First-year UEPer Marcus Rozbitsky suggested this book review of "Green Metropolis".

While I haven't yet read the book, I found the points made by the review to resonate with discussions from a few of our UEP classes.

In "Developing Sustainable Communities," Dr. J examines and points out the fact that "green" and "sustainable" have become such marketing terms that the message is getting lost and may potentially be diluting the effort. David Owen seems to attack that effort to market through "green actions" by instead changing the entire message. Instead of writing yet another book that purports what we should be doing, Owen has instead taking the perspective of starting at "what are we doing right?" This same question was recently raised by Barbara Parmenter in the "Cities in Space, Place, and Time" class. All too often, planners ask what the community wants rather than asking what the public also likes about their community so as to make sure those initiatives continue.

By examining "what we're doing right," Owen's determines that communities like New York City are the models we should follow. Through denser and closely-integrated neighborhoods, resources and energy needs are reduced. Of course it's pointed out that New York City's model status was not so much created thanks to numerous, forward-thinking policy initiatives, but more so due to development pattern, speed of growth, and geographical constraints.

Reviewer Margaret Mittelbach certainly paints a great picture regarding Owen's efforts to shift our thinking around green. If you've read the book, please let us know what you think about Owen's examination.