Green Cities vs Brown Suburbs

[Michael]

This is something I've been saying for quite some time - that dense urban environments are way more energy efficient than sprawling suburbs.

Matthew Kahn, a professor of economics at UCLA, and I have quantified the first paradox. We begin by estimating the amount of carbon dioxide that an average household would emit if it settled in each of the 66 major metropolitan areas in the United States. Then we calculate, for 48 of those areas, the difference between what that average household would emit if it settled in the central city and what it would emit in the suburbs.

Article (http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_1_green-cities.html)

They even supply a graph of their data.

To put this in perspective, keep in mind that in the USA, both highways and sprawling suburban housing are subsidized by government policy (and have been for over a half a century).

This is one of the main reasons that Americans have one of the largest 'carbon footprints' per capita on the planet.

If America wants to get serious about reducing/curtailing the increasing size of the US carbon footprint, the two most important places to start are:

1. Stop the federal government from giving 'free' highways to the states. For the states, this is nothing more than pork-barrel politics - all about 'bringing home the bacon from Washington.

2. Eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction on residential mortgages. This effectively acts as a 10% tax subsidy on US homeownership - encouraging people to buy larger houses.

Implimenting these two policy changes would (over time) do more to affect US environmental polution than any other 'greenhouse gas reduction' policies added together!

Question for Americans - is a discussion of this topic even considered 'mainstream' or will such a suggestion get you labeled as some radical communist/anarchist/atheist/homosexual/babykiller/childrapist?

[partofme]

That doesn't surprise me at all. If you live out in the country you are more likely to have to drive a longer distance to get to work or go shopping. Also just the distance between one house and the next to go visiting is much larger in places with a lower population density. My sister used to live in a very rural county (I'm saying this living in a rural area myself) and you could drive for ten minutes and only pass by a dozen houses or so. Whenever people that live there need to buy anything other than basic groceries they have to drive to a town about 30 miles away.

[Michael]

Yes, automobile emissions is a significant part of one's "carbon footprint", but the calculation by the study is more stringent than that. Air conditioning and heating of homes and businesses are also an equally large component.

And given the high ranking of several California cities (and comparatively low rankings for other 'warm climate' cities in Texas) suggests that local building regulations also play a significant role in reducing average levels of carbon emissions. The article specifically draws attention to California's more stringent levels of carbon regulation as a likely source of California's good numbers here.

[partofme]

Yes, automobile emissions is a significant part of one's "carbon footprint", but the calculation by the study is more stringent than that. Air conditioning and heating of homes and businesses are also an equally large component.

And given the high ranking of several California cities (and comparatively low rankings for other 'warm climate' cities in Texas) suggests that local building regulations also play a significant role in reducing average levels of carbon emissions. The article specifically draws attention to California's more stringent levels of carbon regulation as a likely source of California's good numbers here.

Not to mention that many homes out in the country are older which means less efficient. Also people in the country rely on well water which uses a pump which is electrical.

[Michael]

Not to mention that many homes out in the country are older which means less efficient. Also people in the country rely on well water which uses a pump which is electrical.
Urban inner-city dwellers (with low carbon footprints) also use electricity for water pumping (I certainly require it living 300 feet up in the air!!!).

However, with regard to the 'older' vs 'newer', I think that argument is moot. NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc., are full of older buildings, in many cases much older than anything found in rural Kentucky (for example).

Likewise, a majority of all new houses (single-family-unit dwellings) with the latest and best utilities have been built in suburban and rural areas, not urban ones. And more of them in the Southwest than the Northeast (judging by US population growth figures over the last 25 years). That is to say, the sprawling suburbs of Phoenix are mostly filled with brand-new construction - but Phoenix ranks poorly on this scale. California is similarly filled with "new" constructions and yet they have comparably good scores. This points at building regulations as a possible 'cause' of the difference - Cali is well known for stringent regulations, Arizona, Texas and Oaklahoma, not so much...

[partofme]

Urban inner-city dwellers (with low carbon footprints) also use electricity for water pumping (I certainly require it living 300 feet up in the air!!!).

However, with regard to the 'older' vs 'newer', I think that argument is moot. NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc., are full of older buildings, in many cases much older than anything found in rural Kentucky (for example).

Likewise, a majority of all new houses (single-family-unit dwellings) with the latest and best utilities have been built in suburban and rural areas, not urban ones. And more of them in the Southwest than the Northeast (judging by US population growth figures over the last 25 years). That is to say, the sprawling suburbs of Phoenix are mostly filled with brand-new construction - but Phoenix ranks poorly on this scale.

I was thinking of the old shitty run down houses in the county my wife is from. :lol:

[Americano]

I was thinking of the old shitty run down houses in the county my wife is from. :lol:

If you look at the construction of a majority of the new suburban crackerboxes there isn't much difference. Slums waiting to happen.

[Michael]

Slums waiting to happen.
I disagree. A slum is a socio-cultural concept that exists independent of the quality of architecture.

