Kaid Benfield’s Blog
Research findings published last year in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association confirm earlier studies by the federal Environmental Protection Agency showing that, for a given increment of development, compact neighborhoods built to a walkable scale reduce stormwater runoff volume.
The article, written by John Jacobs, director of the Texas Coastal Watershed Program and Ricardo Lopez, a faculty member at Baylor College of Medicine, quantifies the per-capita impacts of different residential densities on watersheds, finding that the benefits of relative density (compared to sprawl patterns) begin at around 8 units per acre, increase substantially up to around 32 units per acre, and then continue but at a diminishing rate of increase after 64 units per acre:
