IN DEFENSE OF CITIES
Credit: VerticalCity.org.
I am an urban dweller.
I was born and raised in Shanghai, after which I lived in Hong Kong for three years and then in London for five before settling in New York in 1960. Since the late 1970s when China opened to the world, I’ve pretty much split my days between Shanghai and Manhattan. Along the way I’ve spent a good deal of time in Paris, Zurich, and Pacific Rim cities like Kuching and Kota Kinabulu in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo, not to mention Beijing, Tianjin, and a host of other large -- and growing -- Chinese cities.
What I like about cities is their efficiency and adjacencies and the sheer convenience of being able to move around on foot or public transit, quickly and inexpensively, without ever having to own a car. I like the rich variety, interest, and excitement – the fun – of city life, and the opportunities for social interaction in restaurants, concerts, parks, or in spontaneous exchanges on the street. Rather than being isolated in a car, wasting and polluting precious hours while commuting back and forth to work, pulling into a driveway, and disappearing into a single family house sealed off behind a tidy green lawn and white picket fence, urban living offers a real sense of community. From an environmental perspective, the American dream is a petrol-dependent nightmare.
I’m sure there are people who would disagree with me particularly in the United States where, dating back to Thomas Jefferson, there’s been a widespread misapprehension about cities as centers of unhealthiness and vice. Many environmentalists reinforce this anti-urban bias. Cities, they say, are the greatest energy consumers and the greatest polluters on Earth. It’s true. Cities currently cover only about three percent of the planet yet they devour the lion’s share of its natural resources and emit about eighty percent of global carbon dioxide and significant amounts of other greenhouse gases. But by the yardstick of the individual, the picture is very different. The per capita energy use of dense cities like New York is significantly lower than elsewhere in the country; it might come as a surprise that the highest per capita consumption is in the wide-open plains of Wyoming. Typical New Yorkers consume far less electricity and gasoline and use far less water than their suburban counterparts. They occupy less land, produce less waste, produce lower noxious emissions, and in general inflict less damage on the environment. Clearly at this point of our imperiled ecology, we need to learn the lessons that such cities can teach.
We no longer have the luxury of thinking about such problems, least of all about their solutions, in isolated terms. This is a war – a battle for survival – that will not be won in small uncoordinated skirmishes. It is not just an issue of per capita usages but of global stewardship, reduction, conservation, and commitment. It is neither reasonable, nor possible, to stop human energy consumption. But we can use our resources more intelligently, more sustainably. We have the knowledge and the wherewithal and, with the right leadership, we have the ability to succeed. We need to revisit familiar patterns and determine whether they are valid or destructive and merely sanctioned by habit. We must understand and embrace the need for change and give full rein to our imagination so that we may benefit from new and emerging technologies and creative ideas. We can no longer live our lives without regard to how we impact the environment.
Nor can we feel self-satisfied in our new Green awareness and determination to curtail or halt environmentally damaging actions. For the sake of our children, it is not enough to just settle for doing less bad; we must reformulate the equation to make a positive contribution. We have no choice but to turn things around. Why not take the best aspects of human habitation from wherever in the world they might occur, fuel them with imagination to create new possibilities, and adopt new paradigms for modern life?
That is what Vertical City is really all about.
This article was archived on December 18, 2015.
I was born and raised in Shanghai, after which I lived in Hong Kong for three years and then in London for five before settling in New York in 1960. Since the late 1970s when China opened to the world, I’ve pretty much split my days between Shanghai and Manhattan. Along the way I’ve spent a good deal of time in Paris, Zurich, and Pacific Rim cities like Kuching and Kota Kinabulu in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo, not to mention Beijing, Tianjin, and a host of other large -- and growing -- Chinese cities.
What I like about cities is their efficiency and adjacencies and the sheer convenience of being able to move around on foot or public transit, quickly and inexpensively, without ever having to own a car. I like the rich variety, interest, and excitement – the fun – of city life, and the opportunities for social interaction in restaurants, concerts, parks, or in spontaneous exchanges on the street. Rather than being isolated in a car, wasting and polluting precious hours while commuting back and forth to work, pulling into a driveway, and disappearing into a single family house sealed off behind a tidy green lawn and white picket fence, urban living offers a real sense of community. From an environmental perspective, the American dream is a petrol-dependent nightmare.
I’m sure there are people who would disagree with me particularly in the United States where, dating back to Thomas Jefferson, there’s been a widespread misapprehension about cities as centers of unhealthiness and vice. Many environmentalists reinforce this anti-urban bias. Cities, they say, are the greatest energy consumers and the greatest polluters on Earth. It’s true. Cities currently cover only about three percent of the planet yet they devour the lion’s share of its natural resources and emit about eighty percent of global carbon dioxide and significant amounts of other greenhouse gases. But by the yardstick of the individual, the picture is very different. The per capita energy use of dense cities like New York is significantly lower than elsewhere in the country; it might come as a surprise that the highest per capita consumption is in the wide-open plains of Wyoming. Typical New Yorkers consume far less electricity and gasoline and use far less water than their suburban counterparts. They occupy less land, produce less waste, produce lower noxious emissions, and in general inflict less damage on the environment. Clearly at this point of our imperiled ecology, we need to learn the lessons that such cities can teach.
We no longer have the luxury of thinking about such problems, least of all about their solutions, in isolated terms. This is a war – a battle for survival – that will not be won in small uncoordinated skirmishes. It is not just an issue of per capita usages but of global stewardship, reduction, conservation, and commitment. It is neither reasonable, nor possible, to stop human energy consumption. But we can use our resources more intelligently, more sustainably. We have the knowledge and the wherewithal and, with the right leadership, we have the ability to succeed. We need to revisit familiar patterns and determine whether they are valid or destructive and merely sanctioned by habit. We must understand and embrace the need for change and give full rein to our imagination so that we may benefit from new and emerging technologies and creative ideas. We can no longer live our lives without regard to how we impact the environment.
Nor can we feel self-satisfied in our new Green awareness and determination to curtail or halt environmentally damaging actions. For the sake of our children, it is not enough to just settle for doing less bad; we must reformulate the equation to make a positive contribution. We have no choice but to turn things around. Why not take the best aspects of human habitation from wherever in the world they might occur, fuel them with imagination to create new possibilities, and adopt new paradigms for modern life?
That is what Vertical City is really all about.
This article was archived on December 18, 2015.