Comments on: Density or just Dense: David Owen argues that Manhattan is the Greenest City in North America

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:27:07 +0000

I have more…
New York tried for five years to launch organics pick-up but were unsuccessful.
Lange cited the dense neighbourhoods, lack of storage for scraps between collections, high cost of collection, difficulty marketing the end product, and perceived ‘yuck’ factor from residents as part of their struggles. New York tried for five years to launch food waste pick-up, but ultimately failed. “An apartment dweller has a lot of anonymity,” said Lange. Lange elaborated on why he thought the five year effort had failed. “The hard part in multi-family is where do you store food waste in between collections?” he asked? “You start having odours. You start having vermin problems.”
New York had tough enforcement as part of their waste reduction plans, including gun-bearing waste-enforcement officers who ticketed residents who put recyclables and compostables in with their garbage. In 2010, officers issued fines totalling $10.1 million to 56,300 repeat offenders. They also issued 38,000 fines of $25 to first-time offenders.

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:20:37 +0000

LB,
I was hoping that Mr. Owen could give us hope that composting and recyclng in a dense area like Manhattan is a reality and give Vancouver some advice. With some research, I found out what I suspected – NYC doesn’t hold the answers to waste reduction.
Robert Lange, Director of New York’s bureau for waste reduction, told the 400 delegates( at MV’s Zero waste conference) of the U.S.’s largest city’s struggles in trying to increase recycling and composting in their dense, multi-family (apartment towers, etc) neighbourhoods.
New York has a low 17 per cent residential recycling rate in its multi-family neighbourhoods, close to Metro Vancouver’s 16 per cent rate for the same buildings. In contrast, Metro Vancouver’s single-family homes recycle just under 50 per cent of their waste, and strong recycling rates from our region’s construction and demolition industry pull our average recycling rate to 55%.

By: LB

LB — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:09:07 +0000

The people living in NYC use the same resources and create the same amount of waste as they would if they lived elsewhere…. living in an compact urban form doesn’t create additional resource use/waste, it simply concentrates it geographically.

Perhaps Adam could elaborate on what his concern is? Is it the energy associated with shipping the resources in and the waste out? Are people living in sprawly suburbs all eating local food and not shipping their waste far away?

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:33:04 +0000

I’m interested if Mr. Owen talked about how the drinking water for NYC is collected hundreds of kilometres away and piped to the city. Did he mention what happens to all the garbage? I have read that all NYC trash is shipped out of state to far off places like Ohio. I hope they don’t barge it out to sea anymore (like the WTC toxic remains).
Mr. Owen’s has solid points on how high density can reduce energy consumption and transportation but I’d like to know how dense his argument is for all the other resources it takes to run a city. Where does all NYC’s food come from?

By: VPSN

VPSN — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 23:19:15 +0000

Reposted from VPSN Facebook Commentary:

Ask Sam Sullivan where he supposes the water would come from to sustain his eco-dense ideas and I’m sure he’ll come up stumped.

Increased density means increased waste and consumption. Building higher simply ignores the reality that we must also deal with where we’re going to direct the flow from thousands more toilets per square kilometer…. Unfortunately for Ex-Mayor Sullivan, it doesn’t simply disappear like the product of his $9.5M investment of public money into an irrational trolley demonstration.

– JM

By: LB

LB — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:22:23 +0000

The idea that increased density will solve our housing issues (which I think is what Mr. Sullivan is getting at) gets somewhat hung up on the fact that we’re in a global market…. and in a supply/demand situation with crazy high, potentially unlimited, demand where does that leave us? How many units would have to come online each year for housing prices to drop to a level people with median Vancouver incomes could afford?

That said, density has a lot of other benefits! I don’t think I could go back to a life where I have to drive every day. I love getting to everything on foot or by transit.