Big buildings mean green cities

Want to “go green”? Then support tall buildings in urban environments.

That’s the truth, no matter who’s been telling you otherwise.

No less an expert than Edward Glaeser, economics professor at Harvard University, agrees.

In a New York Times blog column he wrote following up on an article he wrote for the City Journal, he says:

Matthew Kahn, a U.C.L.A. environmental economist, and I looked across America’s metropolitan areas and calculated the carbon emissions associated with a new home in different parts of the country. We estimated expected energy use from driving and public transportation, for a family of fixed size and income. We added in carbon emissions from home electricity and home heating. We didn’t try to take on the far thornier issues related to commercial or industrial energy use …

In almost every metropolitan area, we found the central city residents emitted less carbon than the suburban counterparts. In New York and San Francisco, the average urban family emits more than two tons less carbon annually because it drives less. In Nashville, the city-suburb carbon gap due to driving is more than three tons.

Obviously, city-dwellers use less energy because they drive less – more often than not, they walk to work or take public transportation. But, the analysis found there were other, as-important, reasons that cities are “greener”. Using New York City as an example, he writes:

But cars represent only one-third of the gap in carbon emissions between New Yorkers and their suburbanites. The gap in electricity usage between New York City and its suburbs is also about two tons. The gap in emissions from home heating is almost three tons. All told, we estimate a seven-ton difference in carbon emissions between the residents of Manhattan’s urban aeries and the good burghers of Westchester County. Living surrounded by concrete is actually pretty green. Living surrounded by trees is not.

In today’s Boston Globe there was an op-ed piece written along the same lines. Anthony Flint, director of public affairs at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge (and, apparently, a friend of developer Don Chiofaro’s) writes:

Right here in Boston, however, there is something tangible we can do to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions: support infill redevelopment …

Bostonians should be proud to help thwart global warming. We can do that, in part, by filling in the gaps in the city, one vacant lot at a time.

For the first time in recorded history, more people live in urban areas than in rural, according to recent reports.

Shall we take advantage of this phenomenon by doing what’s right for our world?

Logo courtesy of the US Green Building Council

Related posts:

1. Ed Glaeser nails it, once again: historic preservation can hurt cities
2. Is Brown the New Green? I dunno, but Green is the color of envy
3. Boston chosen as one of five cities that will rise in New Economy
4. Fort Point Channel: improving despite artists
5. Want to save money? Move to Boston