Greening the City

Cities have a bad reputation. It is in the city that crime rates are high and the streets are dark and forbidding. In modern mythology, the city is the place of Metropolis, Batman, the Godfather gangs, shootouts, drug lords, and the nightmare landscape of Escape from New York. It is a terrible, inhuman place, a place to leave for the clean air and safe surroundings of the countryside.

There is a good deal of irony in all of this. The clean and safe surroundings of the countryside have become the sprawling suburbs of big box stores, acres of parking lots, unwalkable streets, and traffic jams. And the cities have begun to take the lead in promoting a sustainable way of life. Here are three recent examples:

• At a recent Climate Protection Summit convened by the National Conference of Mayors, one speaker after another described how his or her city was rethinking neighborhood planning, public transit, and shopping—creating mixed-use, livable neighborhoods that are easy to reach and navigate without a car. The consensus was that cities must take the lead in becoming sustainable, if they are to have a future.
• Many of the most innovative green neighborhood groups are based in cities. A partial listing will be found under "Links—Urban Green Programs" in the right-hand column.
• New York City, whose residents already use public transit more than most Americans, will soon have a fully hybrid taxi fleet, which will lower the city's greenhouse gas emissions and save money and fuel for cab drivers.

The irony is that cities, for all their bad reputation, have always had the potential to be sustainable in ways that standard American suburbs could never be. And as they become sustainable, they will almost certainly become livable in ways that would surprise the people who fled them for suburbs that are becoming less viable with every increase in the price of gasoline.