November 18, 2007 · Derek

Think Green? Move to the Suburbs!

The TNT’s Insight section has a piece from the Washington Post that criticizes the move toward city densification and promotes the notion of suburban villages instead.

The article states, “Building what we call ‘an archipelago of villages’ seems far more reasonable than returning to Industrial Age cities and mass transit systems.” Highly dense cities, it argues, creates “heat islands” that contribute to global warming far more often than low-density suburbs. And it’s more expensive to build green in high density areas. Besides, people don’t want to give up their cars. Hmm… Read the article. I’m sure you’ll have some thoughts.

What do you think?

Link to The News Tribune

13 comments

snoopy November 18, 2007

Mr. Kotkin is at it again… don’t know where to start. I would caution anyone reading Mr. Kotkin’s material. His claims that a minority of persons favor city’s and that the concentrated “urban heat island effect” is a great concern for global warming might not be entirely accurate. Why would Mr. Kotkin advocate that sprawl is better for the environment than urban development?

Couldn’t one argue that the amount of energy it takes to heat/cool 2,500+ square foot suburban single family dwellings and the amount of C02 produced by the automobiles that suburbanites depend on contribute just as much, if not more towards global warming than urban ‘heat islands’.

This was my favorite…

“But short of a crippling fuel shortage or some other catastrophic event, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever see the widespread success of heavily promoted strategies such as dense, transit-oriented developments or the wholesale abandonment of the suburbs”

Isn’t it possible we will see a catostrophic fuel shortage in our lifetime?

Sometimes I wonder if Mr. Kotkin writes these pieces simply to boost his ego and get a rise out of the planning/environmental community.
Erik B. November 18, 2007

The article misses completely most of the problems associate with suburban sprawl: loss of farmland, additional pollution, loss of community, loss of time spent commuting, large uses of fossil fuels, and huge public subsidies required for roads.

His one attempted point: Studies show that concentrating concrete, asphalt, steel and glass in cities like New York creates environmentally worrisome “heat islands” far more than low-density landscapes. is meaningless. Of course a city block likely creates more heat than a suburb block. Yet, the analysis should have been how much heat per person.

Per person, a suburb certainly requires the construction of more road building per person than in s city so the amount of total heat produced is far greater overall. So the writers one attempt to make a point fails.

Then the writer appears to abandon his defense of suburbia altogether when he suggests that workplaces should be near homes. Yet, this is by defintition the antithesis of sprawl.
Erik Hanberg November 18, 2007

I thought it was Friday there for a second …
Phil November 18, 2007

http://www.friendsofpiercecounty.org/FPC-newsletter_Sept-Oct-2007.pdf
ensie November 18, 2007

“We can accommodate our need for space and still leave ample room for a flourishing natural environment, as well as for agriculture. By preserving open space and growing in an environmentally friendly manner, we can provide a break from the monotony of concrete and glass and create ideal landscapes for wildlife preservation.”

Right. Because we’ve done so well with this so far. In fact, everyday I read about how farms (especially family farms) are flourishing in America and wildlife is coexisting with suburban culture in harmony.

What planet is Kotkin describing?
drizell November 18, 2007

Ironically, a recent study (unfortunately, I don’t have a link to it) shows that residents of New York City produce about ten times LESS carbon emissions than the typical American, and far less than even lower density supposedly “green” cities like Seattle and Portland. Obviously, this is because 80 percent of New Yorkers use public transportation and have walkable neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. This alone seems to be enough to contradict some of Mr. Kotkin’s arguments.
morgan November 18, 2007

Sometimes I wonder if Mr. Kotkin writes these pieces simply to boost his ego and get a rise out of the planning/environmental community.

Take him for what he’s worth. He’s smart but he ~~talks out of his ass~~ shoots from the hip a lot because it gets him printed (witness the TNT article)… which helps his demand for the corporate sideshow circuit.
Chris Karnes November 19, 2007

That op-ed piece in the tnt was mostly hogwash. Energy consumption per capita plummets if you go from a one story building to ten. Energy use for heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and transportation all scale down as you increase density to that point. Those are conservation effects you can’t get from the greenest “low impact development” schemes in the suburbs.
The Gulag November 19, 2007

The only contribution the metropolitan “heat island” effect has on Climate Change is through mis- representative temperature readings.
David Boe November 19, 2007

One can make the case that the earth is indeed flat if you only look at specific criteria. Score another point for the post-modern ‘logic spin.’
Mofo from the Hood November 19, 2007

The answers you get depend on the questions asked.

I reject the notion that the depletion of energy, natural land resources, and global warming is a “what” problem. If it is true that the problem is technolgy based then it follows that the solution is a matter of manipulating mathematical formulas and applying technological innovations to the physical environment.

Kotkin only gets close to the real problem and its solution when he says that we should improve the places where most of us choose to live and work.

Where do people get the notion that they can choose to do whatever they want? The real issue is “who” problem.

Kotkin acknowledges that when he suggests that government policy is the solution, even though there will always be a rebellious contingent seeking suburbia.
jamie from thriceallamerican November 19, 2007

That the TNT printed this oped strikes me as lazy journalism. If Tacoma (or Seattle) were anywhere nearly as developed as NYC, maybe this would be worth talking about, but (as drizell frequently reminds us), all of the major cities around here are relatively suburban outside of their small urban cores.

What I would like to see is someone examine why the construction of new housing needs to out-pace population growth. Why should we even need new suburbs? Now there’s something worth examining. (Even though I know that the answer probably just has to boil down to “market demand”.)
Mofo from the Hood November 27, 2007

This new Kotkin article is a tough read like the first one in that one has to break through miles of flak to get to what he is trying to say, which is that he is a social conservative.

Part of the problem, in my view, is that he doesn’t have the language or doesn’t use the basis for his position, which is a distinctive Christian worldview.

Just like his first article, he seems to be grappling with an intuitive sense that the root of society’s problems is man. Then in both articles he throws in some kind of landscape improvement plan which will likely solve a current social problem. In the second article right near the ending is a testimonial that says that one thing that will transform and retain life in cities is better parks. And right after that statement he claims that the family is the foundation of [society](He almost says that. I sense that he fears the liberal elites who want to define and control the family with government policies.). The end statement actually comes out sounding like a capitulation to state economic development agendas—-Strong economies are the result of strong families. Kotkin is almost there. Strong economies, like strong families, require strong leaders.