» Tuesday, 13 October A.D. 2009
units fail
I picked up Changing Metropolitan America: Planning for a Sustainable Future by William H. Hudnut III the other day at the library. Lots of charts and graphs about how urban centers have developed and lots of discussion on the right way to develop further. But I have to take issue with a statistic that appears at the beginning:
During the [years between now at 2043], the homebuilding industry anticipates that the United States will need 100 billion square feet (9.3 billion square meters) of new residential space.
You read that and at first, you say, “WOW! 100 billion square feet! A crisis!” I understand that square feet is how we measure our dwellings, but I feel that presenting such big numbers with such little units is slightly misleading.
So how big is 100 billion square feet? About 3,500 square miles. Which is slightly smaller than Rhode Island and Delaware put together. So yes, lots of space...but it looks slightly less dire presented in (well, what I think) are more realistic numbers. (I'm also curious if that's “we need to build that much space,” ignoring re-using existing buildings, or if it's including renovations. Given that the statistic is from the homebuilding industry, it's probably the latter...which makes me wonder how reasonable it would be to renovate spaces instead and cut that space required down.)
Now, if you say we should multiply that number by other factors--for instance, assuming that most of that number is two-story, 2,000 square foot homes with a quarter-acre lot, which means we'd need to multiply the space needed by six or so--then the number starts to sound a little scarier. You're at least approaching top 25 states territory rather than last two. Plus it starts people thinking about other factors besides just raw space requirements: what's necessary to support that space, etc. It's all well and good to fling statistics at people, but you need to provide a little context for people to get a handle on it and to make your point clearly.
posted by Nate @ 4:54PM