From the New Urban News comes this nugget:
Researchers presented findings at the Congress for the New Urbanism annual conference that show substantial energy savings from higher-density urbanism -- greater savings than can be achieved from the US government Energy Star program.
As the chart on the left shows (if you can read it -- sorry it's so small), even small increases in density can yield substantial energy savings; increasing residential density from 3 housing units per acre to 6 units per acre actually saves more energy than the average efficiency boost provided by Energy Star appliances.
Now, this shouldn't be much of a surprise, since it's been well established for decades that people who live in compact neighborhoods drive much less than people who live in more sparsely populated suburbs. Still, it's an important reminder: Neighborhood design is a powerful determinant of how much energy we use.
But for some reason, when people talk about making our transportation system more fuel efficient, they typically talk about improving the efficiency of vehicles, rather than of neighborhoods. Efficient vehicles have a high-tech cachet, I guess. But if anything, efficient neighborhoods are even more important than efficient vehicles. Hybrids and biodiesel vehicles do save fossil fuels and reduce pollution, obviously; but by reducing how much people need to drive, efficent neighborhoods not only save fuel, but also reduce other costly externalities, ranging from highway spending to car crashes.
Comments
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bhurley Posted 6:30 am
06 Jul 2005
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jdhlax Posted 7:58 am
06 Jul 2005
Living in extreme density is highly unpleasant for many people, myself included. I currently live in San Francisco, not by choice, and I liked living in Berkeley and Oakland much better. One reason is that they are far less densely populated and have much more vegetation, especially Berkeley.
We cannot "urban plan" our way out of the overpopulation problem. The only meaningful solution is to greatly lower the human population. The only reliable and humane way to do so is to empower women, the vast majority of whom do not want to spend their lives pregnant, in childbirth, and raising hordes of children, by giving them free birth control and abortion on demand with no restrictions, and to add a strict one-child policy to that choice.
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cdmiller Posted 9:07 am
07 Jul 2005
Is Air conditioning use factored into this study? I know lots of country folks who go without AC, and many city folks who claim they can't live without AC.
Telecommuting could reduce daily work travel without a need for increased density...
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