LOSING GROUND (2019) - Urban Sprawl Documentary (HD)

The man solution is to stop, slowdown and manage the sprawl by using land better and making cities denser to use less land for more people. Zoning laws in cities must change everywhere to allow this.

This is one of the most wrongly focussed documentaries.
They don’t really talk about why urban sprawl is bad and how it can be avoided. Talk about mixed use housing maybe? Zoning laws?
better city planning? Public transit? Car dependance of America?

None of that. Only sad cowboys

I'm 32, been studying and doing farming for over 13 years (dairy & crops), I never knew I loved farming this much until now. Hated it at some point during the harsh Wisconsin winters LOL but now I would give anything to preserve our precious gift - Land

Stay tuned.

Land Rualization is coming. Through the process of Land Remediation, high density subdivisions, condos, etc, etc will be bulldozed and returned to their natural pristine state.

It's an idea whose time has come.

A poem with a different setting but the same message. Ever since I read it, it's haunted me and as I read it and think of the Atlanta farmer's story, I am moved to tears.

The Future of Forestry
by C.S. Lewis (c. 1938)

"How will the legend of the age of trees
Feel, when the last tree falls in England?
When the concrete spreads and the town conquers
The country’s heart; when contraceptive
Tarmac’s laid where farm has faded,
Tramline flows where slept a hamlet,
And shop-fronts, blazing without a stop from
Dover to Wrath, have glazed us over?
Simplest tales will then bewilder
The questioning children, “What was a chestnut?
Say what it means to climb a Beanstalk,
Tell me, grandfather, what an elm is.
What was Autumn? They never taught us.”
Then, told by teachers how once from mould
Came growing creatures of lower nature
Able to live and die, though neither
Beast nor man, and around them wreathing
Excellent clothing, breathing sunlight—
Half understanding, their ill-acquainted
Fancy will tint their wonder-paintings
Trees as men walking, wood-romances
Of goblins stalking in silky green,
Of milk-sheen froth upon the lace of hawthorn’s
Collar, pallor in the face of birchgirl.
So shall a homeless time, though dimly
Catch from afar (for soul is watchfull)
A sight of tree-delighted Eden."

Let’s call it what it really is… urban canabalization.

Our population explodes beyond any estimate and yet we allow people to walk across our southern border like it does not exsist.

This is great. Slow start, condense the beginning. Picks up 2nd half. The poem is most excellent.

I would love the lyrics to the wonderful poem threaded through this video doc.

It seems apropos, albeit unpleasant to think about, that there is a great deception in the idea that voracious sprawl land-consuming development is a 'Capitalist' idea. Keynesian isn't Capitalist - it's a counterfeit that runs on raw greed, enough that one sells their soul. Here is the doctrine of sprawl Americans sell out to:

"9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country." ~ Plank 9, Communist Manifesto; Marx, Engels

[We call it the Planning Reorganization Act of 1949 , zoning (Title 17 1910-1990) and Super Corporate Farms, as well as Executive orders 11647, 11731 (ten regions) and Public "law" 89-136.]

Planning is important to provide the right balance of land uses. This needs to be accomplished with citizen participation and robust public education. That said, the one essential but almost everywhere ignored is the most efficient and equitable approaches to raising revenue to pay for public goods and services.

Economic theory tells us that in theory all taxation of property improvements ought to be eliminated. Our buildings are depreciating assets. The imposition of an annual property tax on the depreciated value of a building equates to a sales tax imposed year after year after year. If this is rational, then communities ought to tax the depreciated value of all other forms of tangible assets (e.g., our automobiles, our computers, our telephones, our lawn mowers, our refrigerators, etc. etc. etc.). This is clearly irrational.

A very different argument exists regarding the parcels of land on which our buildings are constructed. Land parcels are not a depreciating asset. Moreover, the value of a location has everything to do with the quality of public goods and services brought to the location and nothing to do with what the individual owner does or does not do to improve the location. The optimum public charge (or tax) to the owner is the potential annual rental value of the location as determined by market forces.

By making the above change in how property is taxed, land in our cities would be brought to its highest, best use. Land prices would fall to levels that encourage the construction of residential, commercial and other buildings and discourages the hoarding of locations and speculation in land that causes development to sprawl outward in search of less costly locations.

For more insight into the role of tax policy on the health of cities, search on: site value taxation, land value taxation, land value capture, or land value return

super insightful. as a society I think we need to step back and look at the implications of 'food for profit'--the fact that the profitability of our food producing farms is even a factor in whether or not we have food is a horrifying byproduct of capitalism; we have to be able to measure the value of things in other ways beyond capital.

A swell and gripping film about the disappearing American farm land. This is also true in Germany where I live with my land being much smaller than the US. The truth of this film applies certainly to many many other countries as well. Everyone wants to live in an own house. Everyone wants to have his own piece of land with a house on it. This can't be done everywhere. You know there are places where people live very narrowly together, e.g. Hongkong or other big cities without place to spread.

