In the March 2006 issue of Professional Builder, reader Mark Turner of Abdo Development wrote a letter to the editor regarding a November 2005 column by Contributing Editor Scott Sedam. The following is a reader's response.

I don't usually take the time to respond to letters such as yours that appeared in the March 2006 Professional Builder, but I just couldn't let it pass. Here are some basic facts that you are either unaware of or you just elected to ignore:

• The population of the United States is increasing every year by approximately 3 million people. That is estimated to continue, in the opinion of most experts, for at least 30 to 40 years. That's 90 million to 120 million people — translating to 40 million to 60 million new residential units, not counting many millions more to replace lost housing stock and the shifting demographics due to aging. This will be more than double the current housing stock in the United States today.
• Most demographers are predicting that more than 50 percent of the new housing will develop in California, Florida, Texas and Arizona, with another 25 percent in North Carolina, South Carolina, Nevada, Virginia and Georgia — not much left for the remaining 41 states. (By the way, Florida is experiencing 1,100 net new residences every day.)
• No market research to date finds more than 20 percent to 25 percent of the adult population desiring to live in an urban environment — despite the spin and denial of the new urbanists.
• The best estimates of responsible urban planners is that only 15 percent to 20 percent of future housing needs as stated above can be accommodated by redeveloping the urban cores, brown fields, and first rings of suburbia throughout the country.
• Many attempts to increase density throughout the United States continually meets entrenched resistance by both the public and private sectors. Idealism does not automatically translate to realism.

There are many other talking points that could be made about this issue, but the bottom line is that Scott Sedam may not have approached the subject with the hard, cold facts, but his conclusions would have been the same had he.

We will continue to develop green fields, and there is no way around that. Much of prior developments do "suck," but responsible developers and planners from both the public and private sectors are working very hard to avoid the mistakes of the past. We will succeed in some cases but not in all. If you are one of those responsible developers, then keep up the good work. Meanwhile please don't preach from "outer space" without putting forth solutions to all the problems down on earth.

Anthony Trella, Deerfield Beach, Fla.

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