How To Save America

Salon, in an excerpt from Jeff Speck’s new book Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, describing how our auto centric culture is detrimental both economically and environmentally:

At last measure, we are sending $612,500 overseas every minute in support of our current automotive lifestyle. Cumulatively, over recent decades, this has amounted to a “massive, irreversible shift in wealth and power from the United States to the petro-states of the Middle East and energy-rich Russia.” This cash transfer, which is quickly working its way up to a third of a trillion dollars each year, is building some truly stunning metrorail systems in Dubai and Abu Dhabi — our cars are buying their trains.

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Yet all these [green] gadgets cumulatively contribute only a fraction of what we save by living in a walkable neighborhood. It turns out that trading all of your incandescent lightbulbs for energy savers conserves as much carbon per year as living in a walkable neighborhood does each week.

[…]

Urban location is indeed one of the factors that contributes to a building’s LEED building rating, but it is only one of many factors, such that the overall carbon savings created by downtown locations are almost always undercounted. And because it’s better than nothing, LEED — like the Prius — is a get-out-of-jail-free card that allows us to avoid thinking more deeply about our larger footprint. For most organizations and agencies, it is enough. Unfortunately, as the transportation planner Dan Malouff puts it, “LEED architecture without good urban design is like cutting down the rainforest using hybrid-powered bulldozers.”

That rock solid critique of LEED is one I wholeheartedly agree with. Buildings go up all the time surrounded by a sea of asphalt that get LEED Silver, Gold, or even Platinum ratings. This is ludicrous! Just because the parking lot is shaded, even if by photo-voltaic panels, it doesn’t mitigate the issue that cars will fill that parking lot and the environmental cost of those cars is extreme. And with a little bit of paint, you can get a few extra points just by designating a few spaces for “green” autos - no enforcement necessary. The main issue with LEED is this: less bad does not equal good. And where LEED falls the most short is in its lack of emphasis on how a building fits in the regional context.

As for the shift in wealth to foreign, and oftentimes hostile, regions of the world; I don’t think that needs much commentary. I’ll just say this - next time you marvel at the lavish spectacle that is Dubai, consider our role in funding those feats of engineering.

Overall it was a very smart excerpt from what promises to be an excellent book. Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time is available for preorder from Amazon.