Limited Land - Unlimited Growth

 

It seems obvious that land on a finite planet is limited and that our need for shelter must be balanced against our need to preserve land as a source of life for ourselves and all other species. All physical design disciplines related to shelter capacity evaluation will become more essential to survival as it becomes a more significant issue.

It is now possible to mathematically measure, evaluate, predict, adjust, and guide the shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance implications associated with a chosen building design category and related template of design specification decisions. The result is a mathematical forecast of implication options based on the specifications and a range of floor quantity choices. It is also possible to measure the design specification decisions related to an existing building and enter them in a related building category template to measure the implications and evaluate the results to improve our knowledge regarding shelter design decisions.

The combination of shelter capacity, intensity, and activity on land determines its revenue and investment potential per buildable acre occupied. These considerations take their place next to our historic concerns for compatibility of adjacent activity to protect our health and safety because they determine the revenue and investment potential of a buildable acre. In municipal terms the allocation of shelter capacity, intensity, and activity per buildable acre within its total land area determines the annual yield it receives to support its operations, maintenance, improvements, and debt service.

Cities have not been prepared to monitor, evaluate, or plan the economic performance of land use, shelter capacity, and intensity allocation relationships at the parcel level of their incorporated area. They have had to rely on annual budget estimates based on experience. This is one reason why cities attempt to maintain unincorporated corridors of land for annexation that can provide new revenue to meet existing expenses that often prove inadequate over time as age, maintenance, and demand for service expense increases.

If this topic is of interest, I have written the following essays on my blog at www.wmhosack.blogspot.com to address various topics associated with the shelter capacity of land and the design decisions that face our growing demand for shelter and quality of life on a limited planet. Essays written after December 2020 are also included in LinkedIn. The first was written in September 2010.

Walter M. Hosack, February 2025