Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost
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Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost
#2> Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that.
And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint of the average American. And while the city is pretty segregated, the New York subway is a unique setting of rich and poor people of all races utilizing a public service together.
Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost
#3> Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that. And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint o…
It is also the entire cause of the "gentrification" problem many are so pissed off about. Nobody wants to move into a poor area, they are forced into it because you can't build skyscraper high rises in the good areas.
Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost
#4> Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that. And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint o…
It is also the entire cause of the "gentrification" problem many are so pissed off about. Nobody wants to move into a poor area, they are forced into it because you can't build skyscraper high rises in the good areas.
You can in Manhattan. The tallest residential structure in the U.S. is going up within a few blocks of Central Park.
Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost
#5The problem is not the poor land use, it's the inefficient capital use!
Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost
#6> Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that. And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint o…
I can only find stats on carbon footprints. Somewhat surprisingly, California does very well on this statistic, despite its suburbs: it's just behind New York.
So at least for carbon footprints, those don't necessarily seem to be linked to density.
I couldn't find anything on energy footprint though.
Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost
#7Knowledge-intensive industries such as technology and finance thrive on the clustering of workers who share ideas and expertise.
So allow people to cluster in high quality virtual environments.
Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost
#8> Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that. And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint o…
I can only find stats on carbon footprints. Somewhat surprisingly, California does very well on this statistic, despite its suburbs: it's just behind New York. So at least for carbon footprints, those don't necessarily seem to be linked to density. I couldn't find anything on energy footprint though.
Kind of interesting, the first link [1] that I found ranked Honolulu, Portland OR, and LA above the Tri-state area (which came in forth), in terms of per-capita carbon footprint.
[1] http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2008...
Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost
#9> Lifting all the barriers to urban growth in America could raise the country’s GDP by between 6.5% and 13.5%, or by about $1 trillion-2 trillion. It is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield anything like that. And it would also reduce the real but unaccounted-for environmental and social externalities of our sprawling homogenous suburbs. Someone living in New York has half the energy footprint o…
I can only find stats on carbon footprints. Somewhat surprisingly, California does very well on this statistic, despite its suburbs: it's just behind New York. So at least for carbon footprints, those don't necessarily seem to be linked to density. I couldn't find anything on energy footprint though.
> So at least for carbon footprints, those don't necessarily seem to be linked to density.
Every study I have seen shows the opposite, that carbon footprints are strongly linked to density and urban-suburban divisions. In 2012, for example, climate researchers at Berkeley put together a map for the entire United States showing average household carbon footprint by zip code [0]. They found that suburban emissions are markedly higher than emissions in their respective central cities almost everywhere, confirming a result that Edward Glaeser and other urban economists had already established [1].
The FAQ [2] for the Berkeley researchers' paper [3] summarizes the headline finding like this:
There is an inverted-U relationship between population density and HCF [household carbon footprint]; HCF increases ... from low to medium population densities, and decreases from medium to high population densities. The turning point is about 3,000 persons per square mile, which is very close to medium population density of all locations, and a little higher than the population density of larger suburbs (which have densities of 2,700 persons per square mile).
In other words, low- and high-density places (rural areas and cities) have low household carbon footprints and middle-density places (suburbs) have high footprints. Controlling for income, the authors found that the inverted U goes away and the relationship becomes more monotonic: population density is negatively correlated with carbon emissions across the spectrum of density levels. The upswing of the inverted U-curve that you see before controlling for income happens because, as American communities are actually arranged, middle-density areas (which are relatively dense suburbs) tend to be wealthy, and emissions are also strongly correlated with consumption; the consumption effect dominates the efficiency gains due to higher densities as you go from rural areas to suburbs, and it's not until you get to city-level densities (and poorer urban populations) that the efficiency gains due to density win out over consumption-driven emissions.
So part of the reason that suburbs have high emissions is that the people who live there are relatively rich, and the richer you are the more stuff you consume. But no matter how rich or poor you are, the study suggests, you will likely have a noticeably lower carbon footprint if you live in a city and pursue a lifestyle typical of your income class there rather than doing the likewise in a suburb.
The authors also found, by the way, that suburban sprawl around the central cities of large metropolises effectively offsets the carbon-efficiency of the dense cities themselves [4]; the larger the central city, the greater the sprawl surrounding it, and the number of inefficient suburban households tends roughly to balance out the carbon efficiency of households in the central city.
0. http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps
1. See, e.g., http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_1_green-cities.html
2. http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/files/coolclimate/Jones-Kamm... [PDF]
3. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es4034364 [PDF]
4. http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2014/01/06/suburban-sprawl-ca...
Re: Poor land use in the world’s greatest cities carries a huge cost
#10Knowledge-intensive industries such as technology and finance thrive on the clustering of workers who share ideas and expertise. So allow people to cluster in high quality virtual environments.
Is there anyone preventing you from doing that?