Going on a Diet, Working at Krispy Kreme Newsflash! Sprawl drowns polar bears! More concretely, sprawl makes it hard to hit climate targets, as Eric de Place notes: Building new road capacity in lightly developed areas is like begging for sprawl — and that directly undermines our attempts to put the brakes on greenhouse gases. It’s a bit like promising to go on a diet and then taking a job at Krispy Kreme. We’ve known for quite some time that land use planning has a profound impact on transportation, energy use and other aspects of our ecological footprints. Mixed-use density is one of the best levers for creating urban sustainability. What will that density look like? Well, it can come in many different forms: check out this awesome Lincoln Institute field guide to density (free reg required), which shows that there are a multitude of lifestyles which good planning can accommodate. Just because we’re not living in McMansions doesn’t mean we’re crammed like rats in a cage. Dense urban living and the good life rhyme. Your body is a Temple When we think of the horrific ecological legacies the 20th Century left behind it, we tend to focus on the… (more)
(Posted by Alex Steffen in Media at 2:53 PM)