Green Metropolis: What The City Can Teach The Country About True Sustainability

While the conventional wisdom condemns it as an environmental nightmare, Manhattan is by far the greenest place in America, argues this stimulating eco-urbanist manifesto. According to Owen ("Sheetrock and Shellac"), staff writer at the "New Yorker", New York City is a model of sustainability: its extreme density and compactnessand horrifically congested trafficencourage a carfree lifestyle centered on walking and public transit; its massive apartment buildings use the heat escaping from one dwelling to warm the ones adjoining it; as a result, he notes, New Yorkers per capita greenhouse gas emissions are less than a third of the average Americans. The author attacks the powerful anti-urban bias of American environmentalists like Michael Pollan and Amory Lovins, whose rurally situated, auto-dependent Rocky Mountain Institute he paints as an ecological disaster area. The environmental movements disdain for cities and fetishization of open space, backyard compost heaps, locavorism and high-tech gadgetry like solar panels and triple-paned windows is, he warns, a formula for wasteful sprawl and green-washed consumerism. Owens lucid, biting prose crackles with striking facts that yield paradigm-shifting insights. The result is a compelling analysis of the worlds environmental predicament that upends orthodox opinion and points the way to practical solutions.