Rafael Silveira
In his 2009 book The Green Metropolis, David Owen writes about the qualities of big cities regarding sustainability. I read this book this year and it provided me with many insights about how to understand sustainability in many aspects, so I would like to share some of what I learned by reading it.
The author starts the book by describing this utopian community his wife and him lived in as soon as they got married, in which they lived in a very small space, did not own a car, clothes drier or a lawn; did almost all shopping on foot and if they had to move further they would use public transport – this community was Manhattan.
The book regards the United States context comparing mainly New York City to other North American cities. The author describes New York as being one of most sustainable cities in the country. At first this statement seems surprising, however by reading the book it is possible to understand how he arrives at this conclusion.
At first it is interesting to understand the context of the book.
With the invention and popularization of the automobile a phenomenon occurred in the US and has been intensified since then, that is the urban sprawl. As the author mentions this is related to the so called “American dream” of having a house, a car a piece of land – or single family housing in suburbs far from the city center. This leads to intense low density land use. In addition, people become dependent on cars to move to other places, raising emissions of pollutants.
In opposition to that, we have New York City, with a population of more than 8 million people a density of 10,756 people/km2 (compared to the 35 people/km2 regarding the entire country). Most of people in the city do not own a car and use public transport or walking as a mean of locomotion, they have the lower electricity consumption in the U.S., and also the lower environmental footprint.
The book focuses of showing that New Yorkers are by standard sustainable, the city constraints pushes them to live in a sustainable way.
The data described above regarding the low car ownership and the high public transport use is due to traffic jams – which are not a sustainable problem as they avoid exaggerated car use. As it is impossible to move by car people choose alternatives.
I once read an article (I cannot remember the reference, but this one reinforces that) about a research in Copenhagen interviewing people why they used bike transport – the answer was not at all related to sustainability but to efficiency (the fastest way to get to the other point of the city); for the ones living in Delft the same logic in true.
Low energy use by New Yorkers also is related to the city. People live in small spaces (high costs and density) so they have less rooms to light, less electricity consuming equipment, less heating use (they are surrounded by neighbor apartments, so they lose less heat to the outside).
These are some of the aspects that allow this sustainable living, shaped by the city, the inhabitant of a metropolis like this becomes sustainable by default, without changing his lifestyle.
Well, but not everyone wants to live in New York and not every city provides its constraints that “force” a more sustainable lifestyle. So the question is how to adapt these strategies to make people in other places live a more sustainable life by standard, so they do not have to have their life impacted to not impact the environment. That’s one of the points I would like to discover and try to apply in Texel.
Owen, David - "The Green Metropolis". Lecture at Columbia GSAPP. Avaiable at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXwyQLyMuFs
Owen, David. Green metropolis: why living smaller, living closer, and driving less are the keys to sustainability. Penguin, 2009.