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Solutions: Demographic Trends
While not a "strategy" for combatting sprawl, demographic trends may help reduce sprawl development pressures. Some have found that the growing number of aging "baby-boomers" (as their children leave home) as well as the expanding number of other individuals and families without children have shown a preference for city, as opposed to suburban, locations.
Emerging Trends in Real Estate - 1999, an annual report prepared jointly by Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Lend Lease Real Estate, Inc., in noting that investors have recently grown wary of investing in areas dominated by sprawl development, explained:
"Not-so-subtle demographic changes are encouraging people to seek city lifestyles over suburban ... As baby-boomers become empty nesters, their children move into the expanding ranks of Generation Xers ... Both groups are gravitating to cities. Graying boomers can be closer to work and take advantage of urban amenities. ... The 20-somethings, meanwhile, have graduated from hanging out at the mall. City nightlife and social interaction offer more possibilities, interest, and excitement."
-- From Chapter 4 of Emerging Trends report (select Chpt 4 pdf file).
More information about the impact of changing demographics, and its importance to planners, can be found in Judith Waldrop's "What Every Planning Commissioner Should Know About Demographics" (for excerpts from the article)
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Limiting population growth: Some argue that in order to effectively deal with sprawl, the U.S. needs to limit population growth. The Executive Director of the advocacy group, Negative Population Growth -- in reaction to the 2000 census figures showing that U.S. population grew 13 percent during the past decade, to 283 million people -- commented that "population growth spells disaster for any environmental issue you can name ... our best efforts to clean up the earth, control sprawl, and preserve green space are being overwhelmed by a constantly increasing population." from U.S. Newswire, April 19, 2001
Along similar lines, Bill McKibben (author of The End of Nature and The Age of Missing Information) notes that if current trends continue, America's population by the year 2050 will reach 400 million. As McKibben puts it: "Since we seem not to be learning to live more frugally and compactly, [this] will likely translate into a few more rings of suburbs around each city ... by 2050 the urbanized area of the United States will have doubled to 312,000 square miles, an area larger than Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan combined."
For McKibben, one solution "is for more of us to have just one child -- and to begin a conversation within our culture that topples some of the stereotypes about only children, stereotypes that cause many parents to add to their families." According to McKibben, research has overwhelmingly shown that only children "are not spoiled, not weird, not depressed, not warped -- they are likely to be slightly higher achievers, and their personalities are indistinguishable from those of other kids." from "A Tough Question in Tough Times," in Orion Afield, Summer 1998.
For more on this, read Steve Curwood's interview of Bill McKibben from June 5, 1998 broadcast of the radio show, "Living on Earth" or McKibben's 1998 conversation with Tracey Rembert in Emagazine.com. For a critique of McKibben's views, see comments by Ben Wattenberg of the American Enterprise Institute, from the June 30, 1998 issue of The Wall Street Journal.
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