http://www.scientificamerican.

com/article/the-myth-of-the-sustainable-city/
The Myth of the Sustainable City
Urban areas are usually celebrated for their energy efficiency and low per capita
carbon dioxide emissions, but such accounting ignores how and where they
acquire their resources
By John W. Day, Charles Hall on August 21, 2016
Scientific American
Excerpted from Americas Most Sustainable Cities and Regions: Surviving the
21st-Century Megatrends, by John W. Day and Charles Hall (with contributions
from Eric Roy, Matt Moerschbaecher, Chris DElia, David Pimentel and
Alejandro Yez). With permission of the publisher, Copernicus Books, a
Springer imprint. Copyright 2016. All Rights Reserved.
In spite of their enormous requirements for materials and energy, and
their enormous generation of wastes, many see urban living as the sustainable
future for most of humankind in the twenty-first century. But there are serious
issues for urban areas, especially very large ones in both the developed and
developing world, given the interrelated problems of climate change, and energy
and resource scarcity, and the importance of natural systems for society. These
interrelated problems will pose constraints for all of society, but they will be
much more challenging and difficult to solve for very large urban areas. Lets look
at this in more detail.
Cities are touted as efficient living areas compared with suburban and
rural areas. Why are cities considered as the solution to many of the problems
that we face in this century? The efficiency of mass transit, bicycles, and walking,
shorter commutes, and smaller more efficient living spaces are reasons often
cited. David Owen, in a well-quoted article in The New Yorker, wrote that the
average Manhattanite consumes petrol at a rate the country as a whole hasnt
matched since the 1920s. Owen goes on to state that eighty-two percent of
Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle or on foot or
ten times the rate for Americans in general. But in the greater New York City
area, 56% of residents drive to work. According to this same study, New York City
has the longest commute time at 35 min and the fifth highest congestion score of
the ten cities in the U.S. with the worst traffic. Elizabeth Farrelly writes in
Blubberland that density is the key to sustainability. If we were to design a green
settlement-pattern from scratch, it would not be suburbia, or urban villages, or
Greek fishing towns, or even say, Barcelona. It would be Manhattan. Manhattan
or something like it is the greenest city on earth. Is Manhattan really that
green? We will come back to the concept of green later, but one point is clear.
There will need to be fishing towns in Greece and many other places if the
millions inhabiting Manhattan want to continue to eat fish!
In Triumph of the City, economist Edward Glaeser states that New York
States per capita energy consumption is next to last in the country, which largely
reflects public transit use in New York City . Glaeser goes on to state traditional
cities have fewer carbon emissions because they dont require vast amounts of
driving. Fewer than a third of New Yorkers drive to work, while 86 percent of

American commuters drive. Twenty-nine percent of all the public-transportation

commuters in American live in New Yorks five boroughs. But is less driving the
reason New York State has low per capita carbon dioxide emissions? We will
come back to this question shortly.
In the spirit of the efficient and green city, Scientific American magazine
devoted an entire issue to the idea that cities are the future for mankind. It
featured a two-page spread (pp. 7475) entitled The Efficient City. The picture is
of a thoroughly modern high-density city with gleaming multistory buildings
interspersed with (relatively small) green spaces and clean streets with little
traffic. This city apparently doesnt have poor people as there is nothing that
looks like a low-rent district. Included in the example are a number of creative
solutions to reduce energy consumption, water use, waste and emissions. Some
of the features are solar power (photovoltaic, hot water heaters, and solar films),
high efficiency windows, carbon sequestering concrete, green roofs, vertical farms
(no need to depend on ecosystem services for this agriculture; we will come back
to the idea of urban farming in a later chapter on food), hybrid taxis,
underground and smart parking, irrigation systems controlled by satellites,
sewage sludge incineration, efficient appliances, and storm-surge gates to protect
low-lying parts of the city (especially important for New York and New Orleans,
two cities featured in the next chapter). Some of these solutions, such as solar
power, high efficiency windows, and efficient appliances, could be used for
suburbs and even rural areas, but high-density living likely does foster lower
direct energy use for transit and heating and cooling. However, almost all
gasoline consumed in the U.S. is consumed in metropolitan areas (in the broader
sense) because this is where most people live (see map below). In addition, there
are large indirect energy and material demands that are not often accounted for
in calculations of urban energy use. An example is all the energy and materials it
takes to get gasoline to an urban consumer, whether for a car or bus, (searching
for and drilling wells, pumping the oil to a refinery that converts the oil to
gasoline, and transporting the gas to a network of gas stations) and, in fact,
almost everything from building materials to artificial lighting to clothing to food
that is used in a city is produced elsewhere, often at high energy costs. The same
issues are at play on a global scale. When economists claim that the US economy
as a whole has become less energy intense (defined as energy used per unit of
gross domestic product or GDP), part of what they are really saying is that
energy-intensive and highly polluting industries such as aluminum- and steelmaking have been outsourced to regions and countries where labor is cheaper
and environmental regulations are less stringent. However, our need to consume
these imported products, often shipped over long distances, only increases, and
particularly in densely populated urban areas with the sophisticated
infrastructure of The Efficient City.
The red and orange areas on the map below showing high gasoline use
would overlay well on a map of the megaregions in the U.S. where the majority
of the population is located, showing that heavily populated areas burn more fuel.
Any proposals to reduce gasoline use need to focus on metropolitan areas.
Manhattan may have a high use of public transit, but what about the whole 21
million strong metro area in New York and northern New Jersey?

