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The World's Most Wasteful Megacity
merbs writes: The world's most wasteful megacity is a densely populated, steadily aging, consumerist utopia where we buy, and throw away, a staggering amount of stuff (abstract). Where some faucet, toilet, or pipe, is constantly leaking in our apartments. Where an armada of commerce-beckoning lights are always on. Where a fleet of gas-guzzling cars still clog the roadways. I, along with my twenty million or so neighbors, help New York City use more energy, suck down more water, and spew out more solid waste than any other mega-metropolitan area.
New York is only the most wasteful global megacity because it's full of Americans. The more important point is that New York City is the most environmentally friendly place in the United States, when measured by pollution emitted per capita. (See this list of CO2 emissions by state: New York State, whose population is tightly focused in NYC, has twice the CO2 emissions per capita as the more sprawling development in Florida, and one New Yorker is worth *four* Texans.
To improve its environmental standing, America needs *more* dense urbanized areas like NYC, not less.
NYC and the areas near NYC are so badly thought out that fixing the city can't be done. One would need to start with a giant wrecking ball and remove everything ever built there and then set a population cap on an entirely new city to be built in its place. If one looks at NYC and considers things like trees per acre then the problems become more obvious. One can spend months in NYC and never touch land. the land is covered with concrete and black top. Zero nature pretty much equals zero quality of life. And worse yet you really can't use that wrecking ball. how many millions of tons of asbestos are in the old buildings in NYC. How many other toxic issues would occur in that rubble? How many caskets and bodies would have to be moved or burned? My impression of NYC is that it appears as if some psychopath dedicated to horror for humanity designed and built the city.