Can you go back to the fields where you picked blackberries as a child, or to the woods where you built a fort? What about the hill where you rode your sled, or the creek where you fished with your friends? Or have those places been turned into look-alike shopping malls, housing plans and big-box sprawl?
Across the nation and right here in Western Pennsylvania, poorly planned development is paving over cherished landscapes, degrading our natural resources and taking away farms that provide fresh, locally grown food.
Nationwide, we consume the equivalent of
4000 football fields
of land each day!
Sprawl not only wastes valuable open space, but strains municipal and school district budgets to provide new roads, infrastructure and costly public services over a wider area.
Metropolitan Pittsburgh’s population is shrinking at an increasing rate*, yet we convert 40 acres of land for development every day. Once this land is lost it can never be replaced.
*The Brookings Institution: Committing to Prosperity: Moving Forward on the Agenda to Renew Pennsylvania, Metro Profile: Pittsburgh, March 2007.
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