Appendix D

The per person land consumption in each state can be expressed as:

(1) a = A / P

where:

a = area of developed or urbanized land area for the average resident

A = Area of total developed or urbanized land in a state

P = Population of that state

For example, Minnesota in 1997 had 4,687,726 residents and about 2,185,500 developed acres. Thus, per capita developed land use for all purposes was around .466 acres (about a half an acre) per resident.

The land used per person is the total developed land area divided by the total number of people. This is the inverse of population density, which is the number of people per unit area of land. When per capita land consumption goes up, density goes down; when per capita land consumption goes down, density goes up.

The developed land area of the state can be expressed as:

(2) A = P x a

This can be stated as: the total developed square miles (or acres) of a state can be simply expressed or "factored" into the product of the Population of the state (viz., P) multiplied by the per capita urban land consumption (viz., a). This second equation (2) is the basis for attributing or apportioning the shares of sprawl (viz. growth in A) back onto two contributing factors, the growth in P and the growth in a.

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