In response to Jeff Speck’s TEDx Lecture
People tend to base their views on “greening” our country on certain biases that pull such opinion to either side of the political thermometer. I tend to see these topics with the most objective eye, in hopes to maintain focus on the most important priorities. With this said, my view of Jeff Speck’s Walkable cities compared to greening America is undoubtedly relative to the current view of consumer/consumption. I will present a couple of examples that will exemplify the stated relationship, on a global, regional and local level:
Global: It is viewed as being “energy efficient” to consume products that contain rechargeable batteries. However, batteries are currently manufactured with lithium, a chemical compound that does not occur naturally. To manufacture lithium, mineral salts must be extracted and processed at a facility in order to be placed on the consumer market. The demand for rechargeable batteries at increasingly larger scales (Electric Automotive industry, Tesla “Home Battery”, etc) has put a lot of pressure in the manufacturing sites, ramping up production in the last decade. Will the benefits of reusing your mobile phone battery be greater than the negative impact of a salt-mining and chemical processing plant in Chile, Brazil or Zimbabwe?
Regional: Farms consume a far greater amount of water than the average American household. In agricultural terms, water is measured by acre-feet while the human scale is set at gallons. When a 10-acre farm feeds its crops, how will it compare to the typical commuting worker that likes to take a 10-minute shower every day? Thanks to common sense, austerity allows for resources to be managed wisely on a personal level but a “Greener” future will require much more than that.
Local: Houston’s Buffalo Bayou, a landmark urban design project that became the catalyst for the city’s re-thinking of its stormwater retention facilities into public parks with a wide set of amenities. However, the park was built to use potable tap water to irrigate its environmentally-friendly habitats. It has also been reported that residents in the surrounding areas significantly lose water pressure when the sprinklers come on. Suggestions have been made to repurpose gray water pipelines running beneath the park instead. If the idea was to invest in a double serving park/floodwater basin, why spend on building irrigation infrastructure with an unsustainable mindset?
I admit walkability will eventually help America become greener. The more we walk, the less we drive and the more time we spend time in our local environments. But where are we walking to? Are we walking to a chain coffee shop for our daily brew, then walking to the chain grocery store that brings in produce from a farm 100 miles away, then walking back home to enjoy a home life powered by the diesel-fueled power grid. A recent action cult movie refers to the post-apocalyptic nation of the Corporate States of America, with headquarters in Dubai because was nowhere else decent enough to run a business. Unmistakably, the national conglomerate was run by a bad-tempered, big personality man with an eccentric hairdo. Are we that far from reaching the lengths of the iconic children’s movie about a robot that compacts trash left behind on Earth by purposeless humans, so large that they couldn’t walk? I personally don’t think so. I do believe that how we consume resources is the predominant issue today – one that big corporations will try their best not to discuss.Can we walk to be green ourselves? Yes absolutely! Can we make our cities walkable to make America greener? It takes more to walk to make a country green because it may or may not help the cause.
superficial words journal 