Urbanism is the New Green

By Dom Nozzi

With less compact, lower-density, suburban development, extremely high per capita car use is inevitable, and high levels of walking, bicycling and transit is impossible.

With more compact, higher-density, urban development, car use is relatively inconvenient and costly (which substantially reduces car travel), and walking, bicycling and transit is much more convenient, safe & enjoyable (which dramatically increases such travel).

Both Boulder CO (where I now live) and Gainesville FL (where I toiled for 20 years as a long-range city planner) have exceptionally low, unsustainable suburban densities, which makes extremely high per capita car travel a locked in certainty. In both cities, per capita air emissions are shamefully VERY high due to low-density-induced car dependence.

Boulder has fooled itself into thinking it can achieve high levels of walking, bicycling and transit use simply by leveraging its wealth to build lots of sidewalks, bike paths and bus service. Nevertheless, very high car use remains (as illustrated quite well by the extreme rage directed against the Folsom right-sizing project in 2015).

The only effective way to induce high levels of walking, bicycling and transit use is to take away speed, space, and subsidies from cars (the fourth essential “S” is to Shorten travel distances via compact, mixed use development). Cars need to be slowed down (particularly in town centers) with traffic calming street design. Oversized streets and parking lots (which are found over and over again in all American cities) need to be shrunk down to sustainable, human-scaled size. Huge motorist subsidies have persisted for nearly a century, and must be reduced. Giant subsidies are found in abundant free parking and city requirements that new development provide parking; untolled roads, which bicyclists, pedestrians and transit users pay for – not just motorists; and unpriced gasoline and too-low gas taxes (there are many other subsidies, by the way).

Boulder and Gainesville have almost no development that is compact & mixed use, which make both cities rather unsustainable and extremely car dependent.

Worldwide, studies have found that lower-density, less compact cities emit extremely high levels per capita of toxic air emissions due mostly to extreme car dependence. Conversely, more compact, higher-density cities emit extremely low per capita levels of air emissions due mostly to low car dependence. Shame on Boulder for the several decades of maintaining a political consensus that compact (more dense) development is bad.

There is an emerging consensus (outside of Boulder) that density (urbanism) is the New Green.