Densification is Climate Justice

VERBATIM | Alongside Mayor Leo Williams and Mayor Janet Cowell, Abundance author Derek Thompson calls out anti-housing environmentalism and makes the case for building as the path to a livable planet.

VERBATIM is a series that republishes the words of local leaders supporting better cities.

The following was an exchange between Abundance Author and Chapel Hill resident Derek Thompson and an audience member at an event on April 10th produced by Carolina Forward in Durham. The exchange is republished in full.

---

Audience Question:
Thank you. And yes, to a lot of what you're saying; however, I do consider the environmental concerns, and I look forward to reading Abundance. I haven't yet, and I'm wondering what your thoughts are about growth. Growing up in Seattle, I saw endless growth as the end of farms and the end of forests.

Development proposed-action signs were everywhere, and it hasn't lowered cost. So, I'm curious about your thoughts about what that growth looks like. Smarter, taller, maybe not taking up as much land? Are you taking parking lots and existing structures? I know that can be more expensive to convert, but is the answer really building out? Or is it building 10-minute cities, things like this? We are in the midst of a climate crisis, an administration that wants to undo a lot of regulation. So, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Derek Thompson Answer:
Sure. I think that it's interesting—if you hold up two postcards to someone and one postcard is a gray, drab apartment building downtown and another postcard is an eco-lodge surrounded by beautiful wilderness—you say, “which of these two pictures is a picture of modern environmentalism?”

It’s easy to say the second, like that's where the wilderness is.

What you can't see, though, are the transportation costs to get groceries to that house in the exurbs, and how long someone has to drive from that house to the downtown area every single time they want to participate in the city economy. And in so many ways, as you said, it is the gray, drab apartment building which represents densification, which actually represents environmentalism.

I see this getting confused in urban planning all the time.

For example, you'll see people say, “I'm against that development within the city, because if you build a house there, you're going to have to chop down these 10 trees.” And that's compelling—if all you can see are those 10 trees. If all you have is a postcard of 10 trees that are going to die to put up an apartment building, well, that seems on its face to be anti-environmental.

But what the person can't see are the 1,000 trees that have to be cut down when the 50 units that would otherwise be built as a dense apartment building are instead built in some exurban development.

Every dense unit denied in the city consumes substantially more land in the suburbs.

It’s very easy for progressives to draw a narrow circle of care—“I care so intensely about this tree I can see”—but modern environmentalism forces us to expand that circle.

The difference between environmentalism in the 1950s and 1960s and now is huge. Back then, the problems were dirty air and dirty water. So we got the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, NEPA. But today’s problems—climate change—are global. And so we need solutions that can scale.

On Degrowth

One issue I see in the environmental movement is the promotion of degrowth as a strategy. The idea is we should all accept a little bit less, live smaller, and reduce consumption. I understand the sentiment, but I’m deeply worried about how that message will play politically.

Look at the UK and Germany—energy prices tripled, and the ruling parties suffered the biggest electoral defeats in modern history. So if the message of environmentalism is simply “less,” the movement isn't just set up to lose a few elections. It's set up to lose for a generation.

We have to marry environmentalism with growth. Ironically, the kind of growth that’s most sustainable doesn’t look like a green postcard. It looks like an apartment building.

On Carrboro Anti-Development Activism

I was in Carrboro the other day and picked up a flyer that asked for public input on new developments “as it relates to climate justice and densification.”

And I thought: you’ve got that backward. Densification is climate justice.

The only “justice” the planet cares about—if it could vote—is less carbon in the atmosphere. That comes from building dense, walkable cities. So why are we putting climate justice first and densification second? Flip it. This is one of those paradigm shifts modern environmentalism needs. It's not the 1950s anymore, and the politics of blocking doesn’t cut it.

We need a politics of building. And not just building anything—building the right things. I’m a huge fan of just about anything we can do to densify American cities. Not only because it’s good for the planet, but also because a lot of people want to live in vibrant, walkable places. That’s why downtowns are expensive—not because of physics, but because of economics. Demand. People want to live in those apartments.

We should build them.

Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell, Abundance Author Derek Thompson, Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams

Thanks to Carolina Forward for producing the event