Urban sprawl is not something that too many people really seem to spend that much time thinking about. Despite this, however, many people do have to deal with it. Those that are faced with the problem are often unsure about what they should be doing about it, and those that work in the field of trying to control it often struggle between making sure that there are enough places for people to live and making sure that the environment is not destroyed by the new houses and other buildings that are being created. Sometimes, balancing this is very difficult, and this is at the heart of the problem. For this reason, this paper focuses on urban sprawl and the environmental impact that is often seen when it takes place.
Environmentalists have so many concerns that they often can overlook the problems that urban sprawl is causing when it comes to environmental issues. Even though this is the case, many of the more metropolitan areas in the United States give a good indication of the environmental quality that is part of the lives of many individuals today. Many people in the United States today also feel that the conditions in metropolitan areas are getting much worse in many various respects. These include:
A loss in the amount of green space
The runoff of pollutants into various waterways
The increase of traffic that causes both air pollution and congestion
A landscape that is simply less pleasing overall (Gordon & Richardson, 1998).
Because of these concerns and others, there has recently been a movement to limit urban sprawl in many areas of the country, but most notably in the larger cities where the problems with urban sprawl and the pollution that it brings are becoming more obvious. In November 1998 there were many voters in the state of Maine that approved various and strong measures to keep urban sprawl to a minimum, thereby reducing some of the problems that this causes (Lomax & Schrank, 1998). Maine is not generally the focus of individuals when it comes to sprawl, but all states have problems with it some extent, and some areas of Maine are growing quite rapidly. Since the state is not large in the first place, there is only so much green space and unspoiled landscape available, and losing too much of it can cause many difficulties for those that live there and those that wish to visit on vacation.
In general, most of the lives of individuals in this country are metropolitan lives, and therefore people are becoming increasing concerned with the effects that urban sprawl has on their lives and on the environment in which they live. Currently, areas that are officially designated as metropolitan areas now account for approximately 19% of the vast land area in the United States. In 1960, that number was only 9% (Gordon & Richardson, 1998). This is a tremendous amount of growth in a relatively short period of time, and therefore it is something that environmentalists and others have not been completely able to keep up with. It appears that it is happening so fast, and coming up with good solutions to the problem is not always easy.
Eighty percent of the people in the United States live in a metropolitan area, and over half of the population lives in an area that has over 1 million people (Gordon & Richardson, 1998). Many people spend most of their lives in this kind of crowded, urban area, and they can often damage the land without deliberately intending to. The process of urban sprawl, as well as the consequences, were seen not only in Maine but in Washington DC as well. This area include the city of Washington, but also parts of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland. In 1980, the population of the area was 3.1 million (Gordon & Richardson, 1998). In 1995, in had swelled to 4.5 million (Gordon & Richardson, 1998). This means that the population in that area had climbed by nearly 50% in only 15 years (Gordon & Richardson, 1998). In the suburbs was where all of that growth took place, and in the city of Washington itself, the population actually went down (Gordon & Richardson, 1998). This is indicative of what urban sprawl actually is, as the population keeps expanding outward from the downtown area while the downtown area slowly withers and dies away.
When this happens, many old businesses are lost and the larger, new businesses find that they must move into the suburbs to keep the business of the population (Whyte, 1968). Washington, however, is not the only
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