Green Cities
8 million New Yorkers use only 301 square miles, which comes to less than 1/40th of an acre a person. Even supposedly green Portland, Ore., is using up more than 6 times as much land a person than New York.
Less than 1/3 of New Yorkers drive to work. Nationwide, more than 7 out of 8 commuters drive. More than 1/3 of all the public transportation commuters in America live in the 5 boroughs. Matthew Kahn estimates that NY has by a wide margin the least gas usage per capita of all American metropolitan areas. DOE data confirm that NY State’s energy consumption is next to last in the country because of NYC.
In the 1960s, an environmental anti-growth movement managed to shut off development in the San Francisco Bay area. But they did not stop development spreading to eastern California, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.
In many cases, development occurred in places that were less dense and that had less public transit than the older places that the environmentalists had protected.
A local approach can do more harm than good because dense areas are rich in protesters who push new housing out to where there are fewer people to oppose it.