Steve Mouzon

The many costs of sprawl.

Principal of Mouzon Design ; founder of the New Urban Guild in Miami., Mar 14, 11.

Tagged with urban planning, sprawl, smart growth, walkability

Sprawl is threatening to bankrupt us in more ways than we might realize. Let’s have a look at several of them:

Direct Costs

The US imported 4,289,772,000 barrels of oil in 2010, which at today’s price of $105/barrel is almost half a trillion dollars. Fully one third of our imports come from nations deemed dangerous or unstable. With each “uninstall” attempted on Middle Eastern and African dictators, the instability grows.

Much of that money goes to nations that don’t really like us all that well ... and some downright hate us. So a portion of the half-trillion dollar annual impoverishment of the US gets into the hands of organizations bent on destroying us. How much harm would Osama bin Laden have been able to do without petroleum dollars? And what is the cost, in lives and dollars, of the wars waged as direct or indirect results of petro-dollars getting into the wrong hands?

Sprawl should shoulder much of the blame for this staggering expense. Study after study have shown that per-capita performance is substantially better in the city than in surrounding sprawl. This is no surprise, since sprawl requires us to drive everywhere…

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Source: the Original Green, March 9, 2011

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