sustainableFUTURE

“Most Americans think of cities as ecological nightmares, as wastelands of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams. Yet residents of

compact urban centers” tend to “consume less oil, electricity, and water than all other Americans.”

- David Owen, Green Metropolis

There is a bias in our culture that views cities through a negative

paradigm; people see them as “wastelands of concrete and diesel fumes and

traffic jams.” This bias is socially constructed by media like the epic saga of

James Cameron’s Avatar, however if we are to continue growing as a species we

will need to stop urban sprawl and densify our cities by building up, not out.

David Owen writes in his book, Green Metropolis, how New York City is in fact

the most sustainable place to live in the whole nation. I will first establish context

for our cultural bias against cities? by examining how a negative bias towards

cities is socially constructed by the movie Avatar, and by summarizing the

important concepts of why New York City is so sustainable. I will then analyze

my primary source, the building code rhetoric of NYC, to define how it constructs

a positive, sustainable identity for cities, rather than a negative, destructive one

like in Avatar. Then I will justify it as the model which we should look to for

saving humanity from overpopulation and the impending crisis of climate change.

Sam Worthington, as Jake Sully illustrates in Avatar how Earth is getting

destroyed by all our cities, thus perpetuating a bias that cities are full of negative

energy – a function of our incessant need to continue expanding - “See the world

we come from. There’s no green there. They killed their mother, and they’re

gonna do the same here.” James Cameron exacerbates biases against cities

by envisioning their impending destruction of Earthly beauty and comparing it to

how life on Pandora, the alien planet, lives in perfect harmony. The director

projects a logical idea of what future cities would look like if we do not change our

infrastructure. It is a dark scene – overcrowded and full of disease. Avatar

implies that living in big metropolitan areas is bad because “there is no green,”

inferring that our continuous expansion is turning green in to gray, life in to death,

and the harmony of nature in to chaos and destruction.

Although, there is a greater meaning and a kairos

behind the story which are easily overlooked: if humans are

going to survive, if we want to continue growing as a species, we need to change

the identity of our cities – right now - to be more sustainable and more Green

through greater density, walkability, and mass transit. In this context, the people

who live in NYC are more similar than any other population in America to the

Na’vi (the indigenous people of Pandora who live in perfect harmony with their

environment). Avatar makes this inference about how cities need improvement,

however it is usually overlooked.

This relates directly to what David Owen argues in Green Metropolis –

Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the keys to

Sustainability: “In this remarkable challenge to conventional thinking about the

environment, Owen argues that the greenest community in the United States is

not Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York, New York.” This is

because “residents of compact urban centers” tend to “consume less oil,

electricity, and water than all other Americans – they’re essentially forced to.

They live in smaller spaces, consume less and discard less trash, and most

important of all, spend far less time in” cars. Those who live in Manhattan – “the

most densely populated city in the nation” – are heavily dependent on mass

transit systems like the subway. They consume gasoline at a rate the rest of the

United States surpassed in the 1920’s. The reason for this is simple. They live

closer, walk everywhere, and take mass transit all the time, and thus live much

more sustainably.

That is the main problem with most urban and suburban areas; they

sprawl infinitely because they are based around everyone owning a car, whereas

Manhattan is extremely dense because it is contained to an island so they were

forced to build up, not out. “The problem we face is how to make other settled

places more like Manhattan, whose residents currently come closer than any

other Americans to meeting environmental goals that all of us, eventually, will

have to come to terms with.” I agree completely with David Owen’s argument; I

believe that the zoning laws and organization of New York City are so effective

that it is appropriate to exam them in depth. NYC has a population density of

27,000 people per square mile while other big cities like San Francisco only have

17,000 people per square mile ("Density Using Land Area." Census Bureau

Homepage). Perhaps by understanding the complexities of density in NYC

through examining its zoning texts, we can change our view of cities, and inspire

other cities across America to redefine themselves as super dense epicenters of

life, positivity, and sustainability.

To do this, I will now try to unpack and analyze the building code rhetoric

of NYC to see how it creates a more positive metropolitan identity - an example

that could drive a transformation of densification throughout our country’s

infrastructure, therefore providing for a more sustainable future. I will 1) carefully

examine the language and word choice of the document by addressing how the

three rhetorical appeals are being used, and by identifying and analyzing two

rhetorical devices being employed, then 2) I will explore how and why the

language creates a sustainable, positive identity, and 3) I will go on to argue that

we should use these zoning texts as a model to help save our nation from

increasing population sizes.

