Seattle is a green city, and not just because it rains a lot. Maybe it’s our extraordinary landscape, maybe it’s our history, maybe it’s a combination of these and other factors, but Seattle and its surrounding communities have long been politically green, and profoundly so. Except, it appears, when it comes to the thorny issue of urban density.
Counterintuitive as it may seem, the densest urban communities are also the greenest, making the most efficient use of both landscape and energy, a fact brought home by a recent study that compares the relative CO2 emissions between cities and their surrounding suburbs. Not surprisingly, our nation’s densest city is also by far our most energy efficient, with a CO2 emission differential of nearly 7 tons annually between the average city resident and that of the typical suburbanite.
In almost every metropolitan area, we found the central city residents emitted less carbon than the suburban counterparts. In New York and San Francisco, the average urban family emits more than two tons less carbon annually because it drives less.
[…] But cars represent only one-third of the gap in carbon emissions between New Yorkers and their suburbanites. The gap in electricity usage between New York City and its suburbs is also about two tons. The gap in emissions from home heating is almost three tons. All told, we estimate a seven-ton difference in carbon emissions between the residents of Manhattan’s urban aeries and the good burghers of Westchester County. Living surrounded by concrete is actually pretty green. Living surrounded by trees is not.
The policy prescription that follows from this is that environmentalists should be championing the growth of more and taller skyscrapers. Every new crane in New York City means less low-density development. The environmental ideal should be an apartment in downtown San Francisco, not a ranch in Marin County.
Of course, New York is the extreme, and due to our lower densities, temperate climate, and anemic, bus-centric transit system, the CO2 emission differential between Seattleites and our suburban counterparts is substantially less, amounting to about 2.5 tons annually per capita. But that’s a significant savings nonetheless, and one that will only increase as we let go of our single family home ideal, and eventually build up a denser, more energy efficient Seattle.
The shift to electric light rail will also make a huge difference, both by moving trips from cars to transit, and by shifting transit to cleaner electric power. In fact, one of the more interesting details in the study is that Seattle, while generally in the middle of the pack on other metrics, ranks amongst the top five cities in terms of the current CO2 differential from public transit, with city dwellers annually emitting 2,600 pounds more CO2 per capita than their suburban counterparts. Of course this is more than offset by the CO2 savings from reduced driving, but our relatively meager overall differential on combined transportation related emissions demonstrates how much room there is for improvement both within and without the city center.
While public transportation certainly uses much less energy, per rider, than driving, large carbon reductions are possible without any switch to buses or rails. Higher-density suburban areas, which are still entirely car-dependent, still involve a lot less travel than the really sprawling places. This fact offers some hope for greens eager to reduce carbon emissions, since it is a lot easier to imagine Americans driving shorter distances than giving up their cars.
Of course, apartment life is not for everybody, and I certainly empathize with residents concerned that rezoning to higher densities will change the character of their neighborhoods, but Seattleites should stop kidding themselves that this resistance to change comes without an environmental cost. The Denny Party originally dubbed their new settlement New York Alki, “alki” being the Chinook word for “eventually” or “by and by.” If supposedly green Seattle really cares about maintaining the landscape and natural splendor that is so important to our quality of life, it is time we let go of our 1950’s mentality, and embraced a little more of the Denny’s 1850 vision.
I see in today’s news the sea level is rising faster and farther than scientists had predicted. So much for the Global Warming Deniers. I’m for tying Mark the Welsher’s neck to an anchor at the high tide mark and letting him see for himself how long it will take for him to drown. We’ll send someone to the beach twice a day to feed him, for as long as his head stays above water.
‘politically green’
Yeah, right. Kinda like a smelly mold, algae, or rotting moss that is. And no, I do not read rebuttals; especially from the unemployed and O.C.D. regulars here. Enjoy the sunshine!
Or until he pays his gambling debt, whichever occurs first.
@2 I’ve never seen algae in a settling pond owned by a Democrat, but I’ve seen lots of algae in settling ponds owned by Republicans.
Why do people come here from the east coast and tell us how to live?
A bus-centric transit system, good point. Too bad the history of the old system(good and bad) had been supressed by our local media and others. Not much of it gets mentioned. Ranier Ave used to be a streetcar route, and what density patterns it has are a legacy of that. Here is an interesting photo of a branch-line of the Seattle and Ranier Valley, my how much has changed since 1920. That school that towers over it’s surroundings is gone, but replaced. (Hawthorne Elementary)
http://content.lib.washington......ISOPTR=104
KOMO TV used to have an infomercial they did on different real estate environs around here, called Step One to Seattle and Step One to Tacoma. Maybe they should update it, a few changes have happened since 2000. SOUNDER is running more trains, and I noticed some development occurring around the station in Puyallup. At the time, I thought the guide was a poster child for sprawl, but in a way, it just shows the options.
