Building and Construction - Re: Housing .. uses 0.5% of land

Author

Re: Housing .. uses 0.5% of land

Dan in Philly

2008-03-30, 9:25 am

"Enough Already" <enough_already@lycos.com> wrote in message ...
> Does anyone think about how much land gets covered by blessed housing
> starts each year?

Total acreage of the U.S. = 1876 million acres
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/ge...d-acreage-total

Assuming 100 million households, and assuming the average "house" covers 0.1
acres (should be much less than that due to apartment buildings, condos)
then houses cover 10 million acres.

Percent of land covered by houses: 10/1876 = 0.5%

If this doubles over next century, then 1% of land will be covered. (Note:
much of this will be due to Mexican immigration, so lots of crummy 'houses'
in Mexico will become abandoned and will revert to nature)

Dan in Philly

George Conklin

2008-03-30, 9:25 am

"Dan in Philly" <djr8@aol.com> wrote in message
news:0bMHj.283679$FE.277722@fe05.news.easynews.com...
> "Enough Already" <enough_already@lycos.com> wrote in message ...
>
> Total acreage of the U.S. = 1876 million acres
>
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/ge...nd-acreage-tota
l
>
> Assuming 100 million households, and assuming the average "house" covers
0.1
> acres (should be much less than that due to apartment buildings, condos)
> then houses cover 10 million acres.
>
> Percent of land covered by houses: 10/1876 = 0.5%
>
> If this doubles over next century, then 1% of land will be covered. (Note:
> much of this will be due to Mexican immigration, so lots of crummy
'houses'
> in Mexico will become abandoned and will revert to nature)
>
> Dan in Philly
>
>

I live on an abandoned tobacco farm. The barn was burned in our
fireplace. There are 150 houses where there used to be one tobacco farm.
Do we need more tobacco or more houses? There are all kinds of trees on the
land now, but at one time there were none. I so happen to have a buy-out
for a tobacco allotment (on another piece of land). But do we need more
smokers?

RogerDodger

2008-03-30, 5:25 pm

On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:01:48 GMT, "Dan in Philly" <djr8@aol.com>
wrote:

>"Enough Already" <enough_already@lycos.com> wrote in message ...
>
>Total acreage of the U.S. = 1876 million acres
>http://www.statemaster.com/graph/ge...d-acreage-total
>
>Assuming 100 million households, and assuming the average "house" covers 0.1
>acres (should be much less than that due to apartment buildings, condos)
>then houses cover 10 million acres.
>
>Percent of land covered by houses: 10/1876 = 0.5%
>
>If this doubles over next century, then 1% of land will be covered. (Note:
>much of this will be due to Mexican immigration, so lots of crummy 'houses'
>in Mexico will become abandoned and will revert to nature)
>
>Dan in Philly

Overall context:

The entire population of the world, 6.6 billion, could be given
single-family homes (figuring 5 persons per family, low for the world)
on quarter-acre lots, with yards to play catch with the kids and all,
and easily fit into four or five decent-sized U.S. states.

Say ... Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arkansas.

Though they might prefer California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and
Arizona. Nicer weather, with more choice about it.

That's about 15% of the land area of the US.

Then say you create multi-family housing, so one-third of housing area
is single-family homes, one third is two-family homes, and one-third
averages nine families up in apartment buildings, per quarter acre.

Now you've emptied 75% of even that space, and 6.6 billion people live
in about 3.5% of the land area of the US, with the other 11.5%
becoming room for ball parks, offices and shopping center parking
lots.

The great bulk of the world's land area is empty. The great weight of
humanity physically bears down upon the globe like dust upon a
basketball.

As far as just the US is concerned, if it had the same population
density as that infamous hell-hole Bermuda, all its people would fit
into an area somewaht smaller than California and Wyoming combined.

George Conklin

2008-03-30, 5:25 pm

"RogerDodger" <none@not-here.org> wrote in message
news:kjjvu3p2eokvg70001j8nger2pcvkfacmi@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:01:48 GMT, "Dan in Philly" <djr8@aol.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>http://www.statemaster.com/graph/ge...and-acreage-tot
al
0.1[color=darkred]
(Note:[color=darkred]
'houses'[color=darkred]
>
> Overall context:
>
> The entire population of the world, 6.6 billion, could be given
> single-family homes (figuring 5 persons per family, low for the world)
> on quarter-acre lots, with yards to play catch with the kids and all,
> and easily fit into four or five decent-sized U.S. states.
>
> Say ... Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arkansas.
>
> Though they might prefer California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and
> Arizona. Nicer weather, with more choice about it.
>
> That's about 15% of the land area of the US.
>
> Then say you create multi-family housing, so one-third of housing area
> is single-family homes, one third is two-family homes, and one-third
> averages nine families up in apartment buildings, per quarter acre.
>
> Now you've emptied 75% of even that space, and 6.6 billion people live
> in about 3.5% of the land area of the US, with the other 11.5%
> becoming room for ball parks, offices and shopping center parking
> lots.
>
> The great bulk of the world's land area is empty. The great weight of
> humanity physically bears down upon the globe like dust upon a
> basketball.
>
> As far as just the US is concerned, if it had the same population
> density as that infamous hell-hole Bermuda, all its people would fit
> into an area somewaht smaller than California and Wyoming combined.

Given quadraplexes, the Sierra Club ideal, everyone in the world would
fit into Texas, leaving the rest of the world to snakes and flies.

Matt W. Barrow

2008-03-30, 5:25 pm

"George Conklin" <nil@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:13v01egqohmi822@corp.supernews.com...
>
> "RogerDodger" <none@not-here.org> wrote in message
> news:kjjvu3p2eokvg70001j8nger2pcvkfacmi@4ax.com...
>
> Given quadraplexes, the Sierra Club ideal, everyone in the world would
> fit into Texas, leaving the rest of the world to snakes and flies.

...and to the Sierra Club.

Now THAT's an unbeatable real estate deal!!

George Conklin

2008-03-30, 8:25 pm

"Matt W. Barrow" <mbarrow@performancehomes.com> wrote in message
news:4GTHj.51171$097.21115@newsfe21.lga...
> "George Conklin" <nil@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:13v01egqohmi822@corp.supernews.com...
>
> ..and to the Sierra Club.
>
> Now THAT's an unbeatable real estate deal!!

Nah...for snakes.

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