1/28/13 – Suburbia is lacking...

One thing that really stood out to me was in the book on page 124 (Ecocities). It references Peter Calthorpe’s article, “Beyond Solar Suburbia” from the 1970s and provides a shocking factoid. He notes that “the average suburbanite using every solar design feature and technological device available would spend ten times as much energy driving the car than could be saved with all the solar design and technology available for his or her house.”

Wait, what? Still using more energy driving the car from the suburbs? That’s insane to think about.

Really, though, it makes quite a bit of sense. The infrastructure costs for suburbs are a lot more than for downtown or denser areas of cities. Also, this points out that the pollution and coal burned, etc. (embodied energy), from driving the car amount to huge costs, not just our air quality.

This was something that was on my mind from the reading, as well as something that I know we can change. It’s just how society is today.