Vetalia wrote:Senkaku wrote:Victoria BC has long pumped their sewage into the Salish Sea without catastrophic results (obviously it’s not GOOD, but for medium-sized cities pumping into the ocean, it isn’t necessarily going to totally destroy the coast)—but even if you totally putrefy a river or a lake, I’d argue that’s a lot less severe than razing miles and miles of forest or paving over huge areas of farmland, and then having people move in to start living incredibly inefficient lifestyles.
Vancouver doesn't pump raw sewage into the ocean; it has a combined sewer system which means under certain rare circumstances (such as exceptionally heavy rains) the system overflows and releases the excess stormwater and sewage into the ocean rather than being routed to a treatment plant. This is similar to many other older cities in the United States.
Good for Vancouver, a city I never mentioned at all lol
Also, take a look at the history of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland and Lake Erie (which is where I live)...that ecosystem was literally almost destroyed by the sheer amount of pollution dumped into the river and the impact of it radiated throughout the rest of the area. Destruction of a healthy aquatic ecosystem has knock-on effects on the rest of the region, particularly when rivers are dammed and polluted.
It sure did. I’m not saying it’s nothing; I’m saying I don’t find it convincing that it’s much worse than the environmental damage wrought by the mass construction of suburbs. And also: you seem to be arguing in favor of the most developed and technologically sophisticated suburbs, so this whole thing is sort of a red herring— as you noted, Vancouver, and most other developed major cities don’t pump raw sewage or industrial pollutants straight into their waterways. If you want to argue about whether underdeveloped urban areas are bad, then we should be comparing them to suburbs at a comparable technical and economic level of development.
The land impact of SUBURBS is NEGLIGIBLE? HUH??
Yes, with good land and wildlife management and preservation of green space the impact of suburban development can be significantly offset. In reality, suburban development only occupies a minuscule portion of the total land area and rarely, if ever, impacts agricultural areas.
This... isn’t true. Being more spread out means much higher transportation costs (lots of driving, low density makes mass transit less viable); it means much higher costs to construct road networks, electrical grids (and more electricity loss from transmission over longer distances), and water and sewage systems. Suburban homes tend to be larger and have much larger yards, consuming more energy and water than urban dwellings to heat and cool and to tend to their yards. “Mitigating” these problems usually boils down to densification... aka, urbanization. Cities are just a far more energy-efficient way to live.
There are multiple ways to generate electricity on a local level, rooftop solar is a particularly good one.
A growing and promising technology that hasn’t yet achieved wide enough penetration and which is equally applicable to urban rooftops.
These days working from home is more feasible than ever, cutting down on the need to commute.
For well-off white collar knowledge workers, yeah, they don’t necessarily have to commute to work as much as before. But they do need to drive to get groceries, to see a doctor, to visit family, to get their kids to school— the fundamental problem of being far away from all the places they need to go remains, and the lack of density precluding effective mass transit means that even if they can frequently work from home, they are just going to be driving way more.
Electric vehicles cut down on the need for gasoline to drive your car from place to place,
Depending on how your local electric company generates its power that could actually be worse, but I’ll also add that the world just doesn’t have enough cobalt for the dreams of electric car visionaries to be fully realized (and a lot of what we do have is in the famously stable and reliable Democratic Republic of the Congo).
good building design and investment in property cuts down on heating and building costs.
Developers are incentivized to make money, not to spend it on the most energy-optimal design and construction processes. You know this.
On top of that, many businesses are relocating to lower cost-of-living areas rather than waste money operating in a city where they are subject to much higher taxes resulting in lower operating costs and reduced commute times for suburbanites.
This is a political case for preferring suburban life if you’re a business owner in a city with high taxes, not an environmental one.
Really, the entire concept of locating a business in a major city is archaic to begin with, 9/10 there is literally no benefit to doing so.
I- huh?? What are you TALKING about lmao
And let's be honest, the quality of life is much higher in a suburb than in a city.
This is a purely subjective value statement that may be true of your own feelings, but isn’t true of everyone’s!