Roody

One of those amazing videos that NASA has been pslting on Youtube lately:

Newspaperguy

That reminds me of another sprawl story. In the late 1940s or early 1950s, Highway 401 was built near Toronto. At the time, people couldn't figure out why the highway was so far from the city. Today it cuts through the metro area.

wahoonc

We have had that problem around here, they build a bypass then over a period of years it gets built up and becomes as bad as the road it bypassed to begin with Now they are building bypasses as limited access to avoid the problem, but it isn't any help IMHO.

Aaron

gerv 

As well as the issue of traffic, this video points to the problem the entire South West will face with a resource that isn't mushrooming... the water supply,

Where did all these people come from in the first place?

Pobble.808

Interesting that NASA has chosen to call this "sprawl." Up until 2008 the party line was that this was robust, healthy growth that those of us living in less dynamic places were supposed to feel envious of.

dynodonn 

One can see the housing bubble burst in the housing market quite clearly a the 2008 segment, only time will tell if Lost Wages will see another housing boom like that again.

Dahon.Steve

I see alot of cheap energy needed to create all that activity. I guess everyone fully expected it to stay that way forever. OH WELL!

dynodonn 

The lack of cheap energy didn't have much to do with the bust, but more to do the end of cheap money brought on by poor lending practices.

Artkansas 

In San Diego in the late 90's they were putting in developments that were 5 miles by 5 miles all at once.

They had a great law. You were forbidden to disturb land that had not be developed. It was protected. As much as putting a shovel to it would result in a $1,000 fine.

But once that shovel of dirt had been lifted, the land was no longer protected and you were free to develop.

Suburban

That's a dramatic change.

rnorris

Notice that the western flank of the city advances toward the edge of the valley at about the same rate over the course of the video. That's a huge acceleration of growth, given all the interior "space" that has to fill in behind that margin.

The sky glow from LV can be seen from well over 100 miles away on clear desert nights, especially the vertical pillar of light from downtown.

I remember a family trip to Las Vegas in 1970. It was dwarfed by the valley it now overflows. Watch the James Bond movie "Diamonds are Forever" to see how small LV was around that time!

Mobile 155

Same place they have for years:

https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/...gration-flows/

gerv 

Most of that transition was in 2007. Almost a million people leaving New England for what looks like Florida.

I know there was a big out-migration from the Mid West in those years. But nowadays there's less unemployment around here. But a lot of older people like to retire in Arizona. I'd like to see how Phoenix has grown in the last 25 years.

Roody

In the video, you can clearly see that the roads are built before any other development occurs. It used to be thought that roads follow the population, but now most demographers believe that the roads come first, and then the people.

rnorris

Another example of this was I-215, which was completed between Riverside and San Diego in the mid-1980s. It opened a fast new car commute for the small towns along the way, like Temecula and Lake Elsinore, which have since blown up into huge suburbs.

Mobile 155

Didn't look up the population but the city looks a lot bigger that it was when my son was in school there in the 90s. Every time we go through there they are having a building project going one. I did look up the site on the median populationg center of the US and since 1890 it has been moving west. Not that it teaches us much. But the movement to the South and west is still going on and while the movement from the north east has slowed it hasn't stopped.

https://www.csub.edu/kej/documents/ec...2011-03-21.pdf

I am sure the economy, the weather housing and any number of other reasons can be found to explain it but the government has a site that has a cute little animated site showing the population moving west since 1890. The set it up like the US was on a balancing beam and the median population center is the balancing point. The balancing point is now in Missouri someplace.

gerv 

I did a little googling on Phoenix and it's amazing how often the security of the water supply is questioned.

Artkansas 

Yep, Temecula was "Move till you can afford to buy" from both San Diego and L.A.-Riverside. Now it's big enough that it's a substantial commercial center itself. My Dad lived near Lake Elsinore. The night-time skies were wonderfully dark back then. But no more.

Mobile 155

Temecula is an example of the traditional western population expansion. Urban sprawl becomes suburban sprawl till things settle down a bit after a city forms and developes industrail parks. The only way it slows here is when two areas expand into each other. Elsinore is started to expand towards the Corona area and that area is expanding towards Elsinore. The coastal cities are moving slowly east through Ortega highway and Paris and Murrieta are moving west towards Elsinore. More or less that is how Orange County developed. The county planning commissions throughout Southern California plan it that way and have for years. Northern California is a bit different. In the south however it is all about change. Come back to a city ten years after a visit and chances are everything looks different. It is like the US westward development in the late 1800s only in hyperdrive. I don't think Vegas is unusual. Watching the history channel the other day they accredited it to the air conditioner, their opinion not mine.