Desert Responsible Living
Sprawl growth achieves these things by allowing people to develop land in areas that are outside the boundaries of a city. This means the housing costs will be lower in areas that are further away from the center of the region. But advocates of smart growth say it would not only keep development more compact and take up less open space, it would reduce congestion on the roadways and shorten the distance from one community to another. Compressed growth would lower the cost of roads, utilities, and housing. If the entire nation embraced smart growth and limited outward expansion then every aspect of metropolitan life would become cheaper.
Smart growth advocates also contend that there are countless natural resources more beneficial to the environment than many contemporary building materials. The purpose of using natural materials is to minimize the use of energy and pollution that come from manufacturing and transporting. Renewable resources that can generate electricity are called green power. Power that produces lots of pollution is called brown power. Traditional electricity generators are less environmentally friendly than solar, wind, small hydro, biomass, and geothermal generators. Green power doesn’t produce any radioactive waste or air pollution and it is recycled naturally by the earth. Brown power is the biggest source of the air pollution by creating smog and acid rain. 50,000 people die every year in the United States from illnesses related to air pollution produced by burning fossil fuels. Renewable building materials are cost-efficient and made from fully or partially recycled materials.
