Chapter 32. Chapter 32: Urbanization and Sustainable Communities
How can we develop cities that are environmentally sustainable...?
Guiding Question 32.5
How can we develop cities that are environmentally sustainable and promote a good quality of life for the residents?
Why You Should Care
Although there are a lot of ecological benefits to urban life, many people are turned off by the crowds, housing prices, and quality of air and water. In some cases, these concerns are valid. There are a lot of steps that can be taken at all levels, individual to governmental, to make cities more environmentally sustainable. These steps have the added benefit of making cities more livable, which will make it more likely to find money to enact them. Although there is a wide variety of ways to make cities more sustainable, many of them can be grouped together. First, transportation should have as small a carbon footprint as possible. This translates into more energy-efficient and extensive public transportation and city planning that encourages foot and human-powered traffic. Cities should encourage the ecosystem services provided by vegetation. Green roofs, street trees, parks, and other ways to bring green into the city help reduce problems like air pollution, rain runoff, and the heat island effect, and they make cities more pleasant places in which to live. Zoning and development plans are extremely important because they maintain the environmental quality of neighborhoods, make sure that vacant lots and brownfields are re-developed instead of developing new land, and help curtail suburban sprawl. New construction should be environmentally conscious; the efficiency of buildings in cities goes a long way to conserving resources.
Test Your Vocabulary
Choose the correct term for each of the following definitions:
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| A movement that promotes the creation of compact, mixed-use communities with all of the amenities for day-to-day living nearby and accessible. | |
| The development of empty lots within a city. | |
| Strategies that help create walkable communities with lower ecological footprints. | |
| Construction and operational designs that promote resource and energy efficiency and provide a better environment for occupants. |
1.
Match the principles of smart growth below with the numbers that represent them in the Infographic above:
Encourage a strong sense of place, neighborhood ownership, and local pride:
Setting aside green spaces for the environmental services and health benefits:
Infill development:
Providing opportunities for human-powered transportation:
Incorporating environmentally friendly design into building (green building), like green roofs:
Providing multiple mass-transit opportunities, especially those that incorporate new energy-conserving and pollution-reducing technologies:
Mixing residential locations with retail, dining, and service options so that less traveling is required:
For each of the following benefits or features of green building and sustainable design, select ALL the choices that match (there may be more than one):
10.
Protects water resources:
1: 5: 6: 9:
Short-Answer Questions
You're deciding on where to live now that you have a job in the city. What are the pros and cons of each of these housing options?
1) An existing house in the suburbs
2) Building a house in the suburbs (compare green vs. conventional building as well)
3) A house in the country
4) An apartment in a small building in a popular residential neighborhood of the city
2) Building a conventional house in the suburbs would have all the pros and cons of buying an existing house plus the environmental costs of using unsustainably harvested lumber and reducing natural areas or farmland for development. Building green in the suburbs can certainly offset the cons of living there, but, even if the home were carbon neutral or negative and produced its own electricity, there's still the issue of transportation. Even electric cars produce greenhouse gas emissions if the electricity to charge them comes from a coal-powered plant.
3) The pros and cons are similar to living in the suburbs, except the home and the land on which it's built are both likely to be larger, which is good in terms of personal space but poor in terms of energy efficiency and loss of natural areas and farmland. In addition, the longer drive time creates an even larger footprint, and the diversity of services, goods, and enrichment activities is likely to be even less than in suburbs.
4) Popular city neighborhoods usually have many choices of goods and services in a small area as well as lower crime (usually). So you would have all of those benefits plus the reduced footprint of having shorter travel distances and a smaller home. A smaller home can also be a disadvantage, as can the separation from green spaces and nature experienced in cities. Air quality and traffic congestion are also more likely to be worse in the city.
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