Most climate advocates have, I think rightfully, moved away from anything that is focused on this type of personal sacrifice. Land use changes mistakenly get lumped in with this strain of environmentalism. People think that we are going to have to force people to live in places they don’t want to live and that will be unpopular.
The reality is the opposite. We are currently forcing many Americans to live in auto-dependent, low-density places where they don’t want to live. Many of these folks would choose to live in walkable, urban neighborhoods if they could. This dynamic is most easily seen in the long history of surveys that ask Americans if they would rather live in a smaller home that is in a walkable neighborhood close to amenities and jobs or a larger home where you have to drive to get to those same things. While it’s true that a majority of Americans pick the bigger home, a large minority, 42% in Pew Research’s 2023 survey, choose the smaller home near amenities. The problem is that, today, very little of the US fits the preferences of that 42%.
In Smart Growth America’s 2023 Foot Traffic Ahead report, only 1.2% of neighborhoods in the 35 largest metropolitan areas met these criteria. This huge disparity in supply and demand has also contributed to big price premiums for more compact walkable neighborhoods. Many millions of Americans want to choose the smaller home that is close to things, but single-family zoning, large lot-size requirements, and a thicket of other regulations severely limit our ability to build new walkable neighborhoods and also make it hard to add homes in these existing neighborhoods. To get more climate-friendly land use patterns, we don’t need to force people against their will: we just need to remove those limitations so the 40% of Americans who are locked out of these neighborhoods can live where they want.
Part 1 here. Parts 3 and 4 still to come, apparently.