|
|
Limiting outward expansion can only work if towns and cities are
attractive and affordable places to live. There are a variety of
visions of "sustainable communities," but many share similar
characteristics: denser development around transit stations, a mix of
people of different ages and incomes, close-together
housing, mixed-use planning with residences above businesses
and close to shops, and green open spaces prominent throughout. In some
communities, undesirable land uses, such as incinerators, abandoned
industrial sites or dilapidated housing, must be eliminated first.
A major obstacle that opponents of sprawl face, says John Holtzclaw,
Club transportation committee chair, is the perception that density is
bad, that cities are undesirable places to live. "We've been bamboozled
into believing that we all want a single-family house with a yard to
mow," he says, "but when people understand the true costs of the status
quo and they are presented with attractive alternatives, they prefer
denser developments." In 1993, the city of Portland commissioned a
study in which 4,500 adults and children were asked to view and rank
slides of different kinds of urban and suburban neighborhoods.
Participants overwhelmingly chose compact communities, where grocery
stores were within walking distance, buildings were close to the
sidewalk and people interacted on the street.
Presenting a vision of sustainable communities and identifying and
promoting the incremental steps to get there is a core component of the
Club's work. For example, in New York City, Deling Wang, clean air and
energy co-chair of the New York City Group, and fellow transit
advocates are lobbying Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the city council for
more frequent bus service and bus stops that are well lighted and
visually attractive. Making the city more livable, she says, can
involve everything from making streets off-limits to cars to promoting
bicycle travel to improving existing bus routes. "An increase in
pedestrians and bicyclists means less pollution and more attractive and
livable cities," says Wang. "It's a small but productive step in the
right direction."
Creating livable cities is also an important focus of the Club's
environmental justice campaign, which is promoting affordable housing
and transportation and the cleanup of industrial waste.
More Sprawl
For contacts, publications and more information,
see the resource box
on the following page.
http://www.sierraclub.org/planet/199704/sprawl.asp
Up to Top
|
