BEWEEN QUALITY OF LIFE AND POPULATION DENSITY

Eric Hirst and Tris Shirley[1]

Cascadia Weekly

May 28, 2008

Many factors affect our quality of life. Some are internal (like our self esteem and relationships with family and friends), and some are external (for example, the scope and quality of public services, such as schools and parks).

Land-use patterns, the arrangement of—and harmony among—natural and human-made structures and facilities, substantially affect our sense of well-being. Land-use patterns refer to the spatial organization of our homes, commercial establishments, and industrial sites and how these manmade facilities relate to natural features (rivers, lakes, mountains, and valleys). These patterns, in turn, determine the transportation modes and links that connect these diverse elements.

One key component of land-use patterns is the distinction between urban and rural areas. And a key element of this distinction is population density (the number of people per square mile), how many people live inside cities and how few people live in rural areas.

According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, an urban area has “an increased density of human-created structures in comparison to the areas surrounding it. … The US Census Bureau defines an urban area as one with a population density of at least 1,000 people per square mile and surrounding census blocks that have an overall density of at least 500 people per square mile.” Definitions for rural areas are less precise and generally refer to areas that are not urban, have limited public services available, and have an economy based on agriculture, logging, mining, and energy-resource extraction.

If there were only a few people in Whatcom County, this distinction among land uses would not matter. Farms, forests, open space, parks, and wildlife habitat could comfortably coexist with the occasional residential, commercial, or industrial development. Much of the rural U.S. was once like this, and many counties still are. Whatcom County, however, already contains a substantial population, and the potential exists for that population to expand rapidly. Therefore, the urban-rural distinction is critical. The risk is that the wonderful diversity of landscapes we now enjoy will evolve into a homogenous urbanization.

The Washington State Growth Management Act includes 13 goals. Key among them are:

·        Reduce sprawl,

·        Maintain and enhance natural-resource-based industries,

·        Encourage retention of open space and recreational areas, and

·        Protect the environment and enhance the quality of life.

One measure of our success in achieving these goals is the difference in population density between a county’s urban and rural areas. How well does Whatcom County do on that (very crude and simple) measure of compliance with the Growth Management Act?

Whatcom County cities are 10 percent less dense than the state average, and the county’s rural areas are 110 percent more dense than the state average. But this comparison may be too simple-minded. After all, it includes King County, which contains almost 1.9 million people, ten times as many as live in Whatcom County. At the other end of the spectrum, this comparison includes many counties, especially on the east side of the Cascades, with very small populations.

Let’s exclude King County and those counties with less than 40,000 people (17 of the state’s 39 counties). In calculating these numbers, we subtracted the land owned by the Federal government. Almost 30 percent of Washington State is owned by the federal government and managed by the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Department of Defense. About 65 percent of Whatcom County is national park and national forest.

With these adjustments, Whatcom cities are only slightly more dense (by 5 percent) than the average of these 22 counties, but the county’s rural areas are much more densely populated than the average, by 51 percent (Fig. 1). If Whatcom County’s rural density equaled the average, the number of people living in our rural areas would be lower by one-third (28,000 fewer people).

The population density in Whatcom County rural areas is 117 people/sq mile, compared with 78 people/sq mile for these other counties. Given the goals of the GMA to protect rural areas from sprawl and to concentrate development inside city limits, Whatcom County is not doing well. We are doing especially poorly in preventing suburban type developments in rural areas.

What does it mean to have an extra 28,000 people living in the county’s rural areas? It implies 10,000 more housing units plus the associated retail and other commercial establishments sprawling across the countryside. If these structures and the associated infrastructure (especially roads) were removed, more land would still be available for working farms and forests, as well as for wildlife habitat, open space, parks, and other natural areas.

These data, crude as they are, show clearly what most of us have known for years: Whatcom County’s rural areas are being devoured by the relentless push of sprawling developments. We can’t do much about past zoning and other land-use decisions that allowed such high population densities in our rural areas. But we can do a lot to stop these destructive trends in the future. We need to work with the Whatcom County government to protect our rural areas from further losses. Our quality of life, both in the cities and in the country, depends on it.