Urban sprawl is also destroying our farmlands at an alarming rate. Between 1981 and 1992 the Great Lakes basin lost more than 4.5 million acres of farmland, an area nearly the size of Lake Ontario. This loss of farmland decreases our access to an affordable food supply and sacrifices open lands to development and, eventually, more pollution. Till Plain , the Ontario Plain and Finger Lakes region , the Southwestern Michigan Fruit and Truck Belt , and the Western Michigan Fruit and Truck Belt .
Sprawl inevitably raises taxes.
New urban infrastructure such as roads and sewer and water lines is expensive, and taxes help pay for the expense of establishing suburban communities. But as is often the case, taxpayers from a broader geographic area help pay for new development, so people who do not live in these suburban communities are often burdened with higher taxes as well. One hidden cost of sprawl is the construction of new schools. As communities spread out, new suburban schools must be constructed, often leaving urban schools under-utilized and poorly funded. Between 1970 and 1990, Minneapolis-St.