Urban lesson to be learned from America

WITH the urban sprawl unabated, thousands of acres of farmland are giving way to concrete so to meet demands for housing and roads.

The EU authorities are becoming more concerned, given that by 2020 about 80% of Europeans will be living in urban areas: as a result, the demand for land in and around cities is becoming acute.

We can see cities such as Dublin and Cork expanding ever outwards into what was once virgin countryside, with new housing estates also springing up on the periphery of our towns.

The high cost of housing in bigger urban centres is also driving people out into what were formerly stagnant villages where, not that long ago, the building of even one house was something of an event. We now have the spectre of small villages being overwhelmed by housing estates, leading to huge pressures on water supplies, schools and other services.

The urban sprawl is generally believed to have begun in post-war America, as people began to move from major cities into the countryside: they formed spacious and leafy suburbia, facilitated by new roads and highways and inevitably followed by commerce and shopping malls.

But, the Americans are learning from their mistakes — something we could surely benefit from in this country and throughout the EU before even more damage is done to the countryside and communities.

More Americans — city planners, environmentalists, community leaders and residents of urban, suburban and rural areas — have come to realise that this brand of headlong, poorly planned development is not in the long-term interest of their communities.

They are trying to come up with alternatives that beat back sprawl, save landscapes and make communities better places in which to live.

Since the 1950’s and ‘60s, far too many highways have spread across America. And, while this phenomenon has enabled greater mobility for people and it has also created a problem — endless driving and traffic jams, pollution, fragmented communities and degraded rural and natural areas.

These effects are visible to all, but sprawl also places financial burdens on cities and towns to extend services and infrastructure, including new telephone lines, sewers, police and fire services to outlying areas. And it often sucks the lifeblood out of downtown areas.

EU funding for major road projects has been one of the driving factors of urban sprawl in Europe, which consumed 1.92 million acres of farmland in the 1990s, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA).

In a report, Urban Sprawl in Europe — the Ignored Challenge, the EEA warned that such rapid unrestrained growth of urban areas threatens Europe’s environmental, social and economic balance.

During the past 50 years, the trend towards lower densities in Europe has more than doubled the amount of space consumed per person. Over the past 20 years, built-up areas have increased by 20%, while the population has increased by only 6%.

One recent study showed the rapid expansion of cities, more than 5% in a decade and equivalent to three times the size of Luxembourg. Some of the areas most affected by urban sprawl are in countries with rapid economic growth, such as Ireland.

Factors driving sprawl are rooted in the desire for new lifestyles in suburban environments on the edges of cities, the reported stressed. As a result, the number of kilometres travelled in urban areas by road is predicted to rise by 40% between 1995 and 2030.

EEA executive director Prof Jacqueline McGlade said EU Cohesion and Structural Funds were major causes of sprawl across Europe and new member states should be given guidelines to avoid the pitfalls that a “sudden injection of funds” can encourage.

Dublin will need improved land zoning and new infrastructure if it is to accommodate the continuing urban sprawl, the report pointed out. It also said the Greater Dublin area would need to accommodate up to 480,000 additional residents by the year 2020.

The EEA had already highlighted damage caused by the urban sprawl to Ireland’s former rural landscape, the extent of which came as a surprise to some EU scientists.

They found huge changes had occurred in the period 1990 to 2000, chiefly that the sprawl was not only confined to areas surround our large cities but had also spread to most parts of the country.

Meanwhile, communities in America are tackling commercial giants such as Wal-Mart, the “big box” retailer that for many people symbolises sprawl.

When Wal-Mart set its sights on Rutland, Vermont, a state renowned for its beautiful countryside, many observers thought it was a recipe for disaster, but the company and local officials found a creative way to site and design the store. They put it in an abandoned building adjacent to the city’s downtown, whereas at one time it would have located in an out-of-town green field site.