ABSTRACT
In this selection, published in The New Yorker in 2004, journalist David Owen argues that far from being “an ecological nightmare, a wasteland of concrete and garbage,” Manhattan was “the greenest community in the United States” and the very “model of environmental responsibility,” a bold proposition that reflects a shift in thinking about the built environment from concerns about congestion, pollution, health, and morality to broader, more technical issues of environmental sustainability. Owen admits that places like New York do indeed use massive amounts of energy and generate huge amounts of greenhouse gases and solid wastes when calculated by the square foot. But when calculated on a per capita basis, putting “one and a half million people on a 23-square-mile island … forces the majority to live in some of the more inherently energy-efficient structures in the world: apartment buildings.” Density also allows urban residents to walk, bike, and take transit to run errands and go to work. As a result, Manhattanites use private automobiles at one-tenth the rate of suburbanites and consume a small fraction – again, on a per capita basis – of energy as compared to average Americans. “Barring an almost inconceivable reduction in the earth’s population,” Owen concludes, “dense urban centers offer one of the few plausible remedies for some of the world’s most discouraging environmental ills.”
