Americans Want to Live in Walkable Neighborhoods – Yale Climate Connections
By Sarah Wesseler
Growing up in suburban Ohio, I was used to seeing farmland and woods disappear to make room for new subdivisions, strip malls, and big box stores. I didn’t usually welcome the changes, but I assumed others did. If people didn’t want to live in sprawling suburbs, why did I see this kind of development everywhere I went?
But the situation is more complicated than it seems. Although sprawling development is still a familiar sight across the U.S., many experts in urban planning and housing believe this doesn’t occur because of a uniquely American passion for giant parking lots, but as a result of a dysfunctional market. Many people are hungry for denser, more walkable communities, they believe; there just aren’t enough of them to go around.
The question of what kind of communities Americans prefer has important implications for climate change. Suburban U.S. households have substantially higher emissions than their city-center counterparts, largely due to cars. Building more dense, walkable developments could significantly lower these emissions – assuming enough people would both choose to live in such communities and find suitable housing there.
