RAPID SPRAWL (Not Good or Very Bad) > I Love Time-Lapse Maps: Accelerating 10 Years of Explosive Growth

Thousands of moving data-points seen in a few seconds can say much more than waiting for an entire decade - ten years - to 'do a count" to tally-up Census figures in the places where they happened. Here's a very quick insert of non-static kinetic visual infographics taken from a recent analysis in The Washington Post . . .In the South and Southwest the cities of Phoenix, Houston, and Las Vegas have seen explosive growth over the past 20 years.

Maricopa County which encompasses Phoenix - added the most developed land since 2001: more than 270 square miles

A Washington Post analysis of data released by the U.S. Geological Survey this summer highlights where the most development has taken place. Suburbs are sprawling out in Arizona and Nevada as industries move to the Sun Belt, retirement communities are popping up in Florida as the baby boomer generation ages, and oil and natural gas wells have emerged across North Dakota and West Texas.

HOUSTON AND PHOENIX

 

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About this story

Editing by Lauren Tierney, Kevin Uhrmacher and Tim Meko.

The Washington Post analyzed data from the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Land Cover Database to visualize the growth in developed land between 2001 and 2019.

Developed land refers to any 30-meter by 30-meter area of land identified by the USGS as containing any impervious surface, such as roads, buildings or other human-made structures. The USGS utilizes Landsat satellite imagery, road locations and other inputs to produce this data set.

Data is not available for Alaska and Hawaii.

County-level estimates for 2001 and 2019 were calculated using 2019 county boundaries.

Water data is from the National Hydrography Dataset. Road data is from Natural Earth.

 

 

 

Where America’s developed areas are
growing: ‘Way off into the horizon’

Uneven development across the country has been driven in large part by rising housing costs, according to Albert Saiz, an associate professor at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

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