Lets come back to greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. Energy

Information Agency produced an inventory of direct carbon dioxide emissions by
state from 2000 to 2010. The information in this report is illuminating. If we look
at energy-related per capita carbon dioxide emissions by state in 2010 there are
some striking differences. At one end of the spectrum are states with high CO 2
emissions per person. Kentucky, Montana, Louisiana, West Virginia, Alaska, and
North Dakota all have emissions of more than 35 metric tons of CO 2 per person
with Wyoming being the highest at 118 tons per person. At the other end are
states with less than 15 tons per person. These include almost all of the northeast
states as well as California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Florida. New York is
last among the states at 8.8 tons per person. Only the District of Columbia is
lower at 5.4 tons per person.
If we look at how many tons of CO2 are generated per million dollars of
GDP, there are also some striking differences among states. Most of the states in
the Northeast plus Washington, Oregon, and California produce less than 350
tons of CO2 per million dollars of GDP. By contrast, Alaska, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Montana, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming all produce more than one
thousand tons CO2 per million dollars GDP. Thus, the states that have low per
capita direct emissions also produce less direct emissions per unit of GDP. And
the states that have high per capita direct emissions also have high direct
emissions for each million dollars of GDP.
Are there lessons that the folks in states like Louisiana, North Dakota, and
Kentucky can learn from people in New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont about
lowering their emissions and being more efficient? Yes and no.
Lower emissions are not necessarily due to the fact that people in New
York State, Vermont, or Massachusetts drive less or have smaller houses. And its
not necessarily because the average West Virginian, Louisianan, or Montanan
personally uses huge quantities of energy or drives long distances that they have
such high per capita total emissions. At least partially, it has to do with the nature
of the economy in the different states and the particular area (central city versus
suburbs) that is being considered.
Lets compare two states at different ends of the emissions spectrum, New
York and Louisiana. On average, New York annually produces about 10 metric
tons of CO2 per capita compared to about 50 tons per year for Louisiana. But
heres the most important difference in energy use between the two states: the
industrial sector. Each year, the industrial sector in Louisiana produces 128
million metric tons of CO2, compared to 9.1 million tons in New York. Texas is
even higher with 211 million tons. This is because Texas and Louisiana have the
highest concentration of refining and petrochemical industries in the nation.
But heres the key point. Very little of the energy and industrial products
produced in Louisiana, Texas, and North Dakota and similar states are used
personally by the citizens of these states. In addition to refining and
petrochemical industries, Texas and Louisiana are major producers of oil and
natural gas. Montana, Kentucky, and West Virginia produce a lot of coal. And
Alaska and North Dakota produce large quantities of petroleum. All of these
energy-intensive and polluting industries exist to meet demand for their products
all over the country, but particularly in urban population centers since this is

where most people live. This demand involves both direct and indirect uses,
including fertilizers on the farm for high-yield agriculture that is needed to feed
these urban populations. So, to be fair, most of the industrial CO2 emissions
should be removed from the balance sheets of Texas and Louisiana and other
energy states (where citizens use relatively little of what is produced) and added
to the emissions of the states that are end users, directly or indirectly, of the
products of energy production and industrial activity.