11/15/2009 7:35:53 AM

I just finished "Green Metropolis". I think his basic argument is that cities like Manhattan represent "sustainable development" because they have compact, high-density buildings and don't require cars to navigate. His take is that the big environmental problem is cars and the sprawling development that cars encourage. With this point in mind, "green" cars are beside the point because they still encourage sprawling development and "green" buildings are beside the point if they are built in locations that require cars to access. He calls these green innovations "dessert" and says too often we are eating a diet of environmental dessert without eating the "vegetables" of smaller, more compact living.

I think he is exactly right. However, his credibility is undermined by the fact that years ago he moved out of Manhattan because he "did not want to raise his kids in the city". He now lives in a three-storey single family house in northwest Connecticut and commutes as necessary into NYC for his job at the New Yorker. This despite the fact that the kids are now grown and gone. He addresses this incongruity in the book by saying that it wouldn't help the planet at all for him to move back to NYC because he would just sell his house, three (!) cars, and furniture to someone else. He claims it would be an even trade off for the planet so he might as well stay where he is. To me, this misses the point. Right now, there is another young family in Manhattan deciding that they also don't want to raise their children in the city. If Owens does not sell them his house, they are not just going to say, "Oh well, I guess we will just stay in our NYC apartment after all." No, instead that family will end up buying a new house on newly-developed land, increasing the unsustainable sprawl. Similarly, they won't go without a car if they can't buy Owens' used one. They will just buy a new car - using up even more resources. Obviously Owens' personal decision doesn't make much of a difference, but in aggregate, decisions like his are not environmentally sustainable.

I understand that Owens likes his current life, even if he recognizes that Manhattan is a more sustainable model for development, but his attempts to justify not walking his talk fall flat. I wish he had grappled with this issue more deeply. Why is it that many people don't want to live in a big, dense city like NYC? Why do many people seem to prefer the suburbs? Is it the schools, the crime, the noise? If, as he claims, dense cities represent our best hope for the world's population to live sustainably on this planet, how can we make them more attractive so that people like him will want to live there?

Christina Kim