Haarlem for example, contained a lot of good architecture and excellent buildings, yet it became a slum. And there are plenty of towns in New England (and Canada's Maritimes) that contain lots of hideously cheap crap houses and buildings that are not, and have never been, slums - indeed, some of them are considered 'picturesque' now. ;)

And in the one respect that one can make the argument that architecture does create the social conditions for 'slums', that is usually in respect of large multi-unit buildings (concrete canyons) inspired by the monster Le Corbusier. :D

(sorry, I can't resist architectural arguments!)

[Michael]

I was thinking of the old shitty run down houses in the county my wife is from. :lol:
Carbon footprints include automobiles but also heating/airconditioning. On that basis, I'd think that Kentucky would be considered to be comparatively 'temperate' - not needing as much heating in the winter (compared to Chicago or NYC for example), and probably less air conditioning than California, Texas or Florida in summer - or even Chicago or NYC with their humidity.

I think the bottom line in the study is that a combination of regulations and increased urban density, are the primary factors to focus on to reduce our aggregate carbon footprint.

As such, the US policy of subsidizing the ownership of single-unit housing (and the building of highways) is very bad public policy as this policy essentially subsidizes suburban sprawl.

[partofme]

Carbon footprints include automobiles but also heating/airconditioning. On that basis, I'd think that Kentucky would be considered to be comparatively 'temperate' - not needing as much heating in the winter (compared to Chicago or NYC for example), and probably less air conditioning than California, Texas or Florida in summer - or even Chicago or NYC with their humidity.

I think the bottom line in the study is that a combination of regulations and increased urban density, are the primary factors to focus on to reduce our aggregate carbon footprint.

As such, the US policy of subsidizing the ownership of single-unit housing (and the building of highways) is very bad public policy as this policy essentially subsidizes suburban sprawl.

Our winters are definitely milder but we also get awful humidity in the summer.

[Michael]

Our winters are definitely milder but we also get awful humidity in the summer.
I wasn't sure about that - but I should have guessed you'd get the humidity. That humidity seems to hit the whole of the inland USA and Canada - except west of the Rockies.

The one time I was in Louisville (for work - doing a press approval at a big printing plant there) it was beautiful spring weather.

[partofme]

I wasn't sure about that - but I should have guessed you'd get the humidity. That humidity seems to hit the whole of the inland USA and Canada - except west of the Rockies.

The one time I was in Louisville (for work - doing a press approval at a big printing plant there) it was beautiful spring weather.

Louisville is actually further away from me than Nashville, Memphis, and Saint Louis.

[The Sister]

If you look at the construction of a majority of the new suburban crackerboxes there isn't much difference. Slums waiting to happen.

Highly recommend a documentary (2003) called the The End of Suburbia.

[Greendruid]

I'm going to take this thread in a slightly different direction. Please re-categorise if you see fit.

I live in a rural area of Nova Scotia (there isn't much around here I'd consider urban by even the most liberal standards anyway) and one of the biggest energy consumption issues here has to be gasoline for cars to get people around. Our transit system in the mildly urban centre on Cape Breton Island is shit and limited to the urban centre. In other words, there is no way to get from rural to urban via public transit. The funny thing is that there used to be when there was a lot of coal industry here.

I would love to be able to ride a horse to work, grocery shopping, appointments, etc. that all takes place in the urban centre. However, I'm not able to due to a lack of accomodation for that kind of transportation. Where am I going to stable the horse at work? Hell, I'd even be willing to haul a cart behind the horse and load its droppings on to take back to the farm with me. If there are obscure Canadian laws on the requirement of businesses to provide this that folks out there know of I'd love to know about them and use them for the purpose of forcing the university to build stables for horses!

One of the major differences that seems to exist with suburban areas to traditional rural areas is the ideas of the conveniences of urban living transplanted a hell of a long way from the urban core. In other words, indoor plumbing, electricity and even shopping in the form of mini-malls all gets transplanted to these stupid little suburbs where people have no actual land to their plots. Even those that do usually destroy it - my sister had enough of a lawn to put in a garden that could have probably kept her entire family of four in vegetables for the year. What did she do? She sunk a pool into it reducing the lawn area to a 6' perimeter around the concrete tub.

Anyway, like I was saying, traditional rural areas had the right way of doing things because they could be self-sufficient. Electricity is one of the things I'd eventually like to get independence of here. For instance, in a suburb, your potential to generate your own electricity is pretty slim. Here, I can put up wind generators on my land and/or a fairly extensive solar array grid on my barn, house, four-car garage/woodshop, chicken coop, goat shelter, etc. My problem is accumulating the capital to accomplish this any time soon.

My water is entirely well fed because my part of the world is infinitely blessed and cursed with some of the most readily available sources of groundwater. The flipside of that (curse) is that I have water almost anywhere I dig down more than 3 feet. I do require a water pump to get my water into the house but it's wattage cost is minimal compared to suburban water pressure requirements.

