In today’s context of climate change, energy, and a new green economy, David Owen makes an eloquent case that density is in fact the most efficient form of human settlement, in “Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability.’’
Owen, a staff writer for The New Yorker, traces his own family’s movement to illustrate the point: starting out in New York, then relocating to rural Litchfield County in Connecticut, a seemingly more environmentally friendly arrangement. But then he realizes he must hop in the car for the simplest errands. Heating and cooling his single-family home racked up 30,000 kilowatt-hours a year, in contrast to their city apartment at 4,000. In Manhattan, the heat rose through the multiple floors, and the family could walk or take the subway to just about anything. On a per capita basis, New York is remarkably energy-efficient.
“New Yorkers, individually, drive, pollute, consume, and throw away much less than do the average residents of the surrounding suburbs, exurbs, small towns, and farms,’’ Owen writes, “because the tightly cir cumscribed space in which they live creates efficiencies and reduces the possibilities for reckless consumption . . . the apparent ecological innocuousness of widely dispersed populations - as in leafy suburbs or seemingly natural exurban areas such as mine - is an illusion.’’
In the tradition of fellow New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, Owen is in the business of explaining the counterintuitive. Similarly, he has expanded a New Yorker article - his widely acclaimed 6,000-word piece in 2004 titled “Green Manhattan’’ - into an 85,000-word book, which can be a tricky exercise. “Green Metropolis’’ is a thoughtful exploration of the tweaks and policy initiatives in modern-day urban planning and urban design, from green building and green standards for neighborhood development, to transit improvements and better parks and congestion pricing.
