Cohousing-L Mailing List: Urban Sprawl

[James Kalin (jfkalin]

Urban sprawl is abating in regions and communities with strong open-space
and farmland preservation laws and regulations.  It can and is being
controlled where citizens are active and working smart and hard to make it
so.

For example, in the greater SF Bay Area a citizens group called Greenbelt
Alliance has for years been instrumental in enacting effective anti-sprawl
laws and government regulations.  In California, the Williamson Act
legislation helps protect farm land from sprawl encroachment by keeping
urban fringe farming land taxes at levels farmers can afford.

The loss of America's, and the world's, farmland, through paving,
residential and industrial development, industrial ground water depletion
or pollution, acid rain, etc, will this decade cause global food supply
disasters, and political and military repercussions, of unparalleled
proportions.  There are NO technofixes available, now or in the foreseeable
future, that will handle the global food supply shortfalls caused by
farmland loss.

As an ex-farm advisor, with extensive knowledge of alternative
agritechnologies, I am convinced that loss of farm land is one of the most
critical global environmental problems we face on our small planet.  And
urban sprawl, in the US and elsewhere, is a leading cause of farm land
loss.  Doing our part as cohousers to halt or mitigate urban sprawl is a
wise use of our time.