Journal fiannaFailMan's Journal: Why sprawl in the US is bad for the world 5
Let's start with the causes of sprawl before we deal with the effects. As I said elsewhere in my journal (skip this and the next paragraph if you have already read it), in the post war period, it made a lot of sense to seperate industry from residential areas since production in those days was a dirty business in most cases. So industry was zoned off in its own corner of town and lo-and-behold, quality of life improved for the residents. Sensation.
Where it started to go horribly wrong was when the planners decided to zone everything from everything, and the spectre of single-use-zoning, aka the BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) rules came into existence. Offices go here, factories go there, shops go somewhere else, and all the houses go in a residential area. Makes for neat and tidy diagrams on paper, but in practice it pushes common everyday uses out of walking distance of each other. We all have to sleep, work, shop and play at different times of the day. Put these things beyond walking distance of each other, and you effectively force everyone to drive just to get through the day.
Now, the single-use-zoning golden calf isn't the only thing that causes sprawl. There is in American society an inherent undercurrent of anti-urbanism. It's nothing new, it dates back as far as Jefferson. "I view large cities," he wrote, "as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man." This was a commonly held view at the time, and the trend in American cities was for the wealthy to move to big mansions on the outskirts, whereas in Europe the well-off people preferred to stay downtown right at the heart of things and it was the poor who were pushed to the outskirts. Anti-urbanism in the US has never gone away - as recently as last year I saw some people with a stall at Sunnyvale farmer's market complaining about some tall buildings that had been built towards the end of the dot-com boom in the centre of Sunnyvale. They didn't like the fact that they were so tall, that they prevented sunlight from getting in (which they didn't), that they were too close together (how close is too close?), all manner of subjective and half-baked complaints. There were no complaints about a low-rise sprawling development only a block away where about five identical, boring, two-story office buildings had been built in the traditional suburban manner, i.e. surrounded by acres of parking spaces and some landscaped footpaths where nobody walks and where the whole thing goes dead after five o'clock. Anecdotes aside, the majority of Americans still prefer to live in the suburbs - the image of the busy bustling city street is perceived in a negative light. It draws to mind images of the Bronx and slums of older cities, while the existence of successful, vibrant, and exciting downtown areas (like parts of San Francisco or Times Square in NYC) do not feature prominently in their thinking.
The main problem I have with life in the suburbs is that they are soulless. There are neither urban nor rural, they combine the worst of both worlds. I thought that the whole point of a city was that everything is close to hand, and as a trade-off you sacrifice a bit of space. Well in the suburbs you have less space than you would in the countryside (albeit a little more space than in an urban apartment), but your location in the middle of a sea of houses puts you so far away from amenities like shops, resturaunts and the like that you might as well be living away out in the sticks. If you have to get in your car and drive a mile just to buy a postage stamp, what benefit is there to living in a suburb?
So how does this affect the rest of the world? Simple. The dominance of suburbs forces increasing numbers of people to drive more than they would if they lived in a traditional, high-density urban environment where daily needs are close at hand and mass-transit offers an advantage over the private car. This in no small part contributes to America's ultra-high energy consumption.
Figures from eia.doe.gov about the USA:
Total Energy Consumption (2002E): 98.3 quadrillion Btu (2003E): 98.1 quadrillion Btu (25% of world total energy consumption)
Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions (2002E): 5,796 million metric tons of carbon (about 24% of world total carbon emissions)
Per Capita Energy Consumption (2003E): 338 million Btu
So the country with about 4% of the world's population consumes 25% of its energy. A bit of an imbalance.
Our dependence on oil is interwoven into our society as comprehensively as slavery was in the old south. The USA's dependence on oil is so desperate that it must be maintained at all costs. This leads to desperate measures to ensure that the oil flows. It leads to alleged CIA involvement in coup attempts like the one in Venezuala a few years aback. It leads to war with Iraq. It leads to our leaders cosying up to the Bin Laden family and repressive undemocratic regimes like the House of Saud. It leads to a military presence in the Middle East that draws resentment from a certain other member of the Bin Laden family with whom I'm sure we're all familiar. It leads to a foreign policy that creates enemies, and breeds mistrust and resentment around the world.
This is the price we are paying for our suburban utopia. We're not paying for it in our gas taxes (which only cover a third of the cost of motoring). We're not paying for it through our other taxes that are spent on urban renewal and road-building. We're paying for it in the lives of American servicemen. We're paying for it in the lives of whoever is going to die in the next terrorist atrocity. We as a people have got to wake up to the fact that our everyday choices have an effect on others not just at home, but abroad as well. We are not an independant untouchable island. We are part of a global system where our fates are intertwined no matter how much we want to believe that we can do what we like without affecting anyone else.
I am not suggesting that everyone should be forced to live downtown or that our suburbs should be bulldozed and replaced by traditional urban streets. I am suggesting that where demand for high-density living exists, it should be met. I am suggesting that mixed-use zoning should be allowed back into our lives and let the market decide. So far the evidence suggests that there is a place for mixed-use developments. Santana Row in San Jose is one example of how the ability to walk to the shops is one that people are willing to pay a premium for. Enough of this communistic parcelling off of land into neat, boring, dead blocks of mediocrity. It's time to let people live in vibrant streets if they want, and let them show to the rest of us that the urban street is not evil.
Awesome (Score:2)
I have lived in two cities in the last while: Ottawa Canada, and Toronto Canada. Ottawa is a nightmare for sprawl. The city is ridiculously spread out, and the transit system barely functions, unless you are lucky enough to live in the few corridors it serves well. It seems like most everybody aspires to move to the 'burbs and buy a big car.
Toronto, on the other hand, is great. I've chosen to live in t
Decentralization (Score:2)
Re:Decentralization (Score:2)
Pollution only worsens if the city is sprawled out in a way that forces people to use the private car. Big cities are quite capable of being sustainable. The concentric ring arrangement that you mention is how European cities have biologically evolved over the millenia, and it works. Venice is a high-density large city, and pollution does not concentrate
Some sites for you... (Score:2)
This leads to neighborhood being drawn up into racial districts. Both Chicago and Boston are well known for this. Whites consistently move farther towards rural areas, since most farmers at the turn of the 20th century were white, this lead to "white flight"
Re:Some sites for you... (Score:2)