Now an example of what Seattle lost by conceding to the automobile, as far as a streetcar map. This was the 1933 track map, look closely at some of the routes, many of them went to the city line. These routes also went up the hills that many rail critics today say rail can’t do. The Mt. Baker Route,(today’s 14-Trolleybus), at least had to get up Jackson Street. I find it hard to believe that the Madrona Park line was a streetcar then myself, it is a steep route. Queen Anne Hill was assisted by the Counterbalance. The reason there was no route except the Interurban North of 85th Street, was that beyond that, was not part of the city at the time. Yesler, James, and Madison Streets were Cable Car lines. The guy who oversaw the ripping up of that operation, went down to San Francisco and tried to get rid of the Cable Cars there, he failed.
http://www.oddmart.com/wp-cont.....p-1260.png
@5 You mean like the Denny Party showing up and telling the Duwamish how to live?
@5
Have the Gov. show your picture a poster child of Washington State. This will stop everyone from moving here.
@6 No, Cascadian, that is not what I meant.
Cascadian, good point, but in the Conservative Point of View, that was the right thing to do, as the Duwamish were not with society. Now we do honor the Duwaimsh, the city is named in honor of their Chief, and the SFD has had two fireboats honoring the tribe, the Duwamish(moored at Northwest Seaport in South Lake Union, next to war veteran tugboat Arthur Foss), and Chief Seattle(soon to be the department’s freshwater boat, replacing the Alki).
8)Sometimes perceptions of the Government are not enough to drive people away. Everybody is entitled to their opinion.
New Jersey is supposedly a corrupt place if you believe all the stories, but it seems to be a pretty good state otherwise. New Jersey Transit is a pretty good system that covers pretty much the entire state, and it’s rail lines, are about to expand into Northern Pennsylvania to Scranton, and possibly deeper into the Lehigh Valley. It’s one of the reasons they are purchasing Dual-Mode Locomotives(to avoid Changing trains at Newark, Diesels are not allowed in NYP, the LD Trains switch locomotives just after leaving the tunnel. When I road the Broadway Limited, it was at Philadelphia) and pushing for expanding the Hudson River Tunnels(rail proponents have a problem with that one. It was supposed to be capacity expansion into Penn Station, but the new tunnels will go to a mostly isolated annex being built near Penn Station). What would be a local example would be if it were possible to bring back the stub-ended platforms at Union Station, and selling it as capacity expansion for King Street Station(by the way, the 1960s modernization of the station is being ripped up, and restored to it’s original glory. That includes getting rid of the concrete/asphalt roof, and putting in some kind of faux Terra Cotta surfaces)
http://i25.photobucket.com/alb.....C00212.jpg
(This photo is not exactly good quality, I took it from a bus last week, as I was passing by)
Sometimes progress ends up doing damage to a good thing. Needs to be a balance between urban and rural, progress and preservation. If the attitudes of the left and right are any example, we will never see that.
My apologies, if I seemed a little peeved at Goldy. I understand that Goldy lives in Rainier Valley. The Rainier Valley where I grew up still had farms. Across Empire Way, now MLK Jr. Way, between Orcas and Graham was one such farm. We used to jump from the loft in the barn onto the haystack below. Just to the south of the pasture land was a five acre pond surrounded by woods where we once rowed a small boat and fished. West across Empire from that farm, nestled against the Columbia greenhouses, hidden behind the Hilltop nursing home, was another such farm with livestock and a duck pond. It’s all gone now. It became apartment buildings, a super market and strip malls. A big improvement, I’m sure. Goldy wasn’t around to see these changes. When he calls for further density, he likely doesn’t understand what we’ve already lost and how much some of us might miss the Seattle that used to be.
There was once a Seattle that you’ll never know, Goldy. That’s a shame. It was a minor league city, a provincial town, and we’d say, “I’m from Seattle, Washington”, as though we had to throw in the name of the state so folks would know what the fuck we were talking about. Sigh!
11 Steve, there’s still some of what you describe within a dozen or so miles of Seattle. Concentrating development in already-urban areas is the only hope we have of preserving any of it.
I’m with you though. I’m also old enough to remember the Seattle you describe. Some of it was pretty nice. At the same time, there were also such delights as the humongous garbage dumps in Interbay and east of the UW campus, and smog so thick that sometimes you couldn’t see more than a block downtown.
@12 “smog so thick”
I believe many Seattle homes had coal furnaces back then, fueled by the Enumclaw coal mines. There was a garbage dump down on Genesee, east of Rainier Ave. We tend to remember things as being better than they really were. I’ll tell you one thing though, with those Allisons and Rolls-Merlins, hydros really roared back in the day.
Steve @11,
What ArtFart @12 said. The pastoral Seattle is lost to history, but by concentrating density here, we can help preserve landscape elsewhere, while living and commuting more efficiently.
@14 Yes, I was there and saw it lost to history, which is a slightly different perspective than yours, Goldy. When you rally for Seattle density, how about at least tipping your hat to what we’ve lost and to what we’ll continue to lose – the character of our neighborhoods and our city. Right now you strike me as saying good ridd… Oh, forget it. Do what you will with Seattle. Fuck it.
Sorry about that.
