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 @mtsw Reducing the frequency of car trips is also a big factor in making dense neighborhoods green. Being able to walk to a grocery store, park, restaurant, etc cuts my weekly trips substantially. And walkable neighborhoods are a much easier sell than mode-switching to transit.
@mnolangray Interesting how SF doesn’t even look that different from LA excluding the hills
@mnolangray but this is precisely the issue bc part of the reason that emissions are so much higher in those other places is that they tend to be designed to make driving easy by car expressly by limiting density & the lack of realistic options to driving means greater density = more cars.
@mnolangray It’s always fun to see maps of LA and the random sprawl of Torrance (and Carson).
@mnolangray Also what are the implications for homelessness here? As y’all’s report shows, Houston has dramatically decreased it. Does Houston land use policy potentially increase carbon emissions but also drastically decrease the cost of housing?
@mnolangray Does the sizing of housing also play a factor? My assumption is that the average household sq ft is larger in Houston than LA and therefore has higher daily energy costs.
@mnolangray I was surprised how many people in Santa Monica and particular parts of LA are car lite already. It's just hard to find us crowded amongst all the cars. 200,000 in LA without access to a car at all. 96% of cities have fewer than 50k total population.