The Small Town Project

Some might object to the Small Town Project’s call for an end to local environmental destruction on the basis that, “it’s no big deal; it’s only a small area relative to the state or the country or the world.” If you think that, Wendell Berry, in another essay from the Prairie Writers Circle, has something to tell you:

Small destructions add up, and finally they are understood as parts of large destructions.

I hope you’ll take a look at the rest of the essay. It’s well worth reading.

On another note, for the next week or so the STP is taking a semi-break for the holidays. Some new material will likely still appear though, as a couple of pieces (including the promised “big picture” post) are in the works and may become presentable at any time. For now, happy holidays!

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively: the land. — Aldo Leopold, native son of Burlington, Iowa

Is it a sign of things to come? We’ve discussed the issue of peak oil and how suburban development is a huge oil waster. Oil consumption is, in turn, a major cause of air pollution and climate change. Now air quality officials in California’s Central Valley have taken historic action in that regard. Given the link between automobile dependent sprawl and air pollution, they’ve put into place requirements forcing developers to pay added fees if they fail to design and build in ways that reduce automobile usage.

I’m glad to see this step, though I quite agree with this blogger that this sort of market based approach may not have the results one would hope for. I doubt, in fact, that the results in this case will be anything remarkable. Something more like Janet Kaufman’s proposed “landscape protection law” would have more teeth.

Important here, however, is that a regulatory body has acknowledged an environmental cost of sprawl. That helps push this into public awareness, and is thus a key step in what should, in time, be a major evolution in how we in the U.S. think about “development.”

“Why don’t we levy a tax on earth moving? Why don’t we have landscape protection laws—like water and air laws—for our children’s sake?”

Writing for the Salina Kansas based Land Institute’s Prairie Writers Circle, Janet Kauffman cuts through the irrelevancies with a heartfelt essay on what’s lost in our determination to “develop” land.

Edwin Stennett’s book — important reading. Growth Education Movement

Not long ago we examined an important Brookings Institution paper by Paul Gottlieb titled Growth Without Growth. Gottlieb shows convincingly that population growth is in no way necessary for a U.S. city to see per-capita income growth. His findings go a long way toward debunking the myth that population growth is necessary for per-capita economic wellbeing.

Edwin Stennett expands on Gottlieb’s finding in In Growth We Trust. This book is a key work on the relationship between sprawl and population growth. I recommend it to anyone serious about studying the issues covered on the Small Town Project.

In it, Stennett reviews the Growth Without Growth paper, then looks at the same question on the level of nations. (pp 61-62) He examines the relationship between rate of population growth and rate of growth of per-capita gross domestic product (as percentages per year) for the United States and 15 western European countries. [1] (The latter data came from U.S. Census Bureau tables.) Using the time span from 1970 to 1998, he finds no significant correlation between the two variables in question. [2] His scattergram shows the individual countries spread essentially randomly around an almost horizontal trendline. Notably, the United States shows by far the most population growth among the 16 countries, yet is only about average in per-capita gross domestic product growth. This is a strong indication that population growth is simply not an important factor in creating or explaining a country’s per-capita economic health. (To be consistent with our series exposing the myths of growth, we can label as “myth #5″ the notion that a country does need such growth.)
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Here’s a nice little holiday gift for that logical, truth loving person on your list. Only $1.00!

Last Thursday’s Gazette (newspaper serving this part of eastern Iowa) had a letter to the editor worth mentioning here. Responding to a November 27 article on the topic, Kirk Phillips and Mary Jeanne Perino Phillips wrote to express their disagreement with proposed road construction in Johnson county.

Three of the five Johnson County supervisors are in favor of the highway which would connect Newport and Prairie du Chien roads. It’s purpose is to make way for residential construction.

One issue is whether the county should pay for it. I don’t think they have any obligation to do so. Going back to the 11/27 article, that seems to be the opinion of supervisor Terrence Neuzil as well. He suggests developers, not the the county, should be paying for new roads. I’d go a step further and suggest a program whereby the county (or city) buy up the land to save it from development. As I’ve said here repeatedly, given that they can’t grow forever, any economic strategy based on physical expansion guarantees eventual failure.

Here are a few of the Phillips’s comments:

The proposed highway would destroy the rural atmosphere… and encourage further destruction of productive farmland… How will future generations feel about importing food as currently we import oil and natural gas… Between 1992 and 1997, more than 6 million acres of U.S. farmland has been paved, an area approximately equal to the size of Maryland… [Laws intended to preserve farmland] are increasingly dodged by elite commercial interests which do not suit the broader needs of our community and world.

