13. Urban Sprawl
 
Definition:
 
The effect of unmanaged growth that inefficiently converts rural and natural lands to urban uses. Some call it the “leap-frog” approach to growing a community, whereby the community’s land base is converted to non-traditional uses at a rate higher than the community’s actual population growth rate.  Center for the Environment, Catawba College
 
What are some of the problems related to this issue?
 
Urban sprawl refers to the development of residential and commercial centers on undeveloped land located outside the boundaries of a city.
Increased traffic congestion/air pollution: Each year, Americans spend 55 8-hour workdays behind the wheels of their cars. As urban areas spread out, more time is spent in cars, and traffic congestion occurs over a larger area. Adding new lanes to highways doesn't solve the problem.
Air pollution in urban areas remains a problem. More than 60 urban areas are not within the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) guidelines for carbon dioxide or ground-level ozone. What's more disturbing is that pollution now affects smaller communities outside major metropolitan areas.
As a by-product of increased air pollution, the number of people suffering from chronic respiratory illnesses has increased to about 20,000 to 40,000 cases annually with the number of premature deaths from cardiopulmonary causes linked to particulate air pollution at around 64,000 per year.
 
Reduced farmland/wetland acreage: A staggering 70% of prime farmland is in the path of rapid development. In December 1999, Vice President Al Gore described figures indicating the loss of farmland to development. In the '90s alone, more than 3 million acres of open space (including farmland and forests) were developed. This problem is not just concentrated near large urban centers but also in mid-size cities.
 
Threatened wildlife: As neighborhoods and highways engulf open space, the natural habitat of wildlife is destroyed. Some of America's most important ecosystems, such as the Chesapeake Bay and the Everglades, are now threatened by urban sprawl. Urban development is the biggest threat to endangered plants as well. 

Riverdeep Education Software Corp.
 
Water system regulations and drainage for agriculture and urban development have been the major cause of loss of over 50 percent of the wetlands in countries all over the world including the USA, New Zealand, Australia, Pakistan, Thailand, Niger, Chad, Tanzania, India, Vietnam, and Italy. ENN
 
By  2010, the US is going to lose the equivalent of New England in agricultural land. And if things don’t change, by 2030, the U.S. will need to buy food from other countries.  American Farmland Trust
 

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