It is a curious feature of the human mind that when confronted with evidence of a reality that contradicts our beliefs, we are often quick to reject this evidence. This confirmation bias--our tendency to uncritically accept evidence which bolsters our own views while rejecting immediately evidence which contradicts it--has been understood as a fact of our thought-processes for some time, and it goes a long way towards explaining why we hold doggedly to fixed beliefs in spite of evidence to the contrary.
This may well be the case with a book that I've recently finished, David Owen's radical piece of environmental thought, Green Metropolis. So what if I say to you that the environmental movement has had it all wrong on a number of very important points? As someone who has been concerned about the state of the environment for some years, I was quite unsettled by much of what Owen had to say.
The main point of the book may be summed up as follows: while the environmental movement has historically been hostile to cities, preferring the wide open spaces of the country, and encouraging of living away from cities, this focus is environmentally short-sighted and dead wrong. Residents of dense urban areas per capita consume far fewer resources and have a far smaller carbon footprint than even the most environmentally-conscious urban or country-dweller. Thus cities, when properly planned to encourage high-density living, are better for the environment than living in the country. The reason is quite simple; city-dwellers in dense urban areas live in smaller spaces which encourage having fewer children and discourage the buying of non-essential items. City-dwellers live closer to work, to grocery stores, and to entertainment, thus encouraging walking as a means of regular transportation. This also makes mass-transit feasible and, most importantly of all, discourages the use of cars.
The author's main example is New York City, with other references to places like Boston and cities in Europe, places which, in general, grew up before the invention of the automobile or are otherwise geographically constrained (Manhattan is an island, after all) to prevent the sprawl that is seen in suburbs everywhere and in poorly-planned urban areas like Los Angeles or Atlanta. While my own confirmation bias wants to reject his argument, I find that I cannot. His line of reasoning is sound, and the weight of his arguments are enough to crush any opposition. Owen is rightly scornful of feel-good environmentalism that has little practical impact--he cites the case of an expensive home renovation with all the standard bells and whistles of "green" technology when the simple expansion of the house itself was enough to undercut any benefits to be gained from solar panels or geothermal energy. He is also critical of overly-burdensome schemes like LEED certifications that reward these types of impractical flourishes while ignoring simpler, far more effective steps that could be taken to reduce a building's carbon footprint.
Owen calls for steps to encourage higher-density areas, because it is only through achieving high-density urban areas will we be able to take the meaningful steps needed to reduce our carbon emissions. Cities, when properly planned, encourage efficiency by their very nature, while suburbs represent an enshrined inefficiency that no amount of electric cars or solar panels will remedy. The one thing that really bothers me about the book is that Owen himself left Manhattan long ago, choosing to live in the same kind of suburb that he continues to decry throughout the book. This hypocrisy is all the more grating after his feeble attempt to explain why he doesn't follow his own advice and live more efficiently in the city. He explains that, even if he moved out of his house in Connecticut, residence would merely be taken up by someone else with no net decrease in carbon emissions. This answer is deeply unsatisfying and may merely add fuel to the fire of those who assert the stereotype of "hypocritical environmentalists." Regardless, more rational people than those often employed by the fossil fuel companies have a duty to examine the argument without falling for any ad hominem attacks. Whatever Owen's personal choice of lifestyle, the argument must be examined on its own merits. It is, in sum, a solid argument, and the ideas he puts forward need to be taken seriously by both urban planners and governments at all levels. Our future may well depend upon it.
The prime reason I suspect for the author's abandonment of the city may be that of children...and the pervasive idea that it is best to raise them in the "outdoors" and the equally pervasive feeling that cities are more dangerous. The latter may well be true, and Jane Jacobs described well the "Death and Life" of NYC. While high-density living is environmentally sound...it assumes the civility of the environment, and that cannot be universally assumed.
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