Good points to ponder, if you ask me. It’s nice to know there are some in our neighboring county who oppose needless “development.”

The following is a response to Don Cell’s letter in the current issue of the Sun

Hi Don — Thanks for your letter in the current Sun encouraging more discussion and evaluation of growth issues. It was constructive, and I was glad to see it. It seemed, though, to dance around a certain “elephant in the room.” You provided a thorough letter encouraging more discussion and facts, mentioning that it’s good to see letters discussing the issues, pointing as moderator to the upcoming League of Women Voters debate on the Comprehensive Plan, referring to Stan Crocker’s recent letter on the topic, and itemizing three issues you feel need more attention — all, somehow, without mentioning that we have a local website devoted to discussion of just such issues, and encouraging constructive debate.
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2/22/06 - Note: The article below links to a previous post which I would urge you to read for background information. We can’t predict with certainty how much population growth MV will experience in the coming years, but we know it is well established that, up to a point, human populations tend to grow exponentially. If the rate of MV’s growth continues as it has, or increases (I’ve heard Mike Beimer and other city officials quote a historic rate of 1.5% per year — about right over the last 14 years, while the Mount Vernon Development Corporation anticipates about a 5% annual growth rate.) it will, in time, be markedly greater than most would expect without doing the proper math. No matter the growth rate though, we are still left with the fact that, for the sake of profit, the growth industry has flatly lied to us about the supposed benefits of growth. This is more than clear if you look at the articles here on growth myths. Given that, rather than appease such an industry, for no benefit to anyone other than the industry’s members, I would submit that MV should take a hard, perhaps painful look at the portion of its Comprehensive Plan which advocates population growth as though we “need” it. It may well be that even the bright, informed, and well meaning folks who created the plan, publishing it in 1995, were influenced (as nearly all of us were at the time) by the pervasive growth machine propaganda which tells us we “need” growth. Rest assured, that is the portion of the Plan the growth machine loves to see. Yet as I’ve shown here repeatedly, we are now in an age when, for a variety of reasons, what we need is an end to growth. Whatever the rate of growth, it is completely unnecessary, and is in fact harmful. It is equally unnecessary to let it continue just so a few members of the growth industry can make a great deal of money regardless of the effect on the town, its surrounding natural environment, and the world.

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I promise a “big picture” essay soon. In the meantime, I want to cover one or two prerequisite details and some random items. Let’s start with this:

Some city officials will tell you Mount Vernon’s population has been growing at about a 1.5% rate per year. That may be true. The figure is of course based, though, on past years. (Note that even at a 1.5% growth rate, the math of exponential growth tells us that Mount Vernon’s population would more than triple in 74 years, or about one lifetime.)

Obviously the successful sales of recent and planned developments such as the Wolfe and Stonebrook subdivisions suggest an increasing growth rate. If it goes as planned, Stonebrook alone will bring about 300 new homes, or about 1,000 new residents. The Mount Vernon Development Corporation also anticipates a faster growth rate:

In Mount Vernon, new home construction ensures an expansion of our current population base of 3,800 by nearly 1,050 people in fewer than five years. That estimated figure is over a 25% jump in population!

That jump represents about a 5% annual growth rate. That’s certainly a reasonable estimate considering Stonebrook’s 1,000 added residents as well as the likelihood that, without resistance, other developments will go up soon. But 5% doesn’t sound particularly remarkable, does it? Well, that’s only because we humans lack an intuitive sense of the exponential growth function. To put it in perspective, consider that at that 5% growth rate, assuming a current population of 4,000 (I’ve seen higher estimates, and surely the Chamber’s 3,800 is a bit low.), Mount Vernon’s population will more than quadruple in just 29 years. In the course of 75 years, about one lifetime, a 5% growth rate will create a Mount Vernon population of over 155,000!

We know that any residential growth here is unnecessary and makes no sense as a long term strategy for our towns. Now we know, as well, that projected growth rates, from the quoted 1.5% to the more plausible 5%, mean much more population growth than most of us would guess from the percentage figures alone. Populations tend to grow exponentially, and we have to do the math to see just how much growth that really means.

It’s time on the Small Town Project to take a step back to look at the “big picture,” at how our local growth issues connect with larger scale issues concerning the environment, population growth, and sustainability. I plan to post something soon which looks at those connections, but as a starter, perhaps it’s worth thinking for a moment about this quote from Albert Bartlett, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Colorado, and recipient of the first George Gamow Memorial Lecture Award for his “most significant contribution to the public’s understanding of science.”:

THE GREAT CHALLENGE

Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor, on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?