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In a very short time America has realized that global warming poses
real challenges to the nation's future. "The Agile City" engages
the fundamental question: what to do about it?
Journalist and urban analyst James S. Russell argues that we'll
more quickly slow global warming-and blunt its effects-by
retrofitting cities, suburbs, and towns. "The Agile City" shows
that change undertaken at the building and community level can
reach carbon-reduction goals rapidly.
Adapting buildings (39 percent of greenhouse-gas emission) and
communities (slashing the 33 percent of transportation related
emissions) offers numerous other benefits that tax gimmicks and
massive alternative-energy investments can't match.
Rapidly improving building techniques can readily cut carbon
emissions by half, and some can get to zero. These cuts can be
affordably achieved in the windshield-shattering heat of the desert
and the bone-chilling cold of the north. Intelligently designing
our towns could reduce marathon commutes and child chauffeuring to
a few miles or eliminate it entirely. Agility, Russell argues, also
means learning to adapt to the effects of climate change, which
means redesigning the obsolete ways real estate is financed;
housing subsidies are distributed; transportation is provided; and
water is obtained, distributed and disposed of. These engines of
growth have become increasingly more dysfunctional both
economically and environmentally.
"
The Agile City" highlights tactics that create multiplier effects,
which means that ecologically driven change can shore-up economic
opportunity, can make more productive workplaces, and can help
revive neglected communities. Being able to look at multiple
effects and multiple benefits of political choices and private
investments is essential to assuring wealth and well-being in the
future. Green, Russell writes, grows the future.
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