This document (Zoning Text - New York City Department of City Planning)

is driven by ethos and logos, while pathos is left out of the equation because it is

official government law, so opinion and emotional manipulation cannot be a part

of it. The ethos of any American branch of government is well defined. Our lives

are essentially framed by what laws are written. If these laws are not followed

then there are legal ramifications through police, fines, and prison sentences.

The ethos of NYC’s zoning text is therefore incredibly strong because the

character of the authors is equal to that of our government. Logos is used as a

primary appeal, for it is full of lists that have been created by the NYC

government as logical solutions to city expansion and development. Ethos and

Logos are thus intrinsically connected and have a symbiotic relationship. The

ethos allows the authors to make claims and specific points that we are OK with,

because we trust them to be logical solutions for the people defined by a truly

democratic government.

To assure that there are no rhetorical fallacies and that everything is

expressed clearly, logically, and without any pathos, many people worked

together in order to construct the language extremely carefully. The second

chapter of Article 1 (of 13) – General Provisions, explains the “Construction of

Language and Definitions” of the entire document; it is thus an appropriate place

to examine the rhetorical devices employed. The first device is parallelism:

recurrent syntactical similarity to show that all the parts of a sentence are of

equal importance. The document uses quite consistent language and rhythm,

putting emphasis equally on all sections and sentences. Therefore parallelism

works well for their purpose; they use it throughout to definitively spell out where

and what can be built, without creating a biased statements. The second device

is appositive: a noun placed next to another noun to be described by the

appositive. They like to define things in simple, easy to understand ways, and

the appositive device works well because, like parallelism, it is simple, clear, and

logical.

Because of its validity as a government document and its equality of

logical, understandable language, the social identity constructed by these zoning

laws has been made clear: the government of NYC wants to continue expanding,

however it wants to do so rationally via environmentally conscious methods. The

NYC zoning regulations, as explained under General Purposes in Article 1,

Chapter 3, represents an example of the official rhetoric and how it is supporting

this sustainable identity; “These regulations are a significant step forward

towards … conformity with current environmental programs and safety standards

concerning air pollution.” It also explains how these “regulations will allow the

city to plan for the parking needs of residents and businesses in a more rational

manner and help facilitate a mass transit, pedestrian-oriented Central Business

District.” This is all very logical and clear and without any rhetorical fallacies. It

makes a point aimed at sustainability, walkability, and mass transit oriented

growth – smart growth. This identity a positive paradigm of intelligent expansion,

is further cultivated by people like David Owen. This is the kind of identity we

want people to imagine? Perpetuate? when they think of cities; we should see

them through a progressive, sustainable, and positive point of view. It seems

obvious, therefore, to look at these codes as a model for re-development of

suburbia, and indeed all cities, through truly dense, and thus sustainable,

urbanization.

The kairos of this argument that David Owen and I share – dense urban

spaces are more sustainable – is given validity by Christian Parenti, who explains

in his book Tropic of Chaos, that with the changing climate there will be mass

migrations as the ice caps melt and a third of the world floods. Parenti describes

how the space between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn

consists mostly of third world countries that already have many problems. But

with the changing climate those problems are going to become undeniably worse

and extremely dangerous. So much so that within twenty years

there will be upwards of a billion people around the world who

will need to move. This means that in the very near future,

essentially all existing cities and their infrastructures will have

to prepared for an enormous influx in population size.

Therefore, my main point is that we should utilize the

zoning laws of New York as an example of how to expand cities not by sprawling,

but by building up, thus creating an answer to the issues of rampant

overpopulation - due to climate change - through the notion of a more

sustainable future. The kairos here is of upmost importance, for we must change

soon, or else the environment will wreak havoc o,n not only the built environment

(which is inevitable), but also the social fabric of our entire country and our

planet. Morality tells us that we must help others when they are in danger. So if

we plan on taking good care of humanity when the climate really begins to shift,

then we must utilize and embrace super dense city planning, like that of New

York City, to inspire a new city identity: a new vision of a truly green metropolis.