Castillo, A. (2023, May 4). Report: Land use policies can reduce carbon emissions – American City and County. American City and County. https://www.americancityandcounty.com/2023/04/17/report-land-use-policies-can-reduce-carbon-emissions/
Around 70-90% of residential property is single-family detached homes. The emergence of suburb-style infrastructure is very energy intensive and requires driving more average miles to complete daily activities and discourages walkable infrastructure. A reform must be made in order to accommodate denser zoning, of which increasing height limitations and decreasing the number of parking spaces is dedicated. This slowly transitions to a goal of creating the right infrastructure to support public transportation and trends in higher-density housing.
According to the EPA’s 2021 report, the transportation sector is responsible for more than a quarter of national greenhouse gas emissions annually. While a car-dependent culture can be to blame, it originated for a reason. Suburbs became fairly sparse and wide resulting in long distances having to be driven instead. A historical lack of support federally for multifamily housing and public transportation has now added some strain on the total emissions caused by everyday people. In general, I think most sectors can lower carbon emissions by implementing the most efficient (cost to return) strategies that happen to work well on a variety of subjects, but I know policy is tricky and easily influenced. There is a lot of money to be made in the energy sector – and all the others dependent on it.
My topic was air pollution, so this is interesting to read! I’ve heard a lot about car dependency in our society, and I recognize the incredible amount of parking spaces, highways, and such nearly every day – it’s hard to ignore. Changing how the land is used and improving public transportation would be a huge help. What are some ways you think the US could improve this?
It’s interesting to learn about how suburbs led to a car-dependent culture. I believe that putting restrictions on what land can and cannot be used will help lower emissions as we shift to improving public transportation. How do you think big cities will be affected by these new policies?