In-fill development areas vs. greenfield development areas?

Question

I am working on some research for a friend of mine. I am looking for statistics on population growth projections and much of that growth can be accommodated with in-fill development in existing urban areas vs. how much will have to be accommodated in greenfield development areas.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

At present, infill represents a tiny portion of all housing development, and will as long as conditions remain the way they are.  

Theoretically, infill development can accommodate all future growth (as population is expected to beak within 80 years and current settlement in the US is extremely density inefficient).  Unfortunately, the proportion of infill development as compared to Greenfield is extremely difficult to predict.

At present, many of our policy choices encourage Greenfield over Infill development- consider government subsides for new roads, FHA secured loans being biased to home ownership, particularly of new construction, the fact that so much of the economy depends on home construction, etc.  With these factors, the (seemingly) less desirable infill development will struggle to compete.

This will change dramatically as fuel costs continue to rise. If they rise to the point that long commutes from exurban communities (and community is a very loose term here) become untenable, infill will start to look more attractive.  Until then, however, infill will continue to suffer from the same issues it does today:  The legacy costs of existing buildings, the difficulty of adapting new uses to existing infrastructure, and the rather sticky issue that different people own different bits of land in infill areas (in contrast to Greenfield development, where one developer has a large uniform blank slate to work with).

Infill is certainly the way to go, as it stands a much better chance of allowing people to move to meaningful communities than the current spread out, socially isolating development, but much must change before infill becomes more than a niche (and expensive) real estate redevelopment scheme.