The Once And Future Green City

Are people who live in green neighborhoods happier?

Land use experts think so: so-called “livable” communities enable residents to run errands by foot or bike or maybe hop on a convenient light-rail system to get to work (unlike in typical suburbs, where you practically need a car to go to the bathroom.) People in livable communities use less energy and water while connecting more with the outdoors and with their neighbors. In other words, the word “community” may actually mean something.

So, great. Take me there, you say.

Not so fast. While there’s plenty of pent up demand for walkable urban locales, as reflected in high real estate prices and popular tourist destinations, the problem is a lack of supply, according to urban planning scholar Christopher Leinberger. Not everyone can live in downtown New York City.

For most people, however, “When you’re deciding to buy a house, you have a choice between a single-family home or single-family home. You can go to a 1980s strip mall or a 1990s strip mall. Right now, most Americans don’t have many choices as far as how they live,” he explained today at “The Future of the City,” forum hosted by The Atlantic.

To wit: “Livability is walkability,” he says. (You can check your own address’s “walk score” here.)

What’s more, few of us live in a shiny sustainable bubble. People need to get themselves to work, and so a truly green community is not green unto itself. It demands an entire green region with a “superior transportation system,” rather than one rush-hour pileup that blends seamlessly into the next.

Back in 1945, the city of Los Angeles – of all places – was a public transit model. It had more lines of rail transportation than any other metro area on the planet.

An yet, even in this green-for-all era, finding the will,  and more importantly, the cash to expand public transit systems is a challenge. Even most of the whopping $26.6 billion of transportation funding in President Obama’s “green” stimulus went to “shovel-ready” highway projects in rural areas – exactly where economic activity is not, and exactly the wrong type of green. The rush to spend this money meant any hope of a new type of transportation thinking was thrown under the wished-for city bus.

Another problem: Most top brass in city, state and regional “transportation” departments come from an outdated pave-our-way-to-paradise school of thought.

Experts at the forum see this year, this moment, as a time for hope and change, however, especially as Congress debates what is traditionally known as the "highway" re-authorization bill, but which really includes all modes of transit.

More than anything changing the highway and suburban sprawl mindset will require visionary leadership at all levels. This is starting to happen at the top and at the bottom.

In the Obama administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Transportation Department are jointly promoting local sustainable community projects, and the respective heads of these departments have paid huge lip-service to pushing public transit funding on more equal footing with highways. In Congress, as they endlessly debate transit policy, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) has launched a Livable Communities Task Force.

At the local level, signs of change are stirring too. Even in the conservative bastion of Salt Lake City, officials have committed to an innovative transit plan that, according to Leinberger, includes a sensible mix of transportation options. Officials there looked 20-years into the development-as-usual future and didn't like what they saw. And as local governments rethink their highway-obsession, there are huge and wide openings for progressive and grassroots groups, such as the Transportation Equity Network, to make a difference, others said.

"Rail transit and bike lanes are far cheaper on a per household basis. We can build them, we must build them," Leinberger said. "It's just that we've got to get out of this old mindset that says 'let's just keep building roads.'"

Photo credit: Flickr user MVI