This seems timely. A comparison of Atlanta and Barcelona with respect to their impacts on climate change:
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These two cities illustrate a big piece of the climate change picture that gets much less attention than coal plants or hybrid cars: As the world urbanizes at break-neck speed, the way we design growing cities will heavily determine the environmental impact of the people who live there. And decisions we make today about where and how to invest in transportation will lock in those impacts for decades.
If the world’s cities develop like sprawling Atlanta, the area of urbanized land on the planet could triple from 2000 to 2030, according to the World Resources Institute report. The number of cars could double to 2 billion, as could the amount of land used globally per household.
The problems that would then arise would be both environmental and economic. We’d have to spend a lot more money paving roads and extending utilities to people who live farther apart than in close quarters. Houston, WRI points to as an example, spends about 14 percent of its GDP on transportation. Compact, bike-happy Copenhagen devotes about 4 percent.
The alternative to Atlanta doesn’t have to look like Manhattan (Barcelona is nowhere near as dense as that). And it would be hypocritical of Americans who already enjoy extensive road infrastructure, ubiquitous cars and spacious homes to now lecture the developing world that it can’t have the same. The fundamental issue here, though, isn’t about forcing everyone into high-rises or out of their cars and onto bicycles. It’s about planning for the growth to come instead of simply letting it happen haphazardly.
I don’t know where the Washington Post author gets by with alleging that Barcelona is nowhere as dense as Manhattan. It’s actually 1.77x as dense. Barcelona has a density of almost 33,000/sq km (5.33 million on 162 sq km), while Manhattan’s density is less than 19,000/sq km (1.62 million on 87 sq km). Both are very dense relative to urban averages generally. Barcelona demonstrates that high density doesn’t require high rises. Of course, we also know that Manhattan has one of the world’s highest concentrations of commercial buildings with no residents.
Jeffrey – your last sentence is the right answer. Manhattan has systematically reduced its residential population over the last century or so, for a variety of reasons (cholera, megaprojects, etc.). In fact, its current population is much lower than it was in the 1930s (>2,300,000 v. 1,620,000.) The boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens have absorbed most of that lost population, plus additional growth.
Interesting comparison. And interesting observation about city centres hollowing out. I was just in Barcelona and, talking to local academics and architects, they told me that Barcelona is also emptying out in the centre as the old city becomes increasingly a tourist resort, commercial/cultural playground, and locus of speculative development, and more and more people can’t afford housing in the centre so are moving further out to the periphery or to satellite areas. Another key contributing factor is the shift from industrial production to a knowledge- and entertainment-based service economy, which means old cities like BCN don’t need traditional workers (e.g. fishermen, maritime workers, skilled trades, factory labourers, etc.) living in the centre anymore, as these jobs have largely disappeared, at least from the centre. BCN is of course still very dense compared to say Atlanta (almost anywhere else would be too!), but the trends are troubling, even in this paragon of sustainable urbanism. It seems that the urbanizing pressures on land are growing everywhere, not just in the absurdly sprawling unsustainable conurbations of North America.
http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/national-post-editor-explains-why-many-his-colleagues-are-climate-change-deniers
I thought this was interesting. Quite the admission for an editor to make. Yet these GOM’s (Grumpy Old Men) soldier on. Sorta casts some doubt on some of their other theories and columns, no?