Steve @15,
What did I write…?
I dunno… sounds like a tip of my hat to me.
13 Well, I’m talking about the 50’s. Don’t know if coal was that much of a factor by then. However–OK, I’ll have to admit here that I grew up on Magnolia, where the primary religion has always been Republican…but from my parents’ house it was possible to watch every morning as the Bethlehem Steel mill and the various factories and shipyards on Harbor Island would crank up and belch great clouds of smoke that the prevailing wind would blow across the bay and pack against First Hill until downtown was blanketed. A similar phenomenon to the north would spread the smoke from US Plywood and the Maltese Cross shingle mill over Ballard and Phinney Ridge.
@17 Yeah, a hat tip. Good of you, Goldy. Character of the neighborhoods. Too bad you never saw the farms of Rainier Valley. The view of Mt. Rainier looming above the misty pastures was sight to see.
I apologised at 16, although I let the post @15 stand rather than delete it. It wasn’t a great post but it honestly conveyed my frustration with the changes I’ve seen.
@18 “Well, I’m talking about the 50’s. Don’t know if coal was that much of a factor by then.”
Magnolia likely had different furnaces than the homes in my part of town. We all had coal chutes and bins. Monthly coal delivery. First thing on a cold winter morning, stoke the furnace to get the place warmed up. It was in the 50’s and 60’s that homes were converted to electric and gas. I believe Seattle Steam Company had coal fired plants for many decades. It was Seattle Steam that heated the Belltown apartment buildings, the downtown office and retail buildings, even the old hospitals on the hill.
Of course, apartment life is not for everybody, and I certainly empathize with residents concerned that rezoning to higher densities will change the character of their neighborhoods, but Seattleites should stop kidding themselves that this resistance to change comes without an environmental cost.
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But rezoning to higher densities has had a higher cost in Seattle – more traffic and less livability. In North Seattle, condo/apartment complexes with retail on the first floor have grown like weeds along many main arterials and popular locations such as Green Lake. The result has been a marked increase in traffic that has resulted in substantial congestion where it never existed and use of residential streets to by-pass it. Mega complexes on the east side of Green Lake will dump a large number of cars onto nearby streets when they are filled (which may be awhile, since they were planned during the bubble). Ditto the immense project just south of Northgate. We have been in the Green Lake area for many years and the notion that higher density has a positive environmental impact is not at all supported by the data there.
@21 And I bet parking is a bitch as well. Oh, that’s right, our resident social engineer, Goldy, wants us to get rid of our cars.
I knew Seattle was fucked when it took me over an hour to get from the top of Queen Anne to downtown. Or how it now takes an hour to get on the freeway after leaving from a building on 8th and Olive – and the fucking freeway is only five blocks away!!
@4
“Roger Rabbit spews:
@2 I’ve never seen algae in a settling pond owned by a Democrat.”
Democrats rent they own nothing.
Your funny…
@21 And I bet parking is a bitch as well.
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That’s right, depending on your location. In our neck of the woods, northwest of Green Lake, the community has had a number of meetings with Paul Fischburg, who is with the city’s Office of Policy & Management regarding condo/retail development along Aurora just north of the lake. Fischburg was heavily involved with the development of the mega complex just south of Northgate:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....ate26.html
What clearly emerged from these sometimes contentious meetings was that city thinking was completely divorced from the impact on the neighborhoods of 50 or 60 foot buildings, and the impact of the additional traffic on residential parking, congestion, and residential street cut through. This despite the fact anyone who has lived in the area for more than five or ten years has seen traffic increase in leaps and bounds from the high density development that has already taken place. The city is way out of touch with the neighborhoods on this issue.
Ah the good old days. When a few days of stagnant air mass gave us the pleasure of the scent from the rendering plant wafting through town…
I’m not a fan of highrises. Just not. I note that much of New York is rowhousing. Same with DC. It really seems silly to me that by gum I want my four walls, with inefficient energy use, just do I can look into my neighbor’s bedroom window 4 feet away.
I realize that even NYC does not come close to Tokyo say, but can we get there reasonably? And, can we have the transit to support it? And, can people PLEASE freakin’ move closer to work? Like if you work at that campus in Redmond, build yourselves a new town and go live there.
25 Ha! Don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but the people who “work at that campus in Redmond” have their own whole fleet of company-owned buses to ride in. Apparently having their own private VIP lounge at the Overlake P&R and Sound Transit gerrymandering its routes to pick them up (like that cute 15 minute loop the 545 takes up “the hill” before getting on the freeway) wasn’t cool enough.
Urban density reduces heating costs via some simple physics. Think of your house as a box with six sides: you lose heat on all six faces. In a duplex, one side is shared so that you gain from them as much as you lose to them–making yours effectively a five-sided box. In an apartment, five of your six sides may similarly cancell out so that you are really losing only one-sixth as much as a standalone house.
Of course, if you opt for a top-floor corner apartment, you are back up to losing on three sides.
27 Think of “urban villages” as kind of like going camping with someone you love and sharing a sleeping bag…