These maps reveal something that even a lot of environmentally-minded urbanists miss: even short of getting people to switch from cars to transit, density dramatically reduces emissions by allowing for *shorter* car trips. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Just look at Los Angeles or Houston: most people in the green are car-dependent, but they make shorter trips owing to being physically closer to job centers and daily goods/services. Even car-oriented density, suboptimal though it may be for other reasons, is a big emissions win.
@mnolangray And yet the idea that more people should be able to live in the green areas is very controversial, in some circles. Weird.
@mnolangray Not an expert by any means but this came up frequently in the transportation policy class I took. Probably the simplest thing to reduce vehicle emissions is to literally build things closer to each other. We found out that a lot of transportation issues are land use issues.
@mnolangray @JewishWonk Could everyone stop sharing paywalled articles? All it is, is an ad, I block ads.
@mnolangray @jbouie Density does that but not in a scalable manner, and in cities like LA and Houston it’s clear the actual force at play is environmental race and classism- put the polluting centers in low-rent and outlying areas, but they’re still there
@mnolangray @bradplumer I wonder to what extent these graphics include emissions related to people flying. A lot of people that live in close in neighborhoods may drive less but they may also fly dramatically more than less affluent folks living further out.
@mnolangray @jbouie Thanks! A perfect source for my class at a perfect moment.
@mnolangray @bradplumer Nice article! Well done. Perhaps you could do some kind of article on how we homeowners could get the most reduction for dollars spent.(including tax incentives). That’s not straightforward to know. Thanks Rick H
@mnolangray I don't understand how they have data on each neighborhoods commuting, like one neighborhood south of mine is much greener, but the houses and lots are bigger, and it would seem to have a similar commute.
@mnolangray that comes back to bite tho bc then agencies use that excuse to build new roads that shorten trips