Report: Compact development can bolster climate-change efforts
September 21, 2007 at 11:47 am by Thomas Wheatley in NewsWashington, D.C.-based Smart Growth America and the Urban Land Institute released a report today saying that a vital component of alleviating climate change is rather simple: Live closer to work. Transportation, the study reports, accounts for a full third of CO2 emissions in the United States, and even with the development of more fuel-efficient vehicles and lower-carbon fuels — such as biodiesel — any benefits the changes provide may be negated by the fact that people are driving more and farther distances when doing so.
While many talk of disincentives to discourage the growing surge of commutes — such as increased tolls, no-drive zones or days, etc. — the study urges “compact development.” From the report:
Rather than building single-use subdivisions or office parks, communities can plan mixed-use developments that put housing within reach of these other destinations. The street network can be designed to interconnect, rather than end in culs-de-sac and funnel traffic onto overused arterial roads. Individual streets can be designed to be “complete,” with safe and convenient places to walk, bicycle, and wait for the bus. Finally, by building more homes as condominiums, townhouses, or detached houses on smaller lots, and by building offices, stores and other destinations “up” rather than “out,” communities can shorten distances between destinations. This makes neighborhood stores more economically viable, allows more frequent and convenient transit service, and helps shorten car trips.
It’s an interesting study and speaks to one of Atlanta’s transportation woes, one often offered by Atlanta’s Asphalt Army of Road Supporters — “But will people use this public transit of which you speak?” If they live close enough to it, why not? I’m still waiting to hear the new-urbanism-is-a-plot-to-take-away-our-God-given-rights canard as a reason against this study.
Both the Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times have written pieces on the report. Print out the report and the articles. If you’re caught in traffic on your way home, maybe you can flip through them.
Send to a friend:
September 21st, 2007 at 3:01 pm
I bet more people would move to my neighborhoodif it weren’t for the hookers, pimps and drug dealers on every corner of my block each night.
They don’t have those in the burbs.
They do have yards for the kids to play in, safer schools, sports fields and a mortgage less than half the size of an intown home.
That’s why they commute.
I love Midtown, but I would never raise a child here.
September 21st, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Interesting study. I also enjoyed reading that interview you linked to in Reason magazine - it made me think about the idea of suburban sprawl being driven by consumer preference, and how difficult it would be to get a significant amount of the city population on board with urban density if what they genuinely want is detached houses, each surrounded by a medium-sized lawn and a private backyard.
We live as close as we can to our workplaces, but I work in NE ATL and my wife is in midtown off Peachtree, so we can’t both live very near work. The area directly between us is mostly unaffordable for our incomes, and we’re in one of the only decent condo buildings available for our price range. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a couple of years, there aren’t any residences we can afford to live in anywhere near where we are now.
Urban density is a great idea for the environment. The less land area we can take up with our developments, the more room there is for nature to thrive (and not just grassy-lawn nature - the real thing). But it will work best if there’s accommodations made for folks like us who aren’t in a high income bracket.
September 21st, 2007 at 6:22 pm
I am a proponent of conservation, especially of land and water, but does anyone really think we are using more than a tiny percentage fo the available land in the USA? Ask a pilot sometime, especially one who has had toput a plane down in an emergency, how much land we have developed.
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Re:”does anyone really think we are using more than a tiny percentage fo the available land,” - yes, I do think that we’re using much more than a tiny percentage.
When I look out an airplane window or browse the satellite photos on Google maps, it seems like most of north Georgia, outside of the Appalachians, is developed as farm land or is being used as industrial, commercial or residential development.
I think we should be leaving more space for nature to just do it’s crazy, cookoo, normal thing. Yes, humans are part of nature, but I think we’re dominating the landscape in a way that, to me, feels greedy and, well, unnatural.
September 24th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Dale: The report specifically ISN’T arguing that we should live more compactly just so that we can avoiding developing more land. That’s your red herring. What the report does do is document that more compact development will reduce the production of greenhouse gases.
Certainly, an added benefit to compact development would be to reduce the amount of land the development machine is gobbling up. When you say that “a tiny percentage of our land” is being “used,” I think you’re underestimating the amount metro Atlanta land now given over to sprawl. A leading real-estate consultant (Chris Leinberger of Charles Lesser & Co.) told me in the late ’90s that he figured no human settlement in history had converted land from undeveloped to undeveloped as fast as metro Atlanta did in that decade. Just as Darin said, all you have to do is look out of a jet as you land at Hartsfield to see that the land being gobbled up by development ain’t “tiny.” Beyond that, you’re failing to account for farms and tree farms — which represent the bulk of Georgia’s acreage and which simply don’t perform the same functions in terms of cleansing water and air and providing sustainable resources as natural systems do.
I’m mentioning all that to answer your red herring. But I’m glad you started slapping that herring around — you inadvertantly underscored the point that reducing greenhouse gases with more sensible development will also help us to preserve our valuable and rapidly diminishing natural areas.
September 27th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Ken - I understood the article, I was responding to a post. You know, the thing people should do in a debate or discussion. A response to a preceding post, stating the less land we use the better nature can do it’s thing, is not a red herrring.
Comments for this post in general -
No one responded to my statement about land use in the USA, only about GA. Is that a) provincialist arrogance b) lack of comprehension or c) an intentional avoidance of my query :-)
OK Let’s slap my so called herring…..
Relating to the eastern USA USGS says
- agricultural land is reverting to forest due to agricultural abandonment in the norhteast and converting to forest in the southeast
- most of the inrease in ground usage is due to urban development …
ie sprawl
-developed land is less than 11%
USGS link - http://edc2.usgs.gov/LT/LCCEUS.php
Since the region is more heavily populated than the rest of the country, that percentage goes down when data is considered from the rest of the USA, even if you exclude Alaska.
The USDA reports (updated in 2000) total development of non-Federal lands at 6.6 %, not including Alaska. Since Federal land is developed at a much lower percentage than non-Federal land and Alaska is barely developed at all, it is probably south of 5%.
That is a tiny percentage in my book.
USDA link - http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Technical/land/meta/t5846.html
USDA link showing Federal land and providing key defintions - http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/TECHNICAL/land/meta/m5554.html