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GREENSBORO — North Carolina and other parts of the Southeast have the nation's most wasteful and costly patterns of development, a nationally known planning consultant told state leaders Friday.

The region's growth patterns gobble up 3.5 times more land per person than the national average, author and sprawl critic William Fulton said at a retreat held by the Institute for Emerging Issues at the Proximity Hotel.

"Only the South is both growing and sprawling at the same time," said Fulton, who is a City Council member in Ventura, Calif.

"You are having to simultaneously deal with population growth and the consequences of this very low-density development pattern."

Fulton was the lead-off speaker at the gathering by the N.C. State-based group that hosts the influential Emerging Issues Forum each winter.

The retreat, which ends this afternoon, was the institute's first step in tackling its topic for next February: the different faces of growth across the state.

The seminar will help the self-described "think-and-do tank" to define which growth issues it addresses at the upcoming forum, said Shellie Edge, the institute's communications manager.

"We'll go through summer talking with people around the state to make sure we really cover our bases," Edge said of the group's deliberative process.

February's forum focused on energy and the environment with New York Times columnist and author Tom Friedman as the headline speaker.

The retreat this weekend at the Proximity Hotel brought together an eclectic audience from throughout the state including real estate developers, investment advisers, corporate CEOs, county commissioners, school board members, nonprofit executives, bureaucrats and academics.

There are a variety of ways to contain urban sprawl, Fulton said, but the bottom line is that growth simply costs too much if it is allowed to drift ever farther from a region's core. Fulton is the author of such land-use studies as "Sprawl Hits the Wall" and books that include "The Reluctant Metropolis" and "The Regional City."

Eventually, the whole house of cards collapses because the cost of building and maintaining roads, utilities, schools and other public services can't be supported by a landscape so thinly populated, Fulton said.

Attendees broke into small groups to hear reports about school overcrowding, stressed water-supply systems and transportation challenges.

UNCG professor Keith Debbage's report on transportation issues was a case study of how Greensboro is being squeezed by population growth, rapidly increasing road building and repair costs, aging infrastructure and declining sources of money for transportation projects.

The group was welcomed by Mayor Yvonne Johnson and Proximity owner Dennis Quaintance, who discussed the features that make it the nation's most environmentally efficient hotel — using 41 percent less energy than the norm.

Institute director Anita Brown-Graham suggested that was in keeping with the spirit of the retreat: "It's not coincidence we wanted to have this meeting at this hotel."

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com