An interesting take on New York, America’s greenest city?
Publication:The New York Sun;
Date:Jan 30, 2007;
Section:Editorial & Opinion
The Greenness of Cities
EDWARD GLAESER
The patron saint of American environmentalism, Henry David Thoreau, was no fan of cities. At Walden Pond he became so “suddenly sensible of the sweet and beneficent society in Nature” that “the fancied advantages of human neighborhood” became “insignificant.” Thoreau’s likeminded heirs, including the urbanist, Lewis Mumford, praised the “parklike setting” of suburbs and denigrated the urban “deterioration of the environment.”
Millions of Americans proclaimed their love of nature by moving to leafy suburbs while denigrating New Yorkers for living in the most man-made of places. In the eyes of the pseudo-environmentalist suburbanites, anyone who didn’t care enough about nature to flee Manhattan’s great glazed brick towers seemed worthy of both pity and disdain.
Now we know that the suburban environmentalists had it backwards. Manhattan, not suburbia, is the real friend of the environment. Those alleged nature lovers who live on multiacre estates surrounded by trees and lawn consume vast amounts of space and energy. If the environmental footprint of the average suburban home is a size 15 hiking boot, the environmental footprint of a New York apartment is a stiletto-heeled Jimmy Choo. Eight million New Yorkers use only 301 square miles, which comes to less than one-fortieth of an acre a person. Even supposedly green Portland, Ore., is using up more than six times as much land a person than New York.
New York’s biggest environmental contribution lies in the fact that less than one-third of New Yorkers drive to work. Nationwide, more than seven out of eight commuters drive. More than one-third of all the public transportation commuters in America live in the five boroughs. The absence of cars leads Matthew Kahn, in his fascinating book, “Green Cities,” to estimate that New York has by a wide margin the least gas usage per capita of all American metropolitan areas. The Department of Energy data confirm that New York State’s energy consumption is next to last in the country because of New York City.
