Cities are where it’s at. Or at least, it’s where we’re at. Collectively, as a species, we’re majority city dwellers. Over half of us humans are urbanites. Cities may also be where it’s at for saving the environment. Cities allow people to reduce their footprint more than rural or suburban living do for most people living in industrialized nations.

David Owen, author of Green Metropolis (great cover design by the way), decries the notion that cities represent the antithesis of environmental living – and the impulse to move toward nature in order save it. This isn’t news to any New Urbanists out there, but it’s still a deeply ingrained cultural notion for most of us: that cities represent the anti-thesis of a lived in respect for and in honor of nature. The book’s a fun read (I’ll admit I’m only part way through it), but two ideas in particular struck me.

Making green space can ruin your city

The first notable idea Owen lays out is that the environmental strategies that many urban enviros push will be a net-loss for the greening of cities. Specifically, he cites urban agriculture and tree-planting as a problem. In a nutshell: these strategies become infused with a general push for more green space, which in turn reduces density, increases walking distances and contributes to the sprawling infrastructure that makes auto-free living and multi-unit dwellings disappear.

As Detroit rises as a leader of the urban ag. movement for the nation, this warning bears a prominent place. Obviously, for Detroit, it’s a matter of making use of otherwise “blighted” spaces. But we must carry this reminder forward as we consider how to integrate green space in Detroit. It affirms that what we should be shooting for is not complete integration of green space into all portions of the city as much as focusing on creating dense urban clusters surrounded by green space. However, the organic development of space use makes this goal almost impossible to achieve well without very aggressive zoning.

While the right-sizing conversation floats forward in Detroit, this level of aggressive zoning is not currently on the table. While I agree that we have to have a graduated approach to this effort, and I’m dubious about top-down planning that thinks it can predict where everything should happen, unless we set the patterns and filters for creating the infrastructure to create actual density and keep it from sprawling into our green space, then our potential glory will pass us by.

Also, we must be aware of this difference of context when offering up Detroit’s solutions to other cities. Our context of extensive existing green space is different from most other urban centers.

Just to be fair, Owen is not anti-tree. He notes:

Planting tree along city streets, always a popular initiative, has high environmental utility, but not for the reasons that people assume: trees are ecologically important in dense urban areas not because they provide temporary repositories for atmospheric carbon–the usual argument for planting more of them–but because their presence along sidewalks makes city dwellers more cheerful about dwelling in cities.

However, the production and transport of food is one of our largest contributors to green house gases and other environmental degradation. Urban agriculture lends itself particularly well to providing organic, local, vegetable-based diets. As such, if properly integrated with urban density, it can still be a key solution for how cities and other communities address environmental issues.

Reducing crime to cut Green House Gases

Owen’s second striking notion is the need to focus on reducing crime and improving schools is a top environmental priority. These are key factors in determining whether people live in cities or not, and since dense cities offer lifestyles with smaller carbon footprints then getting people to live in them becomes an environmental priority.

His point is solid. City life is good both reducing green house gases, and for preserving true rural and wilderness green spaces (and all their accompanying benefits, social, environmental, and otherwise). So getting people into cities is a good environmental goal.

But Owen, like so many other analysts, fails to take into account the effects of a life separated from nature. He brings up the concept of “nature deficit disorder”, but also suggests that nature-based recreation is more damaging to the environment than playing video games. Still, people tend not to value the natural world if they do not interact with it. And studies have shown the multiple benefits of nature-based play spaces for kids and adults. This needn’t run counter to Owen’s pro-city stance. Rather, it reinforces the need for development that make it easier to access natural areas from dense urban zones. Again, Detroit’s right-sizing model could create a template for urban development which doesn’t yet exist in this country.

And clearly more progressive activists who get all excited about solar panels and urban gardens need to tackle these key urban-improvement issues of improving schools and reducing crime. Fortunately, those ideas don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Chicago studied the effects of their decades old tree-planting efforts and found that crime rates were lower in neighborhoods with trees. And the literature on biophilia suggests that integrating gardens and other nature experiences can be one important lever in improving educational settings, brain development, etc.

Owen’s point, while valid, nonetheless misses the motivational import of creating a sense of progress and not simply creating remedial improvements. Crime and education are foundational points. When we neglect them, we undermine all “visionary” efforts. But a foundation is insufficient to build a temple. For the environmental movement to stay strong, thrive and continue to guide us toward wiser choices, it must address our basic foundations, but it must also address our highest aspirations in art, innovation, spiritual growth, political frontiers and more.

In fact, I would argue that this is part of why the sustainability movement offers so much success: the solutions that can both address a progressive and visionary edge while also addressing core, foundational needs will be the most successful. Those solutions will survive memetic evolution. Owen’s text is a useful reminder of these often unaddressed foundational issues. Let’s keep filtering for the solutions that are visionary and foundational in order to build greater success for our communities.