Building Up To Save The Planet
Why Density Is A Must For Our Climate
If you’ve read any of my recent content, you’d get the impression that pro-housing reforms are really just about affordability and accessibility.
As great as those qualities are, there are a few even greater concerns that demand swift action. At the top of the list, of course, is climate change.
Our decades-long pattern of suburban growth has contributed to significant environmental harm, not just in the United States, but in much of the world. We embraced a wicked Faustian bargain, trading cheap square footage for our future. The harm done to ecosystems by locking in auto dependency and creating an “American Dream” whereby each American needs thousands of square feet of living space is grave indeed.
It’s not over yet, though. Let’s talk about the harm and ways we can fix it through some smart YIMBY policies.
The environmental harm
Suburban sprawl is choking our cities and those who reside in them.
You might recall a few weeks ago that I wrote about the terrible impacts of living near highways. In fact, lower-income residents typically bear this burden and the health issues that follow. We’re not just polluting our skies, but also our lungs.
Suburban lifestyles also nearly mandate additional driving. How could they not?
The suburbs force us to life far away from urban amenities we utilize. Without the density to support mass transit, driving is ultimately a requirement. Whereas driving is an option for urban dwellers, it’s a necessity for suburbanites. In fact, researchers found that suburban households tend to drive over 30% more than their more urban counterparts.1
Driving is bad no matter what.
That extent to which we drive is significant. No matter the type of car you drive, it is bad. We can’t just avoid all bad environmental things. We take up resources as humans, and that’s not inherently bad, but some of our lifestyle choices are more costly than others.
In the United States, transportation makes up about 28% of all greenhouse gas emissions.2 Driving 30% more than you might otherwise need to sounds pretty significant now, right?
It’s true that we can somewhat mitigate these problems by shifting to more sustainable vehicles like battery electric vehicles (BEVs). This caveat requires, however, a more sustainable grid. Some European countries have much cleaner grids, making BEVs a much better option than vehicles with internal combustion engines.3 This is not as much the case in countries with dirtier energy production.
Worse yet, BEVs have rather unsustainable and high pollution externalities from their production.4 Battery waste is another unsolved issue that, while we hopefully might address it soon, is still very problematic.5
Well, at least we get cleaner air, right?
Wrong. Well, kind of wrong. Tire wear is much worse on electric vehicles, which means a new air pollution problem with potential health risks.6
Don’t get me wrong. Internal combustion engines are worse. Probably. But electric vehicles are not saving us from this problem. They’re just saving the auto industry.
Destruction of ecosystems
Our lust for developing new suburban subdivisions as far as the eye can see has major consequences for the health of our ecosystems. Low density sprawl enables inefficient land usage in areas that may have otherwise been key toward food or water resiliency around our cities.
Or, in the case of Phoenix, probably not food or water, but just the health of every living thing in the desert. The extent of the sprawl there is beyond comprehension.
Sprawl in our cities contributes to worsening air quality, higher emissions, more vehicle miles traveled, urban heat island effects, higher energy utilization (for transport and buildings), worsening watershed health, and even more bad things that will impact us for centuries to come.7
Suburban sprawl is something that we have to really engage with if we’re serious about combatting climate change. I’m not sure we’re ready for that, but we should be having these uneasy conversations regardless.
If you’re curious about learning more, I also recommend you check out the concepts of induced demand related to automobile dependency. Building huge homes with massive garages can contribute to an unfortunate feedback loop of more cars and more driving. Definitely also check out how these large homes isolate us from one another, prevent more efficient mobility choices, and much more consumption to fill the void left by thousands of unnecessary square feet.
What we can do
The best thing we can do now is make cities desirable places to live, not at the periphery, but instead in the urban core.
There is much evidence that suggests higher density urban living can reduce environmental harm. One key advantage of high density cities - particularly in a compact form - is the reduction of car dependency.8 High density can be better served by transit and offer residents in mixed-use areas the option of simply walking or biking to their destination.
In other words, we can cut out a sizable portion of the GHGs we otherwise would generate driving from our far-out suburban home to Walmart and back.
The type of building we live in is a crucial factor as well. Higher density buildings have far lower GHG emissions than lower density dwellings on a per capita basis.9
Consider how powerful urban density is for our climate when we combine these forces of sustainability. By reducing automobile oriented transportation and by increasing energy efficiency by living in higher density dwellings, we can make a huge impact.
The Problem: We make this hard to build
As I’ve covered many times over, our local regulations make density almost impossible - or illegal - to build.
We’re dreadfully slow at building bike infrastructure. Single stairway requirements (and others) from the International Building Code lack empiricism and styme housing development. Parking mandates force developers to build costly parking bays they often don’t even need, threatening developments from breaking ground at all or otherwise passing the costs off to renters.
We often just allow little other than single family homes on large lots.
What we must do
We have to reconsider not just the type of city we wish to build, but also the world we hope to live in. Our choices don’t just affect our neighborhood, rather, they impact people everywhere.
Our urban policies therefore must transform quickly to reverse suburban sprawl’s terrible momentum by reimagining what our urban cores can look like.
We can do that through comprehensive alterations to our zoning codes that prioritize building dense, mixed-use housing in pedestrian and transit-friendly streetscapes. With this foundation, we can build more effective rapid transit to more safely, cheaply, and efficiently transport people to places where they need to go.
Sure, you can call this a 15-minute city.
But also recognize that it’s the kind of city we must build for ourselves and for our future.
We don’t need to get rid of every ordinance or regulation. We do, however, have to rebuild our Administrative Capacity in city bureaucracies to deliver these changes at scale.
We can do this.
Kahn, M. E. (2000). The environmental impact of suburbanization. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 19(4), 569–586. https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6688(200023)19:4<569::aid-pam3>3.3.co;2-g
Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). EPA. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions
Pero, F. D., Delogu, M., & Pierini, M. (2018). Life cycle assessment in the automotive sector: A comparative case study of internal combustion engine (ICE) and Electric Car. Procedia Structural Integrity, 12, 521–537. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prostr.2018.11.066
Shu, X., Guo, Y., Yang, W., Wei, K., & Zhu, G. (2021). Life-cycle assessment of the environmental impact of the batteries used in pure electric passenger cars. Energy Reports, 7, 2302–2315. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2021.04.038
Wan, T., & Wang, Y. (2022). The hazards of electric car batteries and their recycling. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 1011(1), 012026. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/1011/1/012026
Foroutan, H., Aryal, A., Craine, M., & Rakha, H. (2025). Projecting airborne tire wear particle emissions in the United States in the era of electric vehicles. Science of The Total Environment, 967, 178848. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2025.178848
Wilson, B., & Chakraborty, A. (2013). The environmental impacts of sprawl: Emergent themes from the past decade of planning research. Sustainability, 5(8), 3302–3327. https://doi.org/10.3390/su5083302
Cheshmehzangi, A., & Butters, C. (2016). Sustainable living and urban density: The choices are Wide open. Energy Procedia, 88, 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2016.06.020
Norman, J., MacLean, H. L., & Kennedy, C. A. (2006). Comparing high and low residential density: Life-cycle analysis of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Journal of Urban Planning and Development, 132(1), 10–21. https://doi.org/10.1061/(asce)0733-9488(2006)132:1(10)
Great piece! I wrote something along similar lines (https://stephnakhleh.substack.com/p/housing-is-green-infrastructure-part) and I have noticed that the climate angle, while initially counterintuitive to a lot of people, does seem to move the needle better than some other pro-density arguments.