What percent of America is built up in roads, concrete and buildings? (fit in, how much)
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Living in the urban Northeast for most of my life I always thought of America as overbuilt. Nearly every day I would pass one building, parking lot and highway after another. The scene was very urban and full of concrete and blacktop.
Now that I have moved to TN I am constantly amazed how much of America is fields and woods.
Does anyone know what percent of each state is urban (buildings, parking lots, roads, houses, etc.) vs. open space- (woods, fields, desert, etc.)??
Living in the urban Northeast for most of my life I always thought of America as overbuilt. Nearly every day I would pass one building, parking lot and highway after another. The scene was very urban and full of concrete and blacktop.
Now that I have moved to TN I am constantly amazed how much of America is fields and woods.
Does anyone know what percent of each state is urban (buildings, parking lots, roads, houses, etc.) vs. open space- (woods, fields, desert, etc.)??
Not enough to be visible by the naked eye from 100 miles in space.
A high school teacher always used to tell us the entire population of the world could fit in the state of Texas. I think this was just his way of saying it's more wide open than we encounter in our day to day.
A high school teacher always used to tell us the entire population of the world could fit in the state of Texas. I think this was just his way of saying it's more wide open than we encounter in our day to day.
I've looked something up and the national oceanic and atmospheric admin added up that all impermeable surfaces in the USA, roads, buildings, parking lots, etc would cover almost the entire state of Ohio.
It would be around 43,500 square miles out of 3,380,000 square miles in the USA, or around 1.1%.
Just looking at the lower 48 it would be around 1.5%
This doesn't answer your question I know ... But there is in fact more forests and trees in the United States today than there was 150 years ago at the time of the Civil War., when much of the eastern half of the country was agrarian. Strange but true
Also, there are literally tens of millions of aces of land that have been brought under protection of state and federal governments in the past 100 years and will never be developed or built upon. Compared to most of the developed world, the United States has a LOT of land for our population.
Alaska is less than .1% IMO. The most built up state is New Jersey which probably 20%. This is a weird question because there's no study or realistic numbers. It's all opinion oriented. All in all though nearly 85% of the USA is empty...maybe even more.
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