Mythbuster: Why Cities Are Cleaner Than Suburbs
Catie Park
Professor Aaron Krall
English 161
12 March 2013
Mythbuster: Are Suburbs Really Cleaner than Cities? The beautiful scenery of American suburbs persuades us that suburbs are cleaner than cities. Since greenery is more visually attractive than brownness filled with mobs of people and congestion, this claim must be true. Well, is it? Edward Glaeser and David Owen attempt to bust this myth through their works, Triumph of the City and Green Metropolis. They defy the myth and claim that suburbs are actually main culprits for increased carbon footprints in the United States. They attempt to provide compelling arguments of why and how cities are much more energy sufficient than suburbs. I support their ideas, because I also believe we can protect the environment more effectively in close proximity than wide sprawl from my own experiences of living in both Chicago and its northwest suburb. Urban lifestyle is a key to conservation. We must make necessary efforts to accept this counterintuitive fact and ultimately bring ourselves back to cities to sustain our planet earth. Before we discuss why cities are cleaner than suburbs, we must first acknowledge how sprawl began and what made Americans fall in love with suburban lifestyle. According to Glaeser, it is largely due to public policies in the late twentieth century (193). Our government made a mistake by restricting developments in urban centers and encouraging new developments outside of cities. It caused the cost of living in cities to skyrocket, and people got pushed out to suburbs for cheaper housing (191). When there is a large supply of housing built in a particular region, its price of housing becomes affordable. People respond well to this elastic housing supply by moving to into such area to benefit from cheaper housing, and this is how American suburbanization began (190). The emergence of inexpensive automobiles accelerated suburbanization, since people were able to enjoy living in trees and
Professor Aaron Krall
English 161
12 March 2013
Mythbuster: Are Suburbs Really Cleaner than Cities? The beautiful scenery of American suburbs persuades us that suburbs are cleaner than cities. Since greenery is more visually attractive than brownness filled with mobs of people and congestion, this claim must be true. Well, is it? Edward Glaeser and David Owen attempt to bust this myth through their works, Triumph of the City and Green Metropolis. They defy the myth and claim that suburbs are actually main culprits for increased carbon footprints in the United States. They attempt to provide compelling arguments of why and how cities are much more energy sufficient than suburbs. I support their ideas, because I also believe we can protect the environment more effectively in close proximity than wide sprawl from my own experiences of living in both Chicago and its northwest suburb. Urban lifestyle is a key to conservation. We must make necessary efforts to accept this counterintuitive fact and ultimately bring ourselves back to cities to sustain our planet earth. Before we discuss why cities are cleaner than suburbs, we must first acknowledge how sprawl began and what made Americans fall in love with suburban lifestyle. According to Glaeser, it is largely due to public policies in the late twentieth century (193). Our government made a mistake by restricting developments in urban centers and encouraging new developments outside of cities. It caused the cost of living in cities to skyrocket, and people got pushed out to suburbs for cheaper housing (191). When there is a large supply of housing built in a particular region, its price of housing becomes affordable. People respond well to this elastic housing supply by moving to into such area to benefit from cheaper housing, and this is how American suburbanization began (190). The emergence of inexpensive automobiles accelerated suburbanization, since people were able to enjoy living in trees and