The Sierra Club recently put up a density calculator (currently "under
construction") at www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/community/enviroimpacts.asp that
has been revised a couple of times because it was so absurd.
It has gone through the following classifications:

  "Efficient Urban" 500 housing units per acre (original)

  "Dense Urban"  400 per acre

  "Efficient Urban" 100 per acre (revised)

  "Suburban Efficient" 10 per acre (new)

  "Sprawl" 1 per acre

It drew much derision because, at 2.43 persons per household, 500 per acre 
(777,000 per square mile) is more than three times as dense as the most dense 
part of Manhattan and more than twice as dense as the most dense part of 
Bombay.

400 is still more than twice as dense as Bombay.

100 is double the density of Paris and more than double the density of
Manhattan.

10 is about the density of the city of San Francisco and four times as dense
as Portland, Orgegon.

1 is, of course, about 40% less dense than the average American suburb.
So,  Portland is only 1/4 as dense as what the Sierra Club thinks of as
"Suburban Efficient".  That's what comes of letting innumerate people with a
rabid agenda expose themselves in public.

See www.demographia.com/db-citydenshist.htm for selected current and historical
city densities.  The 777,000 per square mile would be be the Lower East Side
of New York around 1900, when there was one block in the 11th ward that was so
heavily populatedd that its density was 1.2 million per square mile.  See
"Battle for the Slum" by Jacob Riis.

Bruce Gaarder
Highland Park  Saint Paul
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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