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bostonmacosx t1_j7qf37v wrote

Reply to comment by Significant_Shake_71 in These housing numbers are insane. In some towns the cost to buy a house is 10x the average salary. by LopsidedWafer3269

Downvote central here I go:

I'm out on that....urban sprawl should not be left unchecked....people who like cities great but not everything should be a city......developers are predatory...period...we've done enough damage to our world to just keep paving everything over and saying isn't is lovely...

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his_dark_magician t1_j7uzmyo wrote

Urban sprawl is a logical fallacy people tell themselves in order to deny Black people lines of credit to purchase homes. Humans have lived in cities since antiquity - Nubia, Egypt, Sumeri, Indus River, Cararabe, Olmec. Living in a city has a lower ecological impact for a number of reasons but primarily because people live closer together. The less space between your house and mine, the more space for nature to do her thing. Climate change and ecological balance affect everyone because they are a part of the human condition. In order to survive climate change, more people are moving to cities globally. Any policy that doesn’t rationally embrace those trends, is going to swim against a global storm.

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bostonmacosx t1_j7v2ocl wrote

Cities account for over 70% of global CO2 emissions, most of which come from industrial and motorized transport systems that use huge quantities of fossil fuels and rely on far-flung infrastructure constructed with carbon-intensive materials.

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his_dark_magician t1_j7whxig wrote

Yeah, because more humans live in cities than rural areas definitionally, so of course the environmental consequences for human life are greater. The one depends on the other.

Any serious policy to help humans generally or Americans specifically live a carbon-neutral, ecologically sustainable way of life needs to account for how people live right now. That’s the starting point to an effective policy.

If your plan is for Americans who lives in cities to become nomadic herbivores who ride draft animals, that’s a serious change from our current way of life. Would we have grazing rights? What about right of ways for our noble steeds?

The reality is that many rural areas are desertifying and other rural areas have barred themselves from developing further, so the options on the table are die or move to a city. People are pretty resourceful and open-minded when the alternative is “or death.” Eddie Izzard said it better.

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closerocks t1_j7qq9ok wrote

I agree that urban sprawl and all of its secondary effects such as light and air pollution, should be constrained. At the same time, urban apartments can never be cheap enough to make it worth living there and a public transit only environment would make it hard to escape cities.

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3720-To-One t1_j83y1hy wrote

You realize that per capita, cities are far less polluting than suburban sprawl?

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