For example, jobs are following people from congested cities to the suburbs. This allows people to drive shorter distances and avoid congestion on their way to work. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 1997 Natural Resources Inventory, all cities and towns in the U.S. occupy just 3 percent of the nation's land. Only 4.6 percent of California, the nation's most populated state, is urbanized, and percentages are similar for most states outside of the Northeast. The biggest problem with the open space myth is its limited definition of open space.
Suburbanites consider their large yards to be an important component of open space.
These open spaces are probably used by recreationists more often than public parks are, and they are certainly used more than private farms and forests. Most smart-growth advocates count private farms as open space but deny that private yards are open space. So they advocate conserving farms but want to shrink people's yards. Most people favor the public purchase of more parks and other open spaces. But they support such purchases as a way of reducing population densities and the problems associated with density, including traffic congestion and air pollution.