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OverviewMost Americans think of crowded cities as ecological nightmares-as wastelands of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams. Yet residents of compact urban centers, David Owen shows, individually consume less oil, electricity, and water than other Americans. They live in smaller spaces, discard less trash, and, most important of all, spend far less time in automobiles. Residents of Manhattan-the most densely populated place in North America-rank first in public-transit use and last in per-capita greenhouse gas production, and they consume gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn't matched since the mid-1920s, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T. They are also among the only people in the United States for whom walking is still an important means of daily transportation. These achievements are not accidents. Spreading people thinly across the countryside may make them feel green, but it doesn't reduce the damage they do to the environment. In fact, it increases the damage, while also making the problems they cause harder to see and to address. Owen contends that the environmental problem we face, at the current stage of our assault on the world's nonrenewable resources, is not how to make teeming cities more like the pristine countryside. The problem is how to make other settled places more like Manhattan, whose residents presently come closer than any other Americans to meeting environmental goals that all of us, eventually, will have to come to terms with. Full Product DetailsAuthor: David Owen , Patrick LawlorPublisher: Tantor Media, Inc Imprint: Tantor Media, Inc Edition: Library ed Dimensions: Width: 17.20cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 16.50cm Weight: 0.162kg ISBN: 9781400143719ISBN 10: 1400143713 Publication Date: 23 November 2009 Audience: General/trade , General Format: Audio Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsReviewsOwen's style...is cool, understated and witty; it does not appear to be in his nature to be alarmist. But this is a thoroughly alarming book. ---The Washington Post Author InformationDavid Owen is a staff writer for the New Yorker and the author of a dozen books, including The Man Who Invented Saturday Morning: And Other Adventures in American Enterprise. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner and Audie Award finalist, Patrick Lawlor is also an accomplished stage actor. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |