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A few thousand years ago, man discovered how to store surplus supplies of food and how to transport water, leaving him free to move from the farm to the city (long story short, of course). Since then, two opposing schools of thought have remained at loggerheads in community development circles: urban verus non-urban living.

This debate on the merits of these lifestyles has been generally characterized by personal preferences, such as access to trade, culture, space and nature. Today, new considerations for environmental sustainability and the urgency associated with global climate change suggest that where one lives is also a moral decision—one that will ultimately affect the ability for current and future generations to sustain themselves with adequate, clean resources.

Preeminent thinkers on the matter are weighing in more directly than ever and seem to favor the view of city proponents. In a bluntly titled article, "Help the environment, stay in the city", esteemed Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser writes, “Americans who settle in leafy, low-density suburbs will leave a significantly deeper carbon footprint, it turns out, than Americans who live cheek by jowl in urban towers.” He goes on to describe the conclusions of his recent study, which estimated the amount of carbon dioxide that an average household would emit if it settled in each of the 66 major metropolitan areas in the United States. The findings show that cities in coastal California have relatively low household emissions due to temperate climates. However, dense urban living in central cities, like Manhattan, fosters the greenest lifestyle in America. According to Glaeser, if you want to preserve nature, stay away from it, which amounts to an explicit if somewhat counterintuitive call for treehuggers to suddenly embrace asphalt and skyscrapers instead.

And it's not just the environmentalists who are thrown. Not surprisingly, phrases like “dense urban living” tend to frighten folks emphatically tied to their farm, gated community or single-family home nestled within vast open spaces. Accordingly, crafty land-use policy wonks and urban designers use other terms like “compact development”, “infill”, “new urbanism”, “strategic growth”, and “smart growth” to lull the masses into efficient planning submission. The lure of smart growth, according to a study by Brian Stone, professor of city and regional planning at Georgia Tech, is that it helps reduce emissions “by allowing people to travel less often, travel shorter distances when they do travel, and take advantage of public transit.” Stone argues that all of these advantages lead to lower overall emissions—more so even than replacing traditional cars with hybrid vehicles while retaining the same sprawling land-use patterns.

Notions like these aren’t just shelved deep in environmental journals these days. In fact, lawmakers at all levels of government, from Obama to small-town mayors, are initiating land-use and community-development initiatives that favor the city approach. Many public initiatives seek to curtail sprawl, create walkable central communities, and reduce demand on inefficient energy and infrastructure systems, while also preserving open space and natural habitats. For example, February 2009 marked the first meeting of California’s Strategic Growth Council, which is charged by Governor Schwarzenegger and the legislature to improve air and water quality, protect natural resources and agricultural lands, improve transportation systems and assist state and local entities in the planning of sustainable communities. Several pieces of recent legislation in California, such as Senate Bill 375, reveal a strong state preference for increasing population density in urban areas rather than developing non-urban areas. These initiatives are being coupled with significant grant money to prompt smart-growth practices, illustrating the extent to which the paradigm shift has taken hold.

Of course, some people simply don’t want to live in a city. The problem is, as more and more studies show, the true costs of the resource inefficiencies inherent in sprawling low-density community designs are never reflected in the bills that end up in mailboxes perched above white picket fences. Therefore, those who despise the hustle and bustle of the urban lifestyle are very unlikely to feel compelled, or even willing, to downsize, pack up and move to a city. It is the latent realization of these mounting unpaid costs that now prompt governments to invest in central cities and find ways to direct people toward them. While unclear how large an investment such a daunting task will ultimately require, inaction will inevitably cost more.

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