Waste water is a difficult thing to manage as is waste in general. While we have curb-side pick up every week, I put out a full garbage bag maybe once every three weeks. The majority of that in weight and volume is cat litter! Every scrap of organic food is composted on site during 10 months of the year. The other 2 the compost container is usually to full and frozen to empty so scraps go to the city bin that gets picked up weekly. Our waste water is fed through our septic tank which has a drain field so none of it is actually ever sent to a processing plant or into the ocean which is the usual method around here. The solids in the septic get removed once every 5 years but have spent that time decomposing as well. In addition, we're moving to on-site composting of human waste as well using composting toilets that we've built ourselves. This (http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html) is a good read on the topic if you're so inclined to educate yourself on it. Greywater systems would be ideal for showers but I figure if the composting toilets work, this may not be necessary. I'm working on a plan to get rainwater into barrels for crop watering but in all honesty, we have sufficient rain that I watered our extensive fields twice last year and require no irrigation system.

Heating/cooling is actually only one issue here - heating. We own no air conditioning and something would be drastically wrong with the world if the day comes that we do. Our climate simply doesn't require it. The ocean insulates from extremes in either direciton. Heating is a must though. We heat mostly with wood and eventually that will be entirely with wood. I'm still looking into the hot water capabilities of wood boilers - this is one of our major electricity-sucking appliances right now. I hear the cries of previous posters about the inefficiencies of old houses - ours is only 42 years old and still has some major fixes in terms of insulation that need to be accomplished.

All in all, I think that anyone living outside of the urban core, where giving up land for efficiency in box-buildings is the way to go, should not be choosing the suburb as a style of living. It is so damned expensive on the personal economy with none of the benefits of rural living. Our goals of self-sufficiency here are not easy - I don't know what this will all look like when I'm 75 and staring down arthritis or cancer or some other chronic ailment. All in all I agree that the apartment style living of cities is much more efficient as a model of living on a small plot of space. Going up is the answer. Cramming a bunch of farm-size houses onto apartment building sized lots with no land is madness to me. I should know, I grew up in the suburbs of Hamilton and that was when lot sizes were 40' x 100'. A luxury by today's standards.

[Michael]

I'm going to take this thread in a slightly different direction. Please re-categorise if you see fit.
No need to!

I think your reply speaks volumes about the 'real' rural vs urban environmental distinction. As you noted, rural living offers many possibilities of sustainable living.

And as the studies show, dense urban living is one of the easiest ways to reduce overall/average energy usage per person.

Between these two extremes that can work well with reduced energy usage is the big problem - suburbia.

Your comments about riding a horse to work are very interesting. Less than a century ago, it was common for hitching posts and watering troughs were available for horses everywhere!

[Greendruid]

Your comments about riding a horse to work are very interesting. Less than a century ago, it was common for hitching posts and watering troughs were available for horses everywhere!

That's what I'm saying! I was under the impression that there were even laws, perhaps some of them on the books, that required businesses and possibly institutions like a university, to provide a hitching post and watering trough for horses for this very reason. I have no idea how to find this sort of thing out though. Any lawyers on the forum that can direct me here?

[Americano]

That's what I'm saying! I was under the impression that there were even laws, perhaps some of them on the books, that required businesses and possibly institutions like a university, to provide a hitching post and watering trough for horses for this very reason. I have no idea how to find this sort of thing out though. Any lawyers on the forum that can direct me here?

A brief US history of the hitching post:

http://www.farmcollector.com/Equipment/Once-Common-Hitching-Post-Now-a-Rare-Find.aspx

The reason hitching posts went to metal construction is horses biting and destroying wooden hitching posts. From what I've read hitching posts in towns were more of a convenience for merchant customers than a legislated requirement. Commercial stables where horses were kept (and watered/fed) were more common than street watering troughs and hitching posts.

[Lily]

I live in a semi-rural area that is fast turning into urban sprawl. Although most of my neighbors own land that is a minimum of one acre with most owning 2.5 and more acres, huge swaths of land have been given over to housing developments, followed by Applebees, followed by strip centers, follwed by Panera Bread, followed by, followed by....

About ten years ago, the state finished contruction on a 50-mile, restricted north/south toll road which links the northern (mostly rural) counties with the larger metropolitan areas to the south. Enter growth. Enter urban sprawl. Each year, I've watched this growth spread further and further north. Now, it's here in my backyard. My land, which is some of the rarest upland Sandhill Pine ecosytem in Florida, is going to disappear. There is nothing to stop that from happening. When I bought my land, I built my home to avoid disturbing as much of the natural flora and fauna as possible. I did not put in a lawn or any landscaping for that matter. But, as more and more people move in, that is rapidly changing. Hundreds of acres of longleaf pine and wiregrass are bulldozed to make way for treeless polts of sodded, thirsty grass and ornamental shrubs. I haven't seen a fox squirrel in two years, but I'm seeing more and more gopher tortoises run over in the road. It really saddens me.

[Evangeline]

Greendruid - what about a solar waterheater?

[Greendruid]

Greendruid - what about a solar waterheater?

We're currently investigating this possibility. I have a friend that works at a community centre a little closer to the coast than us and they have one there. He's the project manager for an initiative promoting greener, alternative energy sources around here. I'm going to pick his brain about the feasibility of one of these devices. There is only one provider/installer of these units here in town so I'll stuffed for negotiating prices unfortunately. But if its more viable than our current energy sucker, I'm all for it! Now all I need is some bloody rain to fill my well back up [encourages dancing banana to do rain dance] :banana: