Why read Green Metropolis?

Book cover of Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability

Book description

In this remarkable challenge to conventional thinking about the environment, David Owen argues that the greenest community in the United States is not Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York, New York. Most Americans think of crowded cities as ecological nightmares, as wastelands of concrete and garbage and diesel…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Green Metropolis as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Mary Soderstrom

Author

David Owen cares about cities and climate change, but the solution he suggests may seem counter-intuitive. At least it seemed so to me, until I began to look around at my own relatively sustainable city, Montreal. Owen argues that dense cities are really more environmentally friendly than spread out ones, and if we're going to get a handle on carbon emissions we are going to have to live closer together. He doesn't advocate high rises all over as Le Corbusiier would, but a mixture of housing heights tied to effective public transportation. He presents workable ideas that can change the…

From Mary's list on to design a workable, walkable, wonderful city.