The leadership of the nation's largest environmental organization, with more than 600,000 members, isn't happy with the initiative. Other groups working on sprawl issues follow the same strategy. That strategy is doomed to fail, according to the dissident faction. It is promoting a study that argues population growth is the single largest factor causing sprawl. The study, to be released Monday, defines sprawl as conversion of rural land to suburban and urban uses.
Many previous studies rely on population density.
They find that metropolitan areas such as Las Vegas are doing well because these regions are putting more people into less land. About 4,500 people, on average, live on a square mile in the Las Vegas area. That compares favorably with other growing cities in the Southwest. Portland, Ore., a city that gets high marks from environmentalists for sprawl control, has about 3,900 people per square mile. Phoenix has only about 2,500 people per square mile.