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Charlottesville/Albemarle Population Study Today's world population is estimated to be over 6,640,000,000 people. In 1820 when Thomas Robert Malthus was writing about his skepticism about the ability of the world to sustain population growth and still to provide a good life for residents, the world's population was about 1,041,000,000. The population of the world now is more than six times as great as it was in the time of Malthus. With this growth people are still mostly better off than they were at the time of Malthus. Though technological progress has allowed for sustaining a substantially increased population, we have our own Malthusians in Central Virginia. The Charlottesville City Council and the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors have allotted funds to Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population to determine the maximum population which can be sustained in this area. I have a hard time understanding how these people can be so brilliant as to be able to determine what is the best population for this area from now until the supposed end of time as we know it. Will technological improvements cease? Will people cease to adapt? Will we cease having new houses and new businesses? Will silt stop collecting in reservoirs? Are we going to have limitations on the number of children people can have and which of those children, once raised, can live in this community and raise their children here? Will taxes cease to rise? There was a time when I thought I was smart enough to figure out how people should live, and I believed that I and others like me then had the right to tell these people how to live. Over time I have come to realize that I am not that brilliant. I have also come to realize that what may be right for me or preferred by me is not necessarily what is right for or preferred by others. We cannot all be homogeneous. Some of these people will argue that we are overpopulated already. Yet the United States is not very heavily populated country compared to similarly situated countries. The 16 major European countries have a total population today of 396,041,000 and a land mass of 1,422,026 square miles for a population density of 278.5 people per square mile. The United States has a total population of 303,825,000 and a land mass of 3,794,066 square miles for a population density of 80 people per square mile or 1 person per 8 acres. Thus, by comparison the United States is not heavily populated. Some may say that there is a limit to the amount of water and thus to the population which can be sustained. There is a limit to the amount of water on the earth, but it recycles. What is limited is our capacity to store and process water. Such can be fixed. Some may say that the amount of land still to be developed is limited. Such is true in some regards, but the limitation is primarily imposed by the manner in which we zone and process requests for rezoning. With smaller lot sizes, real clustering in the rural areas and more reasonable processing of applications for rezoning, we can accommodate substantially more population with little impact upon rural areas. It is interesting that many of the people who wish to limit population and growth are not from this area originally, but have come here and now want to stop others from coming here. Many of the people who speak against proposals to allow for reasonable accommodation of greater growth are not dependent upon the economic vitality of the community for their own life styles, but are faculty or retired faculty of the University of Virginia or retirees. Their views appear to be primarily selfish rather than the result of genuine concern for the ability of man to adapt to and prosper with population increases.
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