Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Urbanism. City production systems are closely related to the historical paths
followed in their development and the very low density of American cities will
probably be the first obstacle to reducing dependency on automobiles. Even with the
imposition of limits on urban sprawl (i.e., the adoption of urban growth boundaries),
the public transportation profitability threshold of 30 inhabitants per hectare will be
very long in coming for most metropolitan areas (see Chapters 7 and 8). But beyond
this technical obstacle, planners also face attitudes unprepared for intensified urban
land use (“Nimby attitudes”).
Americans are fiercely individualistic and generally opposed to the densification
of their neighborhoods, especially in the newer suburbs. The garden city ideal is not
supportive of nature not only because it is energy-intensive, but because it consumes
a significant amount of expensive natural resources such as water. It is easy to
illustrate this with an example. The prodigious amounts of water used to maintain
the fountains and golfing greens of Las Vegas in the middle of the desert is seen by
some as an intolerable waste of a scarce resource, and they have been nicknamed the
“green carpet”
1
of Las Vegas in the United Nations Environment Program: 2006-
2007.
2
In this desert region, the catchment basin of the Colorado River no long
suffices to supply Las Vegas' sprawling urban footprint and depleting groundwater,
so that the regional regulatory agency, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, has
been working on projects of Pharaonic proportions to bring fresh water from the
north of the state.
In contrast, we saw in Chapter 9 how New Orleanians rejected out of hand
proposals to increase urban density recommended by the Bring New Orleans Back
Commission in 2006 so as to reduce the city's vulnerability to flooding hazards.
Residents prefer to rely, as before, on structural protections, the levees, which
require maintenance and regular technical improvements. Even in cases of
demonstrated need such as this, the urgency of reducing vulnerability to natural
disasters is not perceived as sufficient to justify the intensification of urban land use.
It is only since the deteriorating economic conditions with the subprime crisis and
the growing number of expropriations since the summer of 2006 that we have
observed a willingness to reverse attitudes and preferences. The question remains
whether such new attitudes favourable to denser land use will resist the return to
prosperity, and whether the ideas advocated by proponents of
New Urbanism
and
environmentalists will have sufficient time to spread widely throughout society and
end the cycle of limitless sprawl which characterized United States urbanization
from 1945 to 2005.
1
.
An allusion to Las Vegas' economic specialization and the colour of game furniture's carpet.
2
.
A few remarkable images may be examined on the UNEP program website [UNEP].
