More on Less Burbs

Reading Natural Capitalism, and running across many interesting thoughts. But one struck me, in relation to the earlier post about the possible pressures moving folks away from suburbs, that goes to the root of how we organize our living and working. Worldwide, in most places that evolved organically, people are five minutes walk from where they live, work, shop and play. They quote Alan Durning from the Northwest Environment Watch:

Most people believe the alternative to cars is better transit--in truth, it's better neighborhoods."

Better mass transit, more efficient/non-polluting cars--these are great. But they don't get to the root of the issue which is we've organized our entire society around cars. We should be clustering people and work together. Less miles driven, more community, less sprawl wiping out natural spaces. Anyone who's had the pleasure of living walking distance to work, which I have a couple of times, can attest what a joy it is. Commuting is death for everyone--the commuter, the community and the environment.

One of the things we have to deal with in the US is that most of our zoning laws forbid that kind of clustering. They are left over from a time when the need was seen to separate dirty factories from homes. Now we need to separate dirty commuting from all of us.