in the new development.
By
examining the actual loss of undeveloped rural land, this
study avoids this problem. Our findings show that population
plays an enormous role in driving sprawl. Thus, stabilizing
the U.S. population must become a central goal of anti-sprawl
efforts. Since Americans already have only about two children
on average, the primary reason for the country's ever-increasing
population is immigration. If we wish to deal effectively
with sprawl, then immigration levels will have to be reduced.
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CONTACTS:
Report co-authors Roy Beck, (703) 816-8820, or Steven Camarota,
(202) 466-8185.
The
Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-profit,
non-partisan think tank which examines and critiques the impact
of immigration on the United States.
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