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China to Build a Zero-Carbon Green City
gormanw writes "Just outside Shanghai, there is an island about the size of Manhattan. China is going to build its first-ever 'green city', complete with no gasoline/diesel powered vehicles, 100% renewable energy, green roofs, and recycling everything. The city is called Dongtan and it should house about 5,000 people by the end of 2010, with estimates of 500,000 by 2050. The goal is to build a livable city that is energy efficient, non-polluting, and protects the wildlife in the area."
So basically the solution is to live close to an urban center. Unfortunately, housing is generally prohibitively expensive close to most urban centers (except for the ones that are so far gone with blight that there are no real jobs there anyway).
The American city (especially in the west) is built around personal automobiles. The affordable houses are well outside of walking or biking distance to most of the jobs, and are too chaotically arranged to allow for efficient mass transit.
Individual choice is part of the equation, but sane urban planning is also a big part of it. Cities and counties need to start doing more to encourage high density housing near urban centers and discourage the building of yet more suburbs and exurbs. Unfortunately, most local governments are too far in the pockets of developers to ever enforce strict zoning of that nature. Most of the new development I've seen near urban centers has also tended to be of the million-dollar-condo variety as well, which doesn't do a whole lot to solve the problem either.
If the internet has taught us anything it's that the Infinite Monkeys Corollary is more important than the Infinite Monkeys Theorem. The corollary reminds us that it doesn't matter whether the monkeys turn out Hamlet, because you'll need to read through an infinity of worthless crap before you find it.