Growth Has Limits

Re “Fewer New Homes Go on the Block Even as Demand Swells,” May 21: Urban planning professor Marlon Boarnet claims growth means a healthy economy: “If you think it’s bad, try no-growth.” Well, European countries prosper today as their populations fall. Italy and Spain, for example, are no longer fascist backwaters with growing populations. They enjoy their greatest prosperity since the Renaissance.

Planners should know that growth has limits, and California is overpopulated. Every year we lose 50,000 acres of farmland to development. We drain aquifers faster than rain refills them. Is this sustainable?

Since the dawn of agriculture, populations that outgrew their food production collapsed. At current growth rates, America will outgrow its farm production around mid-century. It’s a pity experts specialize so narrowly that they learn no sense of history.

Kenneth Pasternack

Santa Barbara