Nuggets on Sprawl

This was in my in box this morning:

Here's an interesting fact I got from some material sent to me by
Grow Smart RI, an anti-sprawl group. They really don't seem to talk much
about unused urban land on their web site, it's more about the ill effects
of sprawl, disappearing farms, etc. But since I asked about vacant urban
land, they sent me a paper written by a student at Brown U. that had some
interesting facts, including:

A 1999 study of 83 US cities found that the average city has 12,000 acres
or 15% of its area in usable, vacant land. This average of 15% means that
the 100 largest cities in the nation have the equivalent of the total
combined land areas of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston,
Philadelphia, and San Diego sitting idle. ( Source: Michael Pagano and Ann
O. M. Bowman: "Vacant Land in Cities: An Urban Resource," Washington, DC,
Brookings Institution Center, 2000).

Hat Tip - C Orloff VIA Y Pensack