Planet of the humans! Population control is the bigger picture!

What was the time where they named the citites ?

Stop the madness

I will never sell, I will make it impossible for developers to destroy my home

That farm was started in the 1840s so we have an idea who was working that land. No sympathy from me. I’m sure he got PAID.

Loosing farmland and injust treatment of farmers is a global problem, suicide rate is high, even in "first world" countries like in Europe.
People want food and produces, high quality food around the year, but dont appreciate farmers.

I am doing a report on Urban sprawl for school and I will be using this as a source so I need to know where the information in this documentary comes from

Florida is one of the worst places for urban sprawl, with so many people moving after Covid. Instead of medium density places, they’re building miles and miles of cookie cutter suburbs and it’s so sad to see.

As a someone who never went to the US, I never knew this country didn't know how to properly build cities.

Overpopulation is the issue. If we were not so many we could all live on individual houses and not being piled in departments.
Also stop speculation. No more accumumation of properties for rent and airbnb

Farms were the first American developments, that was just the first step. We never respected this land.

America is an Indian burial ground

The mayor is the definition of a bedbug or house n8gga

Technically, farmers were the first urban developments, no? The Indians lived differently.

Mr Lovin sorrow is our sorrow

This was a disappointing documentary. There was no mention of the urban growth boundaries Oregon has had for many decades. That has reduced sprawl considerably in Oregon. There was no mention of better land use planning or more compact development. There was no mention of climate change.

Farmland in Ontario is disappearing at an alarming rate due to urbaniniion and to our detriment

How about we all starve. Some people think this food in the grocery stores will always just be there. Wait and see.....

It's. Land what part don't you understand? If I want to farm it I will. If I want to burn it to the ground I will. American has lost it's balls....

When you have open borders allowing millions into your country these people need somewhere to live. Govts continue to spend irrationally so they need more people to pay for their spending & golden hand shakes. People only think their food comes from the store not from a farm. Then you also have corporate farming which pushes regular farmers out of the market. Or people like Gates buying up land & building smart cities. People need to wake up to the fact without farmers, there is no food, without food, there is no life. Support your local farmèr the back bone of the country & rural communities.Thank you.

In the New York Metro area, Long Island sprawls on the southern part into 1/3 of Suffolk County. The North Shore doesn't sprawl, because it's hilly. Long Island is an...island, so it can only go but so much. Westchester, Rockland Counties in New York, and Connecticut do not sprawl. New Jersey sprawls up until the Watchung Mountains, where towns have views of the city. Al in all, the New York Metro doesn't sprawl like the sun belt cities.

American cities need to slim down and built denser. I'm from The Netherlands, if we built like the US does we'd be left with a country that's one large suburb. Now, although we've grown in population, we still have 70% of farmland and nature.

I don't understand why don't u guys build denser developments like little condos with 4-5 apartments instead of those all identical single family houses that take up a lot of spaces

This was hard to watch. My family lost our farm in 2008. We got priced out by the rising taxes too. I’ll never forget leaving it for the last time and looking at the lilac bushes my ggg grandmother planted, and the stone wall they built. This bs is happening every day.

Corporate housing development should be made illegal.

I'd gladly give up 25 silicone valley billionaires and 25 politicians for one Farmer, 1 trucker, and 1 veteran.

Blame racist zoning policies that start d the American dream! The suburbs the urban sprawl with hardly any walkable side walks unless it’s certain college towns! Surburbia and the highways system has destroyed farmlands and highways system were created through poor neighborhoods so they can provide a dividing line between the must have and have nots! Surburbia is destructive, inefficient, and not profitable for the city near by! We need condensed multi use buildings and learn how to live placed like sardines just like Europe and we will be better for it!

Well stop having kids and stop immigranion. Americans don't want to live in cities

This seems like leftist propaganda to me trying to get us all on the same side against urban sprawl. Urban sprawl will destroy these big blue cities in time

We don't properly take care of the beauty in America

corporate subversion of America

Australians need to see this...we are doing better in investing in more density...but there is a minority that believe that urban sprawl is the answer or kin to the "Australian Dream" of owning your own detached home on a block of land...not realising that land is a finite resource and eventually will run out.

™️/‘

Greed

The population doubles as it is, and on top of that it's the #1 destination for immigrants and their relatives. Should've stopped immigration 200 years ago, leaving the country for Natives, descendants of Slaves, and Colonial stock Americans.

People only care about 'appreciation' and 'property values' because...jews.

Thanks for sharing.


One key point got me - the founders of the cities picked to the best land for agriculture to stay but as economy developed the most arable land are now being concreted over for housing and permanently reduced in area.