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Green Metropolis: What The City Can Teach The Country About True Sustainability (2009)

by David Owen(Favorite Author)

3.66 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1594488827 (ISBN13: 9781594488825)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Riverhead Hardcover

review 1: The premise of the book is that the greenest thing anyone can do is move to a dense urban environment, in the US basically NYC, where you don't drive, use much less power per capita, etc. OK, I agree (before, during, and after reading), but he says this over, and over, and over again. What he doesn't say is how we would encourage the vast majority of Americans who don't live in NYC or center city SF/DC/Boston, etc., to do so--basically give up suburbia/exurbia. I thought that that's what the book was leading to, but in the end he basically says it's easy to say what to do but not so easy to say how to do it. Ummm, seriously. Oh, and guess where the author lives? A bucolic rural town in New England! He keeps referencing their charming green and how he and his wife wer... moree so much greener when they were newlyweds in Manhattan, ummm, OK? If an author himself can't take his own advice, how on earth can they expect anyone else to? It was like reading a vegetarian cookbook by someone who kept talking about their love for hamburgers. Blech.
review 2: David Owen takes a narrow view of Sustainability in "Green Metropolis." He bases his entire argument on energy via oil and gas, completely ignoring all other elements of environmental sustainability - water, air, land - and fails to acknowledge the importance of social and financial elements in a truly sustainable city. Furthermore, Owen does not provide facts or data to support his position. The information he uses is cherry picked to further his opinion, and he does not present crucial information that may undermine his argument. A lie of omission is still a lie. This book is nothing more than an extended editorial in the opinion section of The New Yorker. less

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