In a very short time America has realized that global warming poses real
challenges to the nation's future. The Agile City engages the
fundamental question: what to do about it? Journalist and urban analyst
James S. Russell argues that we'll more quickly slow global warming--and
blunt its effects--by retrofitting cities, suburbs, and towns. The
Agile City shows that change undertaken at the building and community
level can reach carbon-reduction goals rapidly. Adapting buildings (39
percent of greenhouse-gas emission) and communities (slashing the 33
percent of transportation related emissions) offers numerous other
benefits that tax gimmicks and massive alternative-energy investments
can't match. Rapidly improving building techniques can readily cut
carbon emissions by half, and some can get to zero. These cuts can be
affordably achieved in the windshield-shattering heat of the desert and
the bone-chilling cold of the north.
Intelligently designing our towns could reduce marathon commutes and
child chauffeuring to a few miles or eliminate it entirely. Agility,
Russell argues, also means learning to adapt to the effects of climate
change, which means redesigning the obsolete ways real-estate is
financed; housing subsidies are distributed; transportation is provided;
and water is obtained, distributed and disposed of. These engines of
growth have become increasingly more dysfunctional both economically and
environmentally. The Agile City highlights tactics that create
multiplier effects, which means that ecologically driven change can
shore-up economic opportunity, can make more productive workplaces, and
can help revive neglected communities. Being able to look at multiple
effects and multiple benefits of political choices and private
investments is essential to assuring wealth and well-being in the
future. Green, Russell writes, grows the future.
