The links between cars, suburbs and climate change
A dive into America's love affair with cars, suburbia and how it's impacting our environment.
After the second world war, America’s suburban population exploded alongside the nation’s broader economic expansion. It was the perfect storm. Veterans returning from the war were guaranteed home loans with GI Bill benefits while the mass production of affordable homes became cheaper and quicker.
The classic image of the American dream originates from this era: two kids, a dog, and a house with a white picket fence. This was the pinnacle of so many Americans’ imaginations. So then why do some now want to abolish the suburbs altogether?
Suburbs and car-centric infrastructure
Life has gotten a lot better for just about everyone since the middle of the 20th century. The global life expectancy in 1950 was just over 45 years, that number has now risen dramatically to almost 73 years in 2022.
Transportation has also become much easier with the continued growth of the automotive industry. Americans have very little trouble accessing a car. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 88% of Americans said they own a car.
Cars are convenient and extremely useful tools for travel. In most of America, you need a car to go just about anywhere. According to another 2015 Pew Research Center survey, only about one-in-ten Americans said they take public transportation on a daily or weekly basis.
Even in the northeast, where public transportation is routinely ranked the best in the nation, only 25% of adults said they take public transportation on a daily or weekly basis. And nationally that number is at a measly 5%.
Suburbs play a large part in America’s car-centric infrastructure. It’s not that complicated.
The main selling point of living in the suburbs is that you’re in the city but aren’t. You enjoy just about all of the conveniences of city living without actually having to live in a cramped, super-expensive apartment in an area with a high crime rate.
But the other side of the coin is you still don’t live in the city. You have to drive into the city for work. You also probably have to drive to get groceries, go to school, and do just about everything else. Suburbs are built for cars.
So what happens when one area is made solely for car owners? Other car-centric infrastructure pops up: strip malls, roads with no sidewalks, drive-through restaurants, drive-in movie theaters, and so many parking lots.
The environmental impact of suburbia
Car-centric infrastructure may seem as American as apple pie, but it wasn’t always like this. Cars only started gaining traction among the masses in the middle of the 20th century. For hundreds of years, America was built for pedestrians, not cars.
America’s mass transit roots can be traced all the way back to the early 19th century. Regular steam ferry service began in New York City in the 1810s which then led to horse-drawn buses in the 1820s.
Even when cars overtook horses in 1910, public transportation was still the main way most American city-dwellers got to work. For almost 100 years, electric streetcars dominated every American city from Atlanta, Georgia, to Los Angeles, California.
But as the car overtook the American imagination, funding that used to be directed toward public transportation and mass transit began to be redirected to roads and highways. The pinnacle of America’s car craze is the largest public works project in history with the construction of America’s interstate highway system.
As cars have taken over the nation, we’ve also become more aware of the impending issues surrounding climate change. The transportation sector produces more than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Even with the proliferation of the electric car industry, we probably need to cut down on individual car ownership to reduce these greenhouse gas emissions.
Passenger cars and light-duty trucks (i.e. sport vehicles, pickup trucks and minivans) contribute half of the carbon dioxide emissions from the U.S. transportation sector
Suburbs also raise some environmental questions. If we want a cleaner future, we might want to look into moving away from the suburbs and back into the cities. A 2018 study conducted in Salt Lake City showed carbon dioxide emissions increased as suburban areas developed while emission levels remained stable in the more urban areas with similar population growth.
Population growth in rural areas that experienced suburban development was associated with increasing emissions while population growth in the developed urban core was associated with stable emissions.
The logic just kind of makes sense. Suburbs are car-centric, sprawling, and generally built to use more land than needed. If you’re looking for a suburban home, you’re just about required to have a lawn go with it: a patch of grass that uses plenty of water that usually requires a gas-powered vehicle to maintain.
So what’s the answer here?
The bottom line is in order to prevent the worst aspects of climate change, America needs to dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. We’re already experiencing the negative impacts of climate change and only more irreversible damage is to come if we don’t shape up soon.
Cars and suburbs aren’t good for the environment, that much is simple. Public transportation and cities are great for minimizing the environmental impacts of population growth.
The larger and denser a city is the cleaner and more energy-efficient it is. Large cities are cleaner and more energy-efficient than suburbs, smaller cities, and even small towns.
But suburbs are so entrenched in American thought it’s hard to imagine the country without them. In many American cities, 75% or more of the land zoned for residential use is designated single-family.
Single-family zoning means no townhomes, duplexes, or apartments can be built in the designated zone. Only single-family detached homes (which essentially means only suburbs). This trend is reversing a bit with some states like California allowing landowners more flexibility with homebuilding but there’s still a long way to go.
And all this goes without mentioning the troubling racial history of the growth of suburbia or the racist policies that kept them almost entirely white for so long.
This doesn’t mean we should abolish suburbia and rid the world of cars. That’s impossible and probably not that desirable. But it’s something to keep in mind if we really do want to avoid the end of the world.