Green Houses

One of the Times' blogs has a post on green architecture that covers some of the quite quantifiable advantages to building with both sustainability and community in mind. While I disagree with making any standards mandatory (government being useless at imposing them at any meaningful level, and people being clever enough to get around them), I do believe that we are beginning to see how environmental friendliness and efficiency is cheaper in the long-term and long-term is is how we should think about homes. Sadly, but thankfully, self-interest might prevail, especially if tax breaks for too-large homes come under scrutiny.

Also, consider this National Geographic article on how Disney and Orlando came together to form a new kind of exurban landscape. There is an interesting connection, but the article makes not one mention of Celebration, FL, another Disney project, that was designed with community, technology, and environmentalism from the outset.

Update: This post by Alex Steffen at World Changing sums up everything I said above, and so much more that I wish I had, neater and in-depther. It looks at the suburbs through automobile use, but the conclusions are the same: It takes a lot of space and CO2 to end up less